Critics of conspiracy theories often charge that such theories are implausible because conspiracies of the kind they allege tend to fail. Thus, according to these critics, conspiracy theories that have been around for a while would have been, in all likelihood, already exposed if they had been real. So, they reason, they probably are not. In this article, I maintain that the arguments in support of this view are unconvincing. I do so by examining a list of four sources recently (...) cited in support of the claim that conspiracies tend to fail. I pay special attention to two of these sources, an article by Brian Keeley, and, especially, an article by David Grimes, which is perhaps the single “best” article in support of the idea that conspiracies tend to fail. That is, it offers the most explicit and elaborate attempt to establish this view. Further, that article has garnered significant (uncritical) attention in the mainstream press. I argue that Grimes's argument does not succeed, that the common assertion that conspiracies tend to fail remains poorly supported, and that there are good reasons to think that at least some types of conspiracies do not tend to fail. (shrink)

The philosopher Quassim Cassam has described a concept called ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (capitalized) that includes several ‘special features’ that distinguish such theories from other theories positing conspiracies. Conspiracy Theories, he argues, are unlikely to be true. Indeed, he implies that they are, as a class of ideas, so unlikely to be true that we are justified in responding to them by criticizing the ideology they are (presumed to be) associated with, rather than engaging them solely on their individual epistemic merits. This (...) article argues that Cassam’s ‘special features’ are ambiguous. Under some interpretations, they are not epistemically problematic. Under other interpretations, they do not fairly describe many of the theories Cassam treats as examples of Conspiracy Theories. In the end, there seems to be no interpretation of these features that would justify the inference that theories Cassam treats as Conspiracy Theories, including JFK Conspiracy Theories, can be reasonably dismissed on account of having these features. (shrink)

In an article based on a recent address to the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Keith Harris has argued that there is something epistemically wrong with conspiracy theorizing. Although he finds “standard criticisms” of conspiracy theories wanting, he argues that there are three subtle but significant problems with conspiracy theorizing: It relies on an invalid probabilistic version of modus tollens. It involves a problematic combination of both epistemic virtues and vices. And it lacks an adequate basis for trust in its information (...) sources. In response to Harris, this article argues that, like previous criticisms, these criticisms do little to undermine conspiracy theorizing as such. And they do not give us good reasons to dismiss any particular conspiracy theory without consideration of the relevant evidence. (shrink)

Music comprises a diverse category of cognitive phenomena that likely represent both the effects of psychological adaptations that are specific to music (e.g., rhythmic entrainment) and the effects of adaptations for non-musical functions (e.g., auditory scene analysis). How did music evolve? Here, we show that prevailing views on the evolution of music – that music is a byproduct of other evolved faculties, evolved for social bonding, or evolved to signal mate quality – are incomplete or wrong. We argue instead that (...) music evolved as a credible signal in at least two contexts: coalitional interactions and infant care. Specifically, we propose that (1) the production and reception of coordinated, entrained rhythmic displays is a co-evolved system for credibly signaling coalition strength, size, and coordination ability; and (2) the production and reception of infant-directed song is a co-evolved system for credibly signaling parental attention to secondarily altricial infants. These proposals, supported by interdisciplinary evidence, suggest that basic features of music, such as melody and rhythm, result from adaptations in the proper domain of human music. The adaptations provide a foundation for the cultural evolution of music in its actual domain, yielding the diversity of musical forms and musical behaviors found worldwide. (shrink)

In the social science literature, conspiracy theories are commonly characterized as theories positing a vast network of evil and preternaturally effective conspirators, and they are often treated, either explicitly or implicitly, as dubious on this basis. This characterization is based on Richard Hofstadter’s famous account of ‘the paranoid style’. However, many significant conspiracy theories do not have any of the relevant qualities. Thus, the social science literature provides a distorted account of the general category ‘conspiracy theory’, conflating it with a (...) subset of that category that encourages unfairly negative evaluations of conspiracy theories. Generally, when evaluating theories, one should focus on the most plausible versions; the merit of a theory is independent of the existence of less plausible versions of it. By ignoring this and glossing over important distinctions, many academics, especially in the social sciences, have misclassified many conspiracy theories and in doing so have contributed to an epistemically unfair depiction of them. Further, even theories that genuinely fit the description of ‘the paranoid style’ cannot be completely dismissed on that basis. All conspiracy theories ought to be judged on the totality of their individual merits. (shrink)

