Genes, Categories, and Species: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Cause of the Species ProblemOxford University Press, 2001 M07 19 - 240 páginas In Genes, Categories and Species, Jody Hey provides an enlightening new solution to one of biology's most ironic and perplexing puzzles. When Darwin showed that life evolves, and that it does so by natural selection, he transformed our understanding of living things. But the very question Darwin addressed-the nature of species-continues to pose an awkward conundrum for biologists. Despite enormous efforts by a great many scholars, biologists still cannot agree on how to identify species or even how to define the word "species." Genes, Categories, and Species is not like other books on the species problem, for it does not begin by asking, "What is a species?" Instead, it focuses on the very fact that biologists are stumped by species and their curious behavior in coping with that uncertainty. Faced with a persistent conundrum-and no lack of data on the subject-biologists who ponder the species problem have ceased to ask the most essential of scientific questions: "What new information do we need to resolve the problem?" This is the question that motivates this book and leads to the discoveries it reveals. The answer to the species problem lies not with the processes and patterns of biological diversity, Hey contends, but rather in the way the human mind perceives and categorizes that diversity. The promise of this book is twofold. First, it allows biologists to understand the causes of the species problem and to use this knowledge to avoid the major confusions that arise over species. Second, with its explanation of the species problem, it gives scholars and students of human nature a humbling example of how ill-suited the human mind is for certain kinds of scientific questions. |
Contenido
| 3 | |
The Mode of Ignorance | 15 |
The Theory of Life | 27 |
Part I Conclusions | 40 |
Species in Nature and within the Mind 4 Categories | 45 |
Typological Thinking about Species | 61 |
Biological Diversity | 67 |
Recombination and Biological Species | 88 |
Part II Conclusions | 128 |
Living with the Species Problem 10 PHYLOGENY | 133 |
Systematics | 145 |
Evolutionary Biology | 159 |
What Are Species? What Are Taxa? | 169 |
What Is to Be Done? | 180 |
References | 195 |
Index | 213 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Genes, Categories, and Species: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Cause of the ... Jody Hey Vista previa limitada - 2001 |
Genes, Categories, and Species: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Cause of the ... Jody Hey Vista previa limitada - 2001 |
Genes, Categories, and Species: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Causes of the ... Jody Hey Vista previa limitada - 2001 |
Términos y frases comunes
adaptation arise ary groups aspects basic behavior biological diversity Biological Species Concept boundaries branching cause cells chapter circumstances cladistic classical common consider context correspond criteria Darwin debate definition of SPECIES descendants described devise distinct DNA replication DNA sequence evolution evolutionary biologists evolutionary groups evolutionary history evolutionary processes evolved example exist fractal fuzzy ganisms gene exchange gene tree genetic drift genome groups of organisms hierarchical higher taxa human hybrids idea indistinct kinds of organisms language learning lutionary Mayr meaning method mind monophyletic monophyly multiple mutation natural kinds natural selection nominalist occur particular patterns persist phylogenetic populations prototype effects question real entities real evolutionary groups real species real world reality reason recognize recombination recurrence refer replication reproduction scientists share similar simple species category species concept species problem species taxa symbol systematics systematists taxon theory things tion tionary groups typological thinking uncertainty understanding vague word
Pasajes populares
Página 48 - There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action and speech. Every time we see something as a kind of thing, for example, a tree, we are categorizing. Whenever we reason about kinds of things — chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions, any kind of thing at all — we are employing categories.
Página 201 - MC Smith, RN Burns, ME Ford, and GF Hatfull. 1999. Evolutionary relationships among diverse bacteriophages and prophages: all the world's a phage.
Página 102 - biological" species as follows: "species are groups of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups
Página 150 - Cracraft defined a phylogenetic species as "an irreducible (basal) cluster of organisms, diagnosably distinct from other such clusters, and within which there is a parental pattern of ancestry and descent
Página 198 - Ferris, SD, RD Sage, C.-M. Huang, JT Nielsen, U. Ritte, and AC Wilson. 1983. Flow of mitochondrial DNA across a species boundary. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 80:2290-94.
Página 123 - Vagueness is a natural consequence of the basic mechanism of word learning. The penumbral objects of a vague term are the objects whose similarity to ones for which the verbal response has been rewarded is relatively slight.
Página 76 - ... gene pool." The concept of the "gene pool" comes to us from population genetics and evolutionary theory. It was introduced surprisingly late, in 1950, by Theodosius Dobzhansky, who used it to help establish a Mendelian definition of "species" as "a reproductive community of sexual and cross-fertilizing individuals which share in a common gene pool
Página 69 - ... given time as we can, we notice at once that the observed variation does not form a single probability distribution or any other kind of continuous distribution. Instead, a multitude of separate, discrete, distributions are found. In other words, the living world is not a single array of individuals in which any two variants are connected by unbroken series of intergrades, but an array of more or less distinctly separate arrays, intermediates between which are absent or at least rare. Each array...
Página 197 - CW and R. Wyatt. 1989. Hybridization and introgression in buckeyes (Aesculus: Hippocastanaceae): a review of the evidence and a hypothesis to explain long-distance gene flow. Syst. Bot.