Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Books:
Principles of Ethics
Principles of Biology
Principles of Psychology
Principles of Sociology
First Principles of the System of Philosophy
Components of Social Darwinism
Darwin Spencer
Evolution Descent with Transformation
Modification
Components Variation
And selection
Cause Mechanism Internal; hard-
“natural wired
Selection”
Description Bush Single line
of evolution
change
20th Century Anthropological Evolution:
Neo Evolution
Julian Steward
Leslie White
Leslie White
Laura Betzig
Virginia Butler
Selectionism and Evolutionary Ecology
• Commonalities
– Both proceed from a platform of science. Building
knowledge is the goal; answering WHY questions
– Actively building theory. In fact, both have theory,
and that theory is Darwinian Evolution
• Consequently Darwinian principles and
mechanisms apply: individuals vary, heritable
variation, reproduction matters, mechanisms
operate on and winnow variation resulting in
differential persistence
Selection operates on the Phenotype
What is the phenotype?
Menstral Hut
Bower Bird
Male Peacock
DIFFERENCES
• Selectionism: Goal is to explain the
archaeological record… ARTIFACTS in
evolutionary terms
• Mechanisms:
• Selection operates on functional traits, and those
traits show directional changes in frequencies over
time (selection operates on functional traits)
• Drift: random changes in gene frequencies
(drift operates on stylistic traits)
Frequency
Function
Frequency
Style
Time
Shape of Stylistic versus Functional
Trait through time
Time