Evidence suggests that humans might have neurological specializations for music processing, but a compelling adaptationist account of music and dance is lacking. The sexual selection hypothesis cannot easily account for the widespread performance of music and dance in groups (especially synchronized performances), and the social bonding hypothesis has severe theoretical difficulties. Humans are unique among the primates in their ability to form cooperative alliances between groups in the absence of consanguineal ties. We propose that this unique form of social organization (...) is predicated on music and dance. Music and dance may have evolved as a coalition signaling system that could, among other things, credibly communicate coalition quality, thus permitting meaningful cooperative relationships between groups. This capability may have evolved from coordinated territorial defense signals that are common in many social species, including chimpanzees. We present a study in which manipulation of music synchrony significantly altered subjects’ perceptions of music quality, and in which subjects’ perceptions of music quality were correlated with their perceptions of coalition quality, supporting our hypothesis. Our hypothesis also has implications for the evolution of psychological mechanisms underlying cultural production in other domains such as food preparation, clothing and body decoration, storytelling and ritual, and tools and other artifacts. (shrink)

This article addresses the question, ‘Should scholars debunk conspiracy theories or stay neutral?’ It describes ‘conspiracy theories’ and two senses of ‘neutrality,’ arguing that scholars should be...

This study tested four theoretical models of leadership with data from the ethnographic record. The first was a game-theoretical model of leadership in collective actions, in which followers prefer and reward a leader who monitors and sanctions free-riders as group size increases. The second was the dominance model, in which dominant leaders threaten followers with physical or social harm. The third, the prestige model, suggests leaders with valued skills and expertise are chosen by followers who strive to emulate them. The (...) fourth proposes that in small-scale, kin-based societies, men with high neural capital are best able to achieve and maintain positions of social influence (e.g., as headmen) and thereby often become polygynous and have more offspring than other men, which positively selects for greater neural capital. Using multiple search strategies we identified more than 1000 texts relevant to leadership in the Probability Sample of 60 cultures from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). We operationalized the model with variables and then coded all retrieved text records on the presence or absence of evidence for each of these 24 variables. We found mixed support for the collective action model, broad support for components of the prestige leadership style and the importance of neural capital and polygyny among leaders, but more limited support for the dominance leadership style. We found little evidence, however, of emulation of, or prestige-biased learning toward, leaders. We found that improving collective actions, having expertise, providing counsel, and being respected, having high neural capital, and being polygynous are common properties of leaders, which warrants a synthesis of the collective action, prestige, and neural capital and reproductive skew models. We sketch one such synthesis involving high-quality decision-making and other computational services. (shrink)

We present results from a study about women and employee-elected board members, and fill some of the gaps in the literature about their contribution to board effectiveness. The empirical data are from a unique data set of Norwegian firms. Board effectiveness is evaluated in relation to board control tasks, including board corporate social responsibility (CSR) involvement. We found that the contributions of women and employee-elected board members varied depending on the board tasks studied. In the article we also explored the (...) effects of the esteem of the women and employee-elected board members, and we used creative discussions in the boardroom as a mediating variable. Previous board research, including research about women and employee-elected directors, questions if the board members contribute to board effectiveness. The main message from this study is that it may be more important to ask how, rather than if, women and employee-elected board members contribute, and we need to open the black box of actual board behavior to explore how they may contribute. (shrink)

Biologists and historians often present natural history and molecular biology as distinct, perhaps conflicting, fields in biological research. Such accounts, although supported by abundant evidence, overlook important areas of overlap between these areas. Focusing upon examples drawn particularly from systematics and molecular evolution, I argue that naturalists and molecular biologists often share questions, methods, and forms of explanation. Acknowledging these interdisciplinary efforts provides a more balanced account of the development of biology during the post-World War II era.

