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Record Nr. |
UNINA9910781067403321 |
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Autore |
Richards Robert J (Robert John), <1942-> |
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Titolo |
The meaning of evolution [[electronic resource] ] : the morphological construction and ideological reconstruction of Darwin's theory / / Robert J. Richards |
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Pubbl/distr/stampa |
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Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, c1992 |
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ISBN |
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1-282-53768-7 |
9786612537684 |
0-226-71205-2 |
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Descrizione fisica |
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1 online resource (224 p.) |
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Collana |
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Science and its conceptual foundations |
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Disciplina |
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Soggetti |
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Evolution (Biology) |
Biology |
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Lingua di pubblicazione |
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Formato |
Materiale a stampa |
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Livello bibliografico |
Monografia |
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Note generali |
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Description based upon print version of record. |
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Nota di bibliografia |
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Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-190) and index. |
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Nota di contenuto |
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Front matter -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- 1. The Natural HBtoy of Ideas -- 2. Evolution us. Epigenesis in Embyogenesis -- 3. The Theory of Evolutionary Recapitulation in the Context of Transcendental Morphology -- 4. Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Species Change -- 5. Darwin's Embryological Theory of Progressive Evolution -- 6. The Meaning of Evolution and the Ideological Uses of History -- Bibliography -- Index |
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Sommario/riassunto |
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Did Darwin see evolution as progressive, directed toward producing ever more advanced forms of life? Most contemporary scholars say no. In this challenge to prevailing views, Robert J. Richards says yes-and argues that current perspectives on Darwin and his theory are both ideologically motivated and scientifically unsound. This provocative new reading of Darwin goes directly to the origins of evolutionary theory. Unlike most contemporary biologists or historians and philosophers of science, Richards holds that Darwin did concern himself with the idea of progress, or telos, as he constructed his theory. Richards maintains that Darwin drew on the traditional embryological meanings of the terms "evolution" and "descent with modification." In the 1600's and 1700's, "evolution" referred to the |
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embryological theory of preformation, the idea that the embryo exists as a miniature adult of its own species that simply grows, or evolves, during gestation. By the early 1800's, however, the idea of preformation had become the concept of evolutionary recapitulation, the idea that during its development an embryo passes through a series of stages, each the adult form of an ancestor species. Richards demonstrates that, for Darwin, embryological recapitulation provided a graphic model of how species evolve. If an embryo could be seen as successively taking the structures and forms of its ancestral species, then one could see the evolution of life itself as a succession of species, each transformed from its ancestor. Richards works with the Origin and other published and archival material to show that these embryological models were much on Darwin's mind as he considered the evidence for descent with modification. Why do so many modern researchers find these embryological roots of Darwin's theory so problematic? Richards argues that the current tendency to see evolution as a process that is not progressive and not teleological imposes perspectives on Darwin that incorrectly deny the clearly progressive heart of his embryological models and his evolutionary theory. |
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2. |
Record Nr. |
UNINA9910811761403321 |
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Titolo |
Continuum theory and dynamical systems : proceedings of the AMS-IMS-SIAM joint summer research conference held June 17-23, 1989, with support from the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Office / / Morton Brown, editor |
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Pubbl/distr/stampa |
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Providence, Rhode Island : , : American Mathematical Society, , [1991] |
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©1991 |
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ISBN |
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0-8218-7705-4 |
0-8218-5450-X |
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Descrizione fisica |
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1 online resource (194 p.) |
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Collana |
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Contemporary mathematics, , 0271-4132 ; ; 117 |
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Disciplina |
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Soggetti |
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Differentiable dynamical systems |
Continuum (Mathematics) |
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Lingua di pubblicazione |
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Formato |
Materiale a stampa |
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Livello bibliografico |
Monografia |
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Note generali |
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"The AMS-IMS-SIAM Joint Summer Research Conference in the Mathematical Sciences on Relationships between Continuum Theory and the Theory of Dynamical Systems was held at Humboldt State University, Arcata, California, on June 17-23, 1989"--T.p. verso. |
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation. |
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Nota di bibliografia |
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Includes bibliographical references. |
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Nota di contenuto |
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""Contents""; ""Preface""; ""Whitney's Regular Families of Curves Revisited""; ""Sets of Periodic Points of Functions on Trees""; ""Indecomposability and Dynamics of Invariant Plane Separating Continua""; ""Rotational Dynamics on Cofrontiers""; ""Fundamental Regions of Planar Homeomorphisms""; ""Dense Orbits of Critical Points for the Tent Map""; ""Periods of Surface Homeomorphisms""; ""Fixed-point Problems in Continuum Theory""; ""A Technique for Constructing Examples""; ""Continuum Theory and Dynamics Problems""; ""The Pseudo-arc"" |
""Dynamical Properties of the Shift Map on the Inverse Limit Space""""Minimal Sets, Wandering Domains, and Rigidity in the 2-Torus""; ""Rotations of Simply-Connected Regions and Circle-like Continua""; ""Chaos: An Introduction to Some Topological Aspects""; ""How Big is the Intersection of Two Thick Cantor Sets?""; ""Problems in Dynamics on Continua"" |
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