Why is sex fun- Jared Diamond

Why is Sex Fun? reads like a lecture series rather than a book. Apparently intended to provide the reader with an overview of the latest thinking on the evolutionary aspects of the subject, this short work includes sections on different sexual (and mate) selection strategies employed by males and females (presumably based on unequal "investments" in the methods of getting one's genes into the next generation); lactation (why milk is produced by females, but not, as a rule, males); how and why humans, almost uniquely, came to engage in engage in recreational sex; the unequal domestic roles played by males and females, particularly in child rearing; female menopause (which is, again, nearly unique to humans); and sexual signaling (Diamond considers penis length in human males to be a prime example, but not necessarily a signal directed at females).

Richard Dawkins: How a scientist changed the way we think Edited by Alan Grafen and Matt Ridley

If Darwin's revelation of natural selection is "the best idea anyone, any where, ever had", then Richard Dawkins' identification of the "selfish gene" must run a close second. While Darwin's concept explained the workings of life, Dawkins' insight disclosed the mechanism of natural selection. The 1976 publication of "The Selfish Gene" not only stimulated a fresh wave of thinking among biologists, it also stirred public interest and imagination. If life was under the thrall of those strings of chemicals in our cells, how far did that influence reach? In this set of excellent essays on the issues, Dawkins ideas and their impact are presented and discussed. The fruit of his insights are bittersweet, and while most of these writings applaud his probity and communication skills, there is the tang of doubt about some of them.

More than two dozen essays comprise this collection. They are topically organised, starting with the biology issues, moving through the logic Dawkins uses to his writing skills. Today, the biology seems straightforward: genes build bodies. Those bodies contain nervous systems and brains - the root of behaviours. At the publication of "The Selfish Gene", it was widely thought that evolution worked at the species' level. Dawkins moved that mechanism much deeper. Its effect is manifested through various ways, with mate choice one of the more significant. Andrew Read explains how evolutionary pressure forces such practices as "lekking" in certain bird species. The mechanism can be readily projected to other creatures, and is manifested in humans, as well.

Nature via Nurture- Matt Ridley

Following his highly praised and bestselling book Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, Matt Ridley has written a brilliant and profound book about the roots of human behavior. Nature via Nurture explores the complex and endlessly intriguing question of what makes us who we are.

In February 2001 it was announced that the human genome contains not 100,000 genes, as originally postulated, but only 30,000. This startling revision led some scientists to conclude that there are simply not enough human genes to account for all the different ways people behave: we must be made by nurture, not nature. Yet again biology was to be stretched on the Procrustean bed of the nature-nurture debate. Matt Ridley argues that the emerging truth is far more interesting than this myth. Nurture depends on genes, too, and genes need nurture. Genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will.

The Rational Optimist- Matt ridley

Life is getting better—and at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down — all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, themobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people’s lives as never before. The pessimists who dominate public discourse insist that we will soon reach a turning point and things will start to get worse. But they have been saying this for two hundred years.


Yet Matt Ridley does more than describe how things are getting better. He explains why. Prosperity comes from everybody working for everybody else. The habit of exchange and specialization—which started more than 100,000 years ago—has created a collective brain that sets human living standards on a rising trend. The mutual dependence, trust, and sharing that result are causes for hope, not despair.

The meme machine

What is a meme? First coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 study The Selfish Gene, a meme is any idea, behavior, or skill that can be transferred from one person to another by imitation: stories, fashions, inventions, recipes, songs, and ways of plowing a field, throwing a baseball, or making a sculpture. It is also one of the most important--and controversial--concepts to emerge since Darwin's Origin of the Species. 

Here, Blackmore boldly asserts: "Just as the design of our bodies can be understood only in terms of natural selection, so the design of our minds can be understood only in terms of mimetic selection." Indeed, The Meme Machine shows that once our distant ancestors acquired the crucial ability to imitate, a second kind of natural selection began: a survival of the fittest among competing ideas and behaviors. Those that proved most adaptive--making tools, for example, or using language--survived and flourished, replicating themselves in as many minds as possible. These memes then passed themselves on from generation to generation by helping to ensure that the genes of those who acquired them also survived and reproduced.