Many cognitive and evolutionary theories of religion argue that supernatural explanations are byproducts of our cognitive adaptations. An influential argument states that our supernatural explanations result from a tendency to generate anthropomorphic explanations, and that this tendency is a byproduct of an error management strategy because agents tend to be associated with especially high fitness costs. We propose instead that anthropomorphic and other supernatural explanations result as features of a broader toolkit of well-designed cognitive adaptations, which are designed for explaining (...) the abstract and causal structure of complex, unobservable, and uncertain phenomena that have substantial impacts on fitness. Specifically, we argue that (1) mental representations about the abstract vs. the supernatural are largely overlapping, if not identical, and (2) when the data-generating processes for scarce and ambiguous observations are complex and opaque, a naive observer can improve a bias-variance trade-off by starting with a simple, underspecified explanation that Western observers readily interpret as “supernatural.” We then argue that (3) in many cases, knowledge specialists across cultures offer pragmatic services that involve apparently supernatural explanations, and their clients are frequently willing to pay them in a market for useful and effective services. We propose that at least some ethnographic descriptions of religion might actually reflect ordinary and adaptive responses to novel problems such as illnesses and natural disasters, where knowledge specialists possess and apply the best available explanations about phenomena that would otherwise be completely mysterious and unpredictable. (shrink)

Kurtis Hagen argues that early Confucians seek to discourage war by prescribing conditions for just war that are exceedingly difficult to meet. They encourage, instead, a long-term strategy of ameliorating unjust circumstances by leveraging the credibility and influence that stems from consistently practicing genuinely benevolent governance.

The twentieth century witnessed a dramatic increase in the use of statistics by biologists, including systematists. The modern synthesis and new systematics stimulated this development, particularly after World War II. The rise of "the statistical frame of mind " resulted in a rethinking of the relationship between biological and mathematical points of view, the roles of objectivity and subjectivity in systematic research, the implications of new computing technologies, and the place of systematics among the biological disciplines.

The aim of this article is to explain the transition from implicit CSR to explicit CSR that has taken place in Scandinavia over the last two decades. Matten and Moon’s distinction between implicit and explicit CSR is the point of departure for the analysis, which is based on case studies of two Norwegian companies: HÅG and Hydro. On the basis of these case studies, we identify two forces that are pushing the transition from implicit to explicit CSR in Scandinavia: Organizational (...) expressiveness and Re-legitimizing. Both of these measures are adjustments to the globalization of the economy, altering the competitive situation even in highly institutionalized, Scandinavian economies. HÅG, a midsized Norwegian manufacturer of office chairs, made CSR and environmental values an integral part of their expressive strategy in the early 1990s. Hydro, a big Norwegian aluminium producer, made CSR an explicit issue around the turn of the millennium, in an attempt to re-legitimize their business operations in a new market situation where plants in local communities in Norway were shut down and relocated to less regulated regimes in low-cost regions abroad. (shrink)

Many intellectuals scoff at what they call “conspiracy theories.” But two Harvard law professors, Cass Sunstein (now working for the Obama administration) and Adrian Vermeule, go further. They argue in the Journal of Political Philosophy that groups that espouse such theories ought to be infiltrated and undermined by government agents and allies. While some may find this proposal appalling (as indeed we all should), others may find the argument plausible, especially if they have been swayed by the notion that conspiracy (...) theories (or a definable subset thereof), by their nature, somehow or another, do not warrant belief. I will argue that Sunstein and Vermeule’s proposal not only conflicts with the values of an open society, but is also epistemically indefensible. In making my case, I will adopt their favored example, counter-narratives about 9/11. (shrink)

Presumably authoritative sources, such as social scientists who study conspiracy theorists, are generally expected to be logically rigorous, intellectually honest, and unbiased. This chapter suggests that this expectation may not always be justified. Specifically, it exposes a number of significant problems in an attempt by a group of social scientists to defend the (ostensibly) scientific study of conspiracy theorists. First, they misrepresent their own previously stated intentions. Second, they misrepresent a critique of those intentions. Third, they fail completely in their (...) attempt to show that, regarding the inappropriate pathologizing of conspiracy theorists, their critics are guilty as they are. Fourth, they cite seriously flawed studies as though they offered robust findings. And fifth, their criticism of a central distinction, between “generalist” and “particularist” approaches, is based on a misunderstanding. This raises troubling questions: How can we to have confidence in a program of study undertaken, in part, by scientists who get so much wrong? And, to what degree is this an isolated problem? (shrink)

