Biological Theory 

About: Biological Theory is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Philosophy of biology & Population. It has an ISSN identifier of 1555-5542. Over the lifetime, 715 publications have been published receiving 9791 citations.

The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religions

Abstract: Understanding religion requires explaining why supernatu- ral beliefs, devotions, and rituals are both universal and vari- 20 able across cultures, and why religion is so often associated with both large-scale cooperation and enduring group conflict. Emerging lines of research suggest that these oppositions result from the convergence of three processes. First, the interaction of certain reliably developing cognitive processes, such as our 25 ability to infer the presence of intentional agents, favors—as an evolutionary by-product—the spread of certain kinds of counterintuitive concepts. Second, participation in rituals and devotions involving costly displays exploits various aspects of our evolved psychology to deepen people's commitment 30 to both supernatural agents and religious communities. Third, competition among societies and organizations with different faith-based beliefs and practices has increasingly connected re- ligion with both within-group prosociality and between-group enmity. This connection has strengthened dramatically in re- 35 cent millennia, as part of the evolution of complex societies, and is important to understanding cooperation and conflict in today's world.

Cultural Niche Construction: An Introduction

Abstract: Niche construction is the process whereby organisms, through their activities and choices, modify their own and each other's niches. By transforming natural- selection pressures, niche construction generates feedback in evolution at various different levels. Niche-constructing species play important ecological roles by creating habitats and resources used by other species and thereby affecting the flow of energy and matter through ecosystems—a process often referred to as ''ecosystem engineering.'' An important emphasis of niche construction theory (NCT) is that acquired characters play an evolutionary role through transforming selective environments. This is particularly relevant to human evolution, where our species has engaged in extensive environmental modification through cultural practices. Humans can construct developmental environments that feed back to affect how individuals learn and develop and the diseases to which they are exposed. Here we provide an introduction to NCT and illustrate some of its more important implications for the human sciences.

A Cultural Niche Construction Theory of Initial Domestication

Abstract: I present a general theory for the initial domestication of plants and animals that is based on niche construction theory and incorporates several behavioral ecological concepts, including central-place provisioning, resource catchment, resource ownership and defensibility, and traditional ecological knowledge. This theory provides an alternative to, and replacement for, current explanations, including diet breadth models of optimal foraging theory, that are based on an outmoded concept of asymmetrical adaptation and that attempt to explain domestication as an adaptive response to resource imbalance resulting from either environmental decline or human population growth. The small-scale human societies that first domesticated plants and animals share a number of basic interrelated attributes that when considered as an integrated and coherent set of behaviors provide the context for explaining initial domestication not as an adaptive response to an adverse environmental shift or to human population growth or packing but rather as the result of deliberate human enhancement of resource-rich environments in situations where evidence of resource imbalance is absent.

The Problem of Biological Individuality

Abstract: Darwin described forces of selection acting upon individuals, but there remains a great deal of controversy about the exact status and definition of a biological individual. Recently some authors have argued that the individual is dispensable—that an inability to pin it down is not problematic because little rests on it anyway. The aim of this article is to show that there is a real problem of biological individuality, and an urgent need to arbitrate among the current plethora of solutions to it.