A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion by Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer

Rape is horrific for women. The mere thought of rape arouses anxiety, revulsion, and anger, so it is not surprising that women are very ambivalent about subjecting rape to scientific scrutiny. Research on deadly or grotesquely disfiguring diseases probably arouses less distaste and ambivalence. Ambivalence arises out of the mix of anxiety, revulsion, and a desire to have more information.

The authors of A Natural History of Rape are familiar with various expressions of such ambivalence, and they understand why women are so anxious. As scientists, they value knowledge and assume that trying to understand everything about why rape occurs is far more beneficial for women in the long term even if the scientific inquiry inspires anxiety and revulsion. The evolution-minded scientific approach that the authors

Forms of Becoming:THE EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT(EVO-DEVO)

Form and Function is the title of a classic book published in 1 9 1 6, in
which Edward Stuart Russell reconstructed the history of animal
morphology from Aristotle to the early 1 900s-a long period of time
in which the most important and revolutionary event in the history
of biology took place, including the advent of a world incorporating
evolutionary change. And yet for Russell the most radical choice between
alternative views in the study of animal form was not preDarwinian
conceptions versus those dominated by the methods and
priorities of evolutionary biology. It was instead the more ancient
and perhaps never fully resolved opposition which, at the beginning
of the nineteenth century, saw the two giants of comparative anatomy,
Georges Cuvier and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, facing one
another. The first championed a view that Russell called teleological
and which consists in claiming the primacy of function over form,
while the second defended, with equal conviction and authority, the
view that Russell called morphological, which claims the primacy of
form over function.

The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex

Why do men and women cheat on each other? How do men really feel when their partners have sex with other men? What worries women more -- men who turn to other women for love or men who simply want sexual variety in their lives? Can the jealousy husbands and wives experience over real or imagined infidelities be cured? Should it be? In this surprising and engaging exploration of men's and women's darker passions, David Buss, acclaimed author of The Evolution of Desire, reveals that both men and women are actually designed for jealousy. Drawing on experiments, surveys, and interviews conducted in thirty-seven countries on six continents, as well as insights from recent discoveries in biology, anthropology, and psychology, Buss discovers that the evolutionary origins of our sexual desires still shape our passions today. 

According to Buss, more men than women want to have sex with multiple partners. Furthermore, women who cheat on their husbands do so when they are most likely to conceive, but have sex with their spouses when they are least likely to conceive. These findings show that evolutionary tendencies to acquire better genes through different partners still lurk beneath modern sexual behavior. To counteract these desires to stray --

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal

We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet -- having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art -- while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins? In this fascinating, provocative, passionate, funny, endlessly entertaining work, renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning author and scientist Jared Diamond explores how the extraordinary human animal, in a remarkably short time, developed the capacity to rule the world . . . and the means to irrevocably destroy it.

Jared Diamond states the theme of his book up-front: "How the human species changed, within a short time, from just another species of big mammal to a world conqueror; and how we acquired the capacity to reverse all that progress overnight." The Third Chimpanzee is, in many ways, a prequel to Diamond's prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns examines "the fates of human societies," this work surveys the longer sweep of human evolution, from our origin as just another chimpanzee a few million years ago. Diamond writes:

It's obvious that humans are unlike all animals. It's also obvious that we're a species of big mammal down to the minutest details of our anatomy and our molecules. That contradiction is the most fascinating feature of the human species.