Religious healing specialists such as shamans often use magic. Evolutionary theories that seek to explain why laypersons find these specialists convincing focus on the origins of magical cognition and belief in the supernatural. In two studies, we reframe the problem by investigating relationships among ethnomedical specialists, who possess extensive theories of disease that can often appear “supernatural,” and religious healing specialists. In study 1, we coded and analyzed cross-cultural descriptions of ethnomedical specialists in 47 cultures, finding 24% were also religious (...) leaders and 74% used supernatural theories of disease. We identified correlates of the use of supernatural concepts among ethnomedical specialists; incentives and disincentives to patronize ethnomedical specialists; and distinct clusters of ethnomedical specialists that we label prestigious teachers, feared diviners, and efficacious healers. In study 2, we interviewed 84 Maasai pastoralists and their traditional religious and non-religious healing specialists. We found that laypersons relied on medicinal services based on combinations of efficacy, religious identity, and interpersonal trust. Further, laypersons and specialists largely used abstract concepts that were not conspicuously supernatural to describe how local medicines work. We conclude that religious healers in traditional societies often fulfill a practical and specialized service to local clients, and argue that supernatural theories of disease often reflect abstract cognition about rare phenomena whose causes are unobservable (e.g., infection, mental illness) instead of a separate “religious” style of thinking. (shrink)

In the philosophy of Confucius, the concept _li_ is both central and elusive. While it is often translated 'ritual' or 'the rites,' I argue that there are numerous significant ways in which _li_ is as much an internal property of individuals as it is an external set of rules or norms. I discuss _li_ as deference, as developed dispositions, as embodied intelligence, and as personalized exemplary conduct. Finally, reflecting on the work of Fingarette, and Hall and Ames, as well as (...) Wilson's analysis of their work, I argue that the external _aspect_ of _li_, although reasonably understood under the rubric of 'traditional norms,' may nonetheless legitimately evolve, and that this coheres well with the notion that an internal sense-of-ritual is integral to the meaning of _li_. (shrink)

Pregnancy involves puzzling aversions to nutritious foods. Although studies generally support the hypotheses that such aversions are evolved mechanisms to protect the fetus from toxins and/or pathogens, other factors, such as resource scarcity and psychological distress, have not been investigated as often. In addition, many studies have focused on populations with high-quality diets and low infectious disease burden, conditions that diverge from the putative evolutionary environment favoring fetal protection mechanisms. This study tests the fetal protection, resource scarcity, and psychological distress (...) hypotheses of food aversions in a resource-constrained population with high infectious disease burden. The role of culture is also explored. In the first of two studies in Tamil Nadu, India, we investigated cultural explanations of pregnancy diet among non-pregnant women (N = 54). In the second study, we conducted structured interviews with pregnant women (N = 94) to determine their cravings and aversions, resource scarcity, indices of pathogen exposure, immune activation, psychological distress, and emic causes of aversions. Study 1 found that fruits were the most commonly reported food that pregnant women should avoid because of their harmful effects on infants. Study 2 found modest support for the fetal protection hypothesis for food aversions. It also found that pregnant women most commonly avoided fruits as well as “black” and “hot” foods. Aversions were primarily acquired through learning and focused on protecting the infant from harm. Our findings provide modest support for the fetal protection hypothesis and surprisingly strong support for the influence of cultural norms and learning on dietary aversions in pregnancy. (shrink)

Synthetic biology" is the label of a new technoscientific field with many different facets and agendas. One common aim is to "create life", primarily by using engineering principles to design and modify biological systems for human use. In a wider context, the topic has become one of the big cases in the legitimization processes associated with the political agenda to solve global problems with the aid of (bio-)technological innovation. Conceptual-level and meta-level analyses are needed: we should sort out conceptual ambiguities (...) to agree on what we talk about, and we need to spell out agendas to see the disagreements clearly. The book is based on the interdisciplinary summer school "Analyzing the societal dimensions of synthetic biology", which took place in Berlin in September 2014. The contributions address controversial discussions around the philosophical examination, public perception, moral evaluation and governance of synthetic biology. (shrink)

We argue that there is no metaphysically possible world with two or more omnipotent beings, due to the potential for conflicts of will between them. We reject the objection that omnipotent beings could exist in the same world when their wills could not conflict. We then turn to Alfred Mele and M.P. Smith’s argument that two coexisting beings could remain omnipotent even if, on some occasions, their wills cancel each other out so that neither can bring about what they intend. (...) We argue that this argument has an absurd consequence, namely having to regard an utterly powerless being as omnipotent. (shrink)

