At which university did the English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author who coined the phrase God's utility function work?
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God's utility function God's utility function is a phrase coined by Richard Dawkins in his book "River Out of Eden". "God's utility function" is the fourth chapter in this book. Dawkins uses this phrase to expound the gene-centered view of evolution by equating the phrase to the "meaning of life" or the "purpose of life". This is the "why" question about life which philosophers and theologians have been pondering in vain for ages, and is a counterpart to the "how" question about nature which engineers have been able to resolve successfully.
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Richard Dawkins Clinton Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.
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Sewall Wright Sewall Green Wright (December 21, 1889March 3, 1988) was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. He was a founder of population genetics alongside Ronald Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane, which was a major step in the development of the modern synthesis combining genetics with evolution. He discovered the inbreeding coefficient and methods of computing it in pedigree animals. He extended this work to populations, computing the amount of inbreeding between members of populations as a result of random genetic drift, and along with Fisher he pioneered methods for computing the distribution of gene frequencies among populations as a result of the interaction of natural selection, mutation, migration and genetic drift. Wright also made major contributions to mammalian and biochemical genetics.
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C. D. Darlington Cyril Dean Darlington FRS (19 December 1903 – 26 March 1981) was an English biologist, geneticist and eugenicist, who discovered the mechanics of chromosomal crossover, its role in inheritance, and therefore its importance to evolution. He was Sherardian Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford from 1953 to 1971.
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History of evolutionary psychology The history of evolutionary psychology began with Charles Darwin, who said that humans have social instincts that evolved by natural selection. Darwin's work inspired later psychologists such as William James and Sigmund Freud but for most of the 20th century psychologists focused more on behaviorism and proximate explanations for human behavior. E. O. Wilson's landmark 1975 book, "", synthesized recent theoretical advances in evolutionary theory to explain social behavior in animals, including humans. Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby popularized the term "evolutionary psychology" in their 1992 book "The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture". Like sociobiology before it, evolutionary psychology has been embroiled in controversy, but evolutionary psychologists see their field as gaining increased acceptance overall.
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James Danielli James Frederic Danielli FRS (1911–1984) was an English biologist.
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1860 Oxford evolution debate The 1860 Oxford evolution debate took place at the Oxford University Museum in Oxford, England, on 30 June 1860, seven months after the publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species". Several prominent British scientists and philosophers participated, including Thomas Henry Huxley, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Benjamin Brodie, Joseph Dalton Hooker and Robert FitzRoy.
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Richard Shine Richard Shine AM FAA (born 7 June 1950) is an Australian evolutionary biologist and ecologist; he has conducted extensive research on reptiles and amphibians, and proposed a novel mechanism for evolutionary change. He is currently a Professor of Biology at the University of Sydney, and a Laureate Fellow of the Australian Research Council.
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Konrad Lorenz Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (] ; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behaviour. He developed an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth.
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Alastair Fitter Alastair Hugh Fitter CBE FRS (born 20 June 1948) is a British ecologist at the University of York.
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Darwin from Orchids to Variation Between 1860 and 1868, the life and work of Charles Darwin from "Orchids" to "Variation" continued with research and experimentation on evolution, carrying out tedious work to provide evidence of the extent of natural variation enabling artificial selection. He was repeatedly held up by his illness, and continued to find relaxation and interest in the study of plants. His studies of insect pollination led to publication of his book "Fertilisation