The Dopaminergic Mind In Human Evolution And History

What does it mean to be human? There are many theories of the
evolution of human behavior which seek to explain how our brains
evolved to support our unique abilities and personalities. Most of these
have focused on the role of brain size or specific genetic adaptations of
the brain. In contrast, Fred Previc presents a provocative theory that
high levels of dopamine, the most widely studied neurotransmitter,
account for all major aspects of modern human behavior. He further
emphasizes the role of epigenetic rather than genetic factors in the rise
of dopamine. Previc contrasts the great achievements of the dopaminergic
mind with the harmful effects of rising dopamine levels in
modern societies and concludes with a critical examination of whether
the dopaminergic mind that has evolved in humans is still adaptive to
the health of humans and to the planet in general.
Fred H. Previc is currently a science teacher at the Eleanor Kolitz
Academy in San Antonio, Texas. For over twenty years, he was a
researcher at the United States Air Force Research Laboratory where
he researched laser bioeffects, spatial disorientation in flight, and

The Evolution of Morality and Religion

Accepted codes of conduct and established religions are features of human societies throughout the world. Why should this be? In this book, biologist Donald Broom argues that these aspects of human culture have evolved as a consequence of natural selection; that morally acceptable behaviour benefits humans and other animals and that a principal function of religion is to underpin and encourage such behaviour. The author provides biological insights drawn especially from work on animal behaviour and presents ideas and information from the fields of philosophy and theology to produce a thought-provoking, interdisciplinary treatment. Scientists who read this book will gain an appreciation of the wider literature on morality and religion, and non-scientists will benefit from the author’s extensive knowledge

Charles Darwin: Origins and Arguments

One of the characteristics of humanity throughout our
history has been an almost insatiable need to question
ourselves in an attempt to find answers to the unknowable
aspects of our lives.We appear to require meaning, to
know where we are from and what we are doing here.The
religions of the world have dealt with these traits of
human nature by providing systems of understanding
which are based on faith and belief. Since the beginnings
of modern science during the Renaissance, when the
knowledge of the Greeks was rediscovered, this has led to
a conflict of ideas between theology and rationality.This is
nowhere more apparent than in the continuing debate
over what is now generally called Darwinian evolution,
after the man who has become the figurehead of a revolutionary
change in human thought.

Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language by Steven Pinker

Irregular verbs! The very thought is enough to give anyone who has struggled with them a headache. In Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language, MIT professor and evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker has taken that scourge of language students and used them ingeniously to throw light on how our minds work and languages evolve.

Pinker, a Montreal native whose wit and good looks have made him something of a scientific superstar, has written two other books for the intelligent layperson: The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (1994) and How the Mind Works (1998). The first explained current scientific thinking on why and how we speak. It argued that humans who could speak had an advantage in the evolutionary sweepstakes. The second explored other characteristics that appear to have been shaped by natural selection: falling in love, smiling, and liking sweet things, to name only a few.

Stephen Jay Gould Reflections on His View of Life

Although Steve Gould’s death on May 20, 2002, provided the
immediate impetus for this book, its original motivation came
from a review of his book Structure of Evolutionary Theory, published
just before his death. That review—by someone who in our view
clearly had no idea what punctuated equilibrium or species selection
were about—suggested to us that Steve’s science was even
more widely misunderstood than we had thought. We said to each
other at the time that someone needed to “do something” about
this situation.
Steve’s death took most of his students and close colleagues
by surprise, although a few of us were aware that he had been
ill. For many of us, it left a great hole in our lives. After his

Adapting Minds Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature

Evolutionary Psychologists claim that their account of human nature

follows from applying the principles of evolutionary biology to the study
of the human mind. Consequently, to truly understand Evolutionary Psychology,
and to be in a position to critically evaluate it, it is essential to
have a basic understanding of evolutionary theory. This chapter provides
the necessary introduction to the fundamentals of evolutionary biology.
For the initiate, this may be a slow go. But theoretical principles and concepts
explained in this chapter will repeatedly turn up later in our examination
of Evolutionary Psychology, so understanding them is a necessary
first step toward understanding Evolutionary Psychology.
In developing their account of human nature, Evolutionary Psychologists
build on (their interpretation of ) the reigning orthodoxy in evolutionary
biology. Aspects of this reigning orthodoxy are currently being