Beginning in the mid-1930s the comparative physiologists Laurence Irving and Per Fredrik Scholander pioneered the study of diving mammals, particularly harbor seals. Although resting on earlier work dating back to the late nineteenth century, their research was distinctive in several ways. In contrast to medically oriented physiology, the approaches of Irving and Scholander were strongly influenced by natural history, zoology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Diving mammals, they argued, shared the cardiopulmonary physiology of terrestrial mammals, but evolution had modified these basic (...) adaptive processes in extreme ways. In particular, seals’ remarkable ability to hold breath, lower metabolism, produce energy anaerobically, and resist asphyxiation, provided a sharp contrast with terrestrial mammals, including humans. This diving physiology was an extreme elaboration of a general regulatory mechanism that allowed seals and other diving mammals to remain active underwater for extended periods. The decrease in heart rate referred to as bradycardia or the “diving reflex” was highly developed in diving mammals, but also found in less developed form in many other organisms faced by asphyxia. It therefore served as a kind of “master switch” for lowering metabolism in diving, hibernation, parturition, drowning, and other physiological responses involving lack of oxygen. Studying bradycardia unified a wide diversity of physiological phenomena, while also providing a context for contrasting the physiological responses of various species, including humans. Conducted in the laboratory and the field, this research served as a bridge between a comparative physiological ecology focused on non-human species and a human-centered general physiology. (shrink)

ObjectiveTo examine subjective and objective socioeconomic status as predictors, cognitive abilities as confounders, and personal control perceptions as mediators of health behaviours.DesignA cross-sectional study including 197 participants aged 30–50 years, recruited from the crowd-working platform, Prolific.Main Outcome MeasureThe Good Health Practices Scale, a 16-item inventory of health behaviours.ResultsSSES was the most important predictor of health behaviours. Among the OSES indicators, education, but not income, predicted health behaviours. Intelligence and memory were negatively correlated with health-promoting behaviours, and the effect of memory (...) was upheld in the multivariate model. Personal control perceptions did not act as mediators.ConclusionSSES predicted health behaviours beyond OSES. The effect of socioeconomic indicators was not confounded by cognitive abilities. Surprisingly, cognitive abilities were negatively associated with health-promoting behaviours. Future research should emphasise SSES as a predictor of health behaviours. Delineating the psychological mechanisms linking SSES with health behaviours would be a valuable contribution toward improved understanding of socioeconomic disparities in health behaviours. (shrink)

Dubourg and Baumard explain why fictional worlds are attractive to consumers. A complete account of fictional worlds, however, should also explain why some people create them. Creation is a costly and time-consuming process that does not resemble exploration but does resemble the culturally universal phenomenon of knowledge specialization.

An anthology of new translations of essential readings from the classical texts of early Chinese philosophy. It includes the Analects of Confucius, Meng Zi (Mencius), Xun Zi, Mo Zi, Lao Zi (Dao De Jing), Zhuang Zi, and Han Fei Zi, as well as short chapters on the Da Xue and the Zhong Yong. Pedagogically organized, it offers philosophically sophisticated annotations and commentaries as well as an extensive glossary explaining key philosophical concepts in detail.

Evolutionary models of human cooperation are increasingly emphasizing the role of reputation and the requisite truthful “gossiping” about reputation-relevant behavior. If resources were allocated among individuals according to their reputations, competition for resources via competition for “good” reputations would have created incentives for exaggerated or deceptive gossip about oneself and one’s competitors in ancestral societies. Correspondingly, humans should have psychological adaptations to assess gossip veracity. Using social psychological methods, we explored cues of gossip veracity in four experiments. We found that (...) simple reiteration increased gossip veracity, but only for those who found the gossip relatively uninteresting. Multiple sources of gossip increased its veracity, as did the independence of those sources. Information that suggested alternative, benign interpretations of gossip decreased its veracity. Competition between a gossiper and her target decreased gossip veracity. These results provide preliminary evidence for psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity, mechanisms that might be used to assess veracity in other domains involving social exchange of information. (shrink)

In an article published in the Journal of Political Philosophy, Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule argue that the government and its allies ought to activelyundermine groups that espouse conspiracy theories deemed “demonstrably false.” They propose infiltrating such groups in order to “cure” conspiracy theorists by treating their “crippled epistemology” with “cognitive diversity.” They base their proposal on an analysis of the “causes” of such conspiracy theories, which emphasizes informational and reputational cascades. Some may regard their proposal as outrageous and anti-democratic. (...) I agree. However, in this article I merely argue that their argument is flawed in at least the following ways: their account of the popularity of conspiracy theories is implausible, and their proposal relies on misleading “stylized facts,” including a caricature of those who doubt official narratives and a deceptive depiction of the relevant history. (shrink)

