|
Blind Watchmaker
''The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design'' is a 1986 book by Richard Dawkins, in which the author presents an explanation of, and argument for, the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He also presents arguments to refute certain criticisms made on his first book, '' The Selfish Gene''. (Both books espouse the gene-centric view of evolution.) An unabridged audiobook edition was released in 2011, narrated by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward. Overview In his choice of the title for this book, Dawkins refers to the watchmaker analogy made famous by William Paley in his 1802 book ''Natural Theology''. Paley, writing long before Charles Darwin published ''On the Origin of Species'' in 1859, held that the complexity of living organisms was evidence of the existence of a divine creator by drawing a parallel with the way in which the existence of a watch compels belief in an intelligent watchmaker. Dawkins, in contrastin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An atheist, he is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. Dawkins first came to prominence with his 1976 book ''The Selfish Gene'', which popularised the gene-centred view of evolution and introduced the term '' meme''. With his book ''The Extended Phenotype'' (1982), he introduced into evolutionary biology the influential concept that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, for example, when a beaver builds a dam. His 2004 The Ancestor's Tale set out to make understanding evolution simple for the general public, by tracing common ancestors back from humans to the origins of life. Over time, numerous religious people challenged th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beetles
Beetles are insects that form the order Coleoptera (), in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings are hardened into wing-cases, elytra, distinguishing them from most other insects. The Coleoptera, with about 400,000 described species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal life-forms; new species are discovered frequently, with estimates suggesting that there are between 0.9 and 2.1 million total species. Found in almost every habitat except the sea and the polar regions, they interact with their ecosystems in several ways: beetles often feed on plants and fungi, break down animal and plant debris, and eat other invertebrates. Some species are serious agricultural pests, such as the Colorado potato beetle, while others such as Coccinellidae (ladybirds or ladybugs) eat aphids, scale insects, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects that damage crops. Beetles typically have a particularly hard e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fundación Telefónica
Fundación is a town and municipality of the Colombian Department of Magdalena. Its people are known as Fundanenses. The primary economic activity is livestock-raising, for production of both meat and milk. Other crops are: corn, yuca, oranges, bananas, beans, sesame, sorghum, rice, tomatoes, and tobacco. There is also artisanal fishing. Physically, the area of Fundación consists of river valley, flood plain and some low-lying hills. The municipio is bounded on the north by Aracataca, on the east by Bosconia, on the south by Chibolo, and, on the west by Pivijay, Sabanas de San Angel, and Algarrobo. The town is crossed by the Fundación River The Fundación River is a river in northern Colombia, originating from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the Cesar Department but flows down to the Magdalena Department crossing the town and municipality of Fundación Fundación is a town a .... The town came to international prominence on 18 May 2014 when a scho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strandbeest
Theodorus Gerardus Jozef Jansen (; born 14 March 1948) is a Dutch artist. In 1990, he began building large mechanisms out of PVC that are able to move on their own and, collectively, are titled ''Strandbeest''. The kinetic sculptures appear to walk. His animated works are intended to be a fusion of art and engineering. He has said that "The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds." He strives to equip his creations with their own artificial intelligence so they may avoid obstacles such as the sea, by changing course when detected. Early life Jansen was born in Scheveningen in the Netherlands. He grew up with a talent for both physics and art, and studied physics at the Delft University of Technology. Jansen left the university in 1974 without a degree. While at Delft, Jansen was involved in many projects that involved both art and technology, including a paint machine and a flying-saucer machine. Flying saucer In 1979 Jansen started using cheap PVC pipes to b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theo Jansen
Theodorus Gerardus Jozef Jansen (; born 14 March 1948) is a Dutch artist. In 1990, he began building large mechanisms out of PVC that are able to move on their own and, collectively, are titled ''Strandbeest''. The kinetic sculptures appear to walk. His animated works are intended to be a fusion of art and engineering. He has said that "The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds." He strives to equip his creations with their own artificial intelligence so they may avoid obstacles such as the sea, by changing course when detected. Early life Jansen was born in Scheveningen in the Netherlands. He grew up with a talent for both physics and art, and studied physics at the Delft University of Technology. Jansen left the university in 1974 without a degree. While at Delft, Jansen was involved in many projects that involved both art and technology, including a paint machine and a flying-saucer machine. Flying saucer In 1979 Jansen started using cheap PVC pipes to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dallas Willard
Dallas Albert Willard (September 4, 1935 – May 8, 2013) was an American philosopher also known for his writings on Christian spiritual formation. Much of his work in philosophy was related to phenomenology, particularly the work of Edmund Husserl, many of whose writings he translated into English for the first time. He was longtime Professor of Philosophy at The University of Southern California in Los Angeles, teaching at the school from 1965 until his death in 2013 and serving as the department chair from 1982 to 1985. Education Willard attended William Jewell College, and later graduated from Tennessee Temple College in 1956 with a B.A. in Psychology, and from Baylor University in 1957 with a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion. He went to graduate school at Baylor University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, earning a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin with a minor in the History of Science in 1964. Academic career Willard spent five years t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alternatives To Evolution By Natural Selection
Alternatives to Darwinian evolution have been proposed by scholars investigating biology to explain signs of evolution and the relatedness of different groups of living things. The alternatives in question do not deny that evolutionary changes over time are the origin of the diversity of life, nor that the organisms alive today share a common ancestor from the distant past (or ancestors, in some proposals); rather, they propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change over time, arguing against mutations acted on by natural selection as the most important driver of evolutionary change. This distinguishes them from certain other kinds of arguments that deny that large-scale evolution of any sort has taken place, as in some forms of creationism, which do not propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change but instead deny that evolutionary change has taken place at all. Not all forms of creationism deny that evolutionary change takes place; notably, proponents of theisti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael T
Michael may refer to: People * Michael (given name), a given name * Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael Given name "Michael" * Michael (archangel), ''first'' of God's archangels in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions * Michael (bishop elect), English 13th-century Bishop of Hereford elect * Michael (Khoroshy) (1885–1977), cleric of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada * Michael Donnellan (1915–1985), Irish-born London fashion designer, often referred to simply as "Michael" * Michael (footballer, born 1982), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born 1983), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born 1993), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born February 1996), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born March 1996), Brazilian footballer * Michael (footballer, born 1999), Brazilian footballer Rulers =Byzantine emperors= *Michael I Rangabe (d. 844), married the daughter of Emperor Nikephoros I *Mic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Group Selection
Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene. Early authors such as V. C. Wynne-Edwards and Konrad Lorenz argued that the behavior of animals could affect their survival and reproduction as groups, speaking for instance of actions for the good of the species. In the 1930s, R.A. Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane proposed the concept of kin selection, a form of altruism from the gene-centered view of evolution, arguing that animals should sacrifice for their relatives, and thereby implying that they should not sacrifice for non-relatives. From the mid 1960s, evolutionary biologists such as John Maynard Smith, W. D. Hamilton, George C. Williams, and Richard Dawkins argued that natural selection acted primarily at the level of the gene. They argued on the basis of mathematical models that individuals would not altruistically sacrifice fitness for the sake of a group unless ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.png "Click for more on -> The New York Times")