The Biological Roots of Human Nature: Forging Links between Evolution and Behavior

In this stimulating book, Goldsmith argues that biology has a great deal to say that should be of interest to social scientists, historians, philosophers, and humanists in general. He believes that anyone studying the social behavior of humans must take into consideration both proximate cause--the physiology, biochemistry, and social mechanisms of behavior--and ultimate cause--how the behavior came to exist in evolutionary time. Goldsmith, a neurobiologist, draws examples from neurobiology, psychology, and ethology (behavioral evolution). The result is a work that overcomes many of the misconceptions that have hindered the rich contributions the biological sciences have to offer concerning the evolution of human society, behavior, and sense of identity. Among the key topics addressed are the nature of biological explanation, the relationship between genes and behavior, those aspects of behavior most likely to respond to natural selection, the relationship between evolution and learning, and some probable modes of interaction between cultural and biological evolution. By re-examining the role of biological explanation in the domain of social development,

Freedom evolves by Daniel C. Dennett

Whenever people discus the concept of freedom, inevitably you will get an argument about freewill or the lack of it. So to clear the philosophical air, Dennett has to first dispel myths associated with determinism and freewill. Can one live freely and possess free will in a deterministic world? Dennett says yes and makes a strong argument for his case. In fact freedom and determinism live compatibly with each other because to make workable choices one must have reliable and predictable (determined) choices to choose from! If determinism holds true, then you have less randomness, less unpredictability. In a totally random universe, you can't have freedom because you can never know or predict the future in a reliable way. Now of course our universe contains both deterministic elements and random elements, and no doubt you need both for an evolutionary system to work, but the point aims to show that determinism does not mean inevitable, or fate. Fatalism claims that something will happen no matter what you do (a godly plan, many times, plays this role). Determinism depends on what you do.

THE RED QUEEN Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by MATT RIDLEY

Why do we have sex? One of the main biological reasons, contends Ridley, is to combat disease. By constantly combining and recombining genes every generation, people "keep their genes one step ahead of their parasites," thereby strengthening resistance to bacteria and viruses that cause deadly diseases or epidemics. Called the "Red Queen Theory" by biologists after the chess piece in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass which runs but stays in the same place, this hypothesis is just one of the controversial ideas put forth in this witty, elegantly written inquiry. Ridley, a London-based science writer and a former editor of the Economist , argues that men are polygamous for the obvious reason that whichever gender has to spend the most time and energy creating and rearing offspring tends to avoid extra mating. Women, though far less interested in multiple partners, will commit adultery if stuck with a mediocre mate. In Ridley's not wholly convincing conclusion, even human intellect is chalked up to sex: virtuosity, individuality, inventiveness and related traits are what make people sexually attractive. Photos. BOMC and QPB alternates. 

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution

Read an excellent article of Dobzhansky.

Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky, also known as T. G. Dobzhansky, and sometimesAnglicized to Theodore Dobzhansky (Ukrainian — Теодосій Григорович Добжанський; January 24, 1900 - December 18, 1975) was a prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist, and a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the unifying modern evolutionary synthesis. Dobzhansky was born in Ukraine (then part of Imperial Russia) and emigrated to the United States as a young man in 1927.

Human Senescence:Evolutionary and Biocultural Perspectives

Much current research on the biology of senescence is on cell lines,
nematodes, or fruit flies, which may be only of peripheral relevance to
the problems encountered in human senescence. Human Senescence reviews
the evolutionary biology of human senescence and life span, and
the evolutionarily recent development of late-life survival. In examining
how human patterns of and variability in growth and development have
altered later life survival probabilities and competencies, how survival
during mid-life contributes to senescent dysfunction and alteration, and
the possibilities of further extending human life span, it gives a better understanding
of howhumans came to senesce as slowly as they do. Bringing