Sex differences in physical and indirect aggression have been found in many societies but, to our knowledge, have not been studied in a population of hunter-gatherers. Among Aka foragers of the Central African Republic we tested whether males physically aggressed more than females, and whether females indirectly aggressed more than males, as has been seen in other societies. We also tested predictions of an evolutionary theory of physical strength, anger, and physical aggression. We found a large male bias in physical (...) aggression. Controlling for anger, we found an adult female bias in indirect aggression. Physical strength predicted anger, which predicted hitting, although results were sensitive to the inclusion or exclusion of traditional healers, who were physically and emotionally distinct from other Aka. With some important caveats, our results generally support the predicted sex differences in physical aggression and indirect aggression, and the predicted relationships among anger, strength, and aggression. (shrink)

Ecology has often been characterized as an immature scientific discipline. This paper explores some of the sources of this alleged immaturity. I argue that the perception of immaturity results primarily from the fact that historically ecologists have based their work upon two very different approaches to research.

This paper challenges the view of several interpreters of Xunzi regarding the status of names, ming. I will maintain that Xunzi's view is consistent with the activity we see not only in his own efforts to influence language, but those of Confucius as well. Based on a reconsideration of translations and interpretations of key passages, I will argue that names are regarded neither as mere labels nor as indicating a privileged taxonomy of the myriad phenomena. Rather, Xunzi conceives them as (...) constructs designed to facilitate social goals. Finally, I will suggest an alternative to overly simplistic understandings of how appropriate names are fashioned and of who is responsible for their form. (shrink)

During the decades following World War II diverse groups of American biologists established a variety of distinctive approaches to organismal biology. Rhetorically, organismal biology could be used defensively to distinguish established research traditions from perceived threats from newly emerging fields such as molecular biology. But, organismal biologists were also interested in integrating biological disciplines and using a focus on organisms to synthesize levels of organization from molecules and cells to populations and communities. Part of this broad movement was the development (...) of an area of research variously referred to as physiological ecology, environmental physiology, or ecophysiology. This area of research was distinctive in its self-conscious blend of field and laboratory practices and its explicit integration with other areas of biology such as ecology, animal behavior, and evolution in order to study adaptation. Comparing the intersecting careers of Knut Schmidt-Nielsen and George Bartholomew highlights two strikingly different approaches to physiological ecology. These alternative approaches to studying the interactions of organisms and environments also differed in important ways from the organismal biology championed by leading figures in the modern synthesis. (shrink)

This article discusses the function, development and maintenance of meaning and the importance of meaning-making from different perspectives, as it is based on a collaboration between professionals from health science and psychology. The aim is to discuss how meaning-making processes can be employed in the health context to enhance individuals’ well-being. Starting point is a description of the common basis of the understanding of meaning-making. Afterwards brief examples from the different professional areas will show how meaning-making can improve health care (...) practice. We will focus on the processual nature of meaning-making, its existential layers, as well as the ways in which meaning-making is at play in everyday activities and limit situations, such as illness or suicidality. (shrink)

A long-standing theoretical tradition in clinical psychology and psychiatry sees deliberate self-harm , such as wrist-cutting, as “functional”—a means to avoid painful emotions, for example, or to elicit attention from others. There is substantial evidence that DSH serves these functions. Yet the specific links between self-harm and such functions remain obscure. Why don’t self-harmers use less destructive behaviors to blunt painful emotions or elicit attention? Economists and biologists have used game theory to show that, under certain circumstances, self-harmful behaviors by (...) economic agents and animals serve important strategic goals. In particular, “costly signals” can credibly reveal a “private state” in situations where verbal claims and other “cheap” signals might be disbelieved. Here, DSH is scrutinized using signaling theory, and a variant, the theory of bargaining with private information. The social contexts and associated features of DSH suggest that it might be a costly, and therefore credible, signal of need that compels social partners to respond. (shrink)

Bergmann’s rule and Allen’s rule played important roles in mid-twentieth century discussions of adaptation, variation, and geographical distribution. Although inherited from the nineteenth-century natural history tradition these rules gained significance during the consolidation of the modern synthesis as evolutionary theorists focused attention on populations as units of evolution. For systematists, the rules provided a compelling rationale for identifying geographical races or subspecies, a function that was also picked up by some physical anthropologists. More generally, the rules provided strong evidence for (...) adaptation by natural selection. Supporters of the rules tacitly, or often explicitly, assumed that the clines described by the rules reflected adaptations for thermoregulation. This assumption was challenged by the physiologists Laurence Irving and Per Scholander based on their arctic research conducted after World War II. Their critique spurred a controversy played out in a series of articles in Evolution, in Ernst Mayr’s Animal Species and Evolution, and in the writings of other prominent evolutionary biologists and physical anthropologists. Considering this episode highlights the complexity and ambiguity of important biological concepts such as adaptation, homeostasis, and self-regulation. It also demonstrates how different disciplinary orientations and styles of scientific research influenced evolutionary explanations, and the consequent difficulties of constructing a truly synthetic evolutionary biology in the decades immediately following World War II. (shrink)

The distinction between taxonomic plant geography and ecological plant geography was never absolute: it would be historically inaccurate to portray them as totally divergent. Taxonomists occasionally borrowed ecological concepts, and ecologists never completely repudiated taxonomy. Indeed, some botanists pursued the two types of geographic study. The American taxonomist Henry Allan Gleason (1882–1975), for one, made noteworthy contributions to both. Most of Gleason's research appeared in short articles, however. He never published a major synthetic work comparable in scope or influence to (...) the ecological texts of Clements, Schimper, and Warming.Despite exceptions such as Gleason, most plant geographers throughout the twentieth century have emphasized the distinction between ecological and taxonomic plant geographies. Why have these distinct traditions developed? In his book Geographical Ecology, Robert MacArthur has suggested a psychological explanation for the dichotomy: “Unraveling the history of a phenemenon has always appealed to some people and describing the machinery of the phenomenon to others... The ecologist and physical scientist tend to be machinery oriented, whereas paleontologists and most biogeographers tend to be history oriented.”46Without necessarily rejecting MacArthur's explanation, my study suggests a more complex relationship between taxonomic and ecological plant geographies. At the turn of the century a group of botanists self-consciously defined a new area of botanical research. These ecologists defined their new discipline in opposition to what they believed was a moribund, nineteenth-century, natural-history tradition. They turned from historically oriented, descriptive, taxonomic plant geography to experimental physiology. The new ecological plant geography was to focus on communities rather than on species, on proximate environmental causes rather than on historical explanations, and on physiological experiments rather than on morphological descriptions.As we look back, much of the “revolt from morphology” was rhetorical. Ecologists never completely replaced species as units of distribution, nor did they set geography on an explicitly physiological basis. Indeed, much of early ecological research was, quite simply, descriptive. Plant communities were defined in terms of dominant species, representative life forms, or general physiognomy. The underlying physiological basis for community characteristics was more often assumed than demonstrated by experiments.Despite the fact that ecological plant geography was not a truly physiological specialty, it was significantly different from more traditional taxonomic plant geography. First, ecologists were less explicitly evolutionary in their approach than were taxonomists. Following Darwin, most taxonomic plant geographers viewed distribution in historical terms. In contrast, early ecologists tended to ignore the traditional geographic problems. Most ecologists were skeptical of historical explanations, emphasizing instead the proximate, environmental causes of distribution. While some nineteenth-century biogeographers had studied the correlation between climate and vegetation, twentieth-century ecologists focused much more sharply on the interactions between plant and environment. Plant ecologists did not place biogeography on a physiological basis, but by emphasizing physiology they laid the foundation for a more detailed understanding of adaption. This emphasis on physiology and environmental causation was a second distinguishing characteristic of ecological plant geography. Finally, the idea of the plant community, articulated by Eugenius Warming in 1895, provided ecologists with a unique perspective on the distribution of plants. For early ecologists, the community was more than an assemblage of species; it was an integrated unit. The distribution of these units became the major focus of ecological plant geography. Communities never completely replaced species as geographic units, and the distinction between flora and vegetation was often blurred. Nonetheless, ecologists were innovative in studying the distribution of structurally and functionally integrated groups of plants.In the twentieth century plant geography has occupied an anomalous position in biology. It has not developed into an autonomous discipline, nor has it been incorporated into the developing discipline of ecology. Ecologists and taxonomists have pursued fairly distinct styles of geographic research, with the result that two relatively independent approaches to the study of plant distribution have persisted. (shrink)