The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World - and Us
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.56 (971 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B071RCMF4G |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 594 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2016-08-18 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. In 30 years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection, in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons - for the mere pleasure of it - is an independent engine of evolutionary change. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum - reviving Darwin's own views - thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: club-winged manakins who sing with their wings, great argus pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3-D spheres, red-capped manakins who moonwalk. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, a
"A must read if you have any interest in human evolution." according to John Wylie. This is the most significant book about human evolution to come along in a very long time. Most popular classics in the genre are by very good science writers, like Matt Ridley (Red Queen), Robert Wright (The Moral Animal), or even Richard Dawkins (Selfish Gene). The Evolution of Beauty easily matches the popular appeal of those books, but it is also in a class with E. O. Wilson’s Sociobiology (which ultimately opened up Darwin's other taboo idea of group selection) for opening up the field of sexual selection. Here is a first rate naturalist (ornithology) authoritatively sweeping all the accumulated detr. A Subtle View of Evolution Hiker For the non-specialist, this book is real revelation. Survival of the fittest is usually considered to be the only force shaping species in the evolutionary process.Prof. Prum makes the case that other forces, specifically autonomous mate selection, may play a pivotal role in the determination of the characteristics of a species. This concept, first introduced by Charles Darwin himself, has been ignored by most evolutionary biologists until the last few decades. But only by recognizing that another force, or forces, may play a substantial role in guiding evolution can one understand and appreciate the intricate. "Beauty Happens" according to Jeremy Minns. This is a fascinating book. Darwin’s theory of evolution was based on two pillars: natural selection of adaptations to the environment (‘the survival of the fittest’), which gave the giraffe its long neck, and sexual selection, which gave the peacock its beautiful – and unwieldy – tail. In ‘The Evolution of Beauty’ Richard Prum concentrates on the second pillar. While the principle of sexual selection is generally accepted, most evolutionists argue that a particular ornament or behavior is selected not because of its intrinsic attractiveness but because it is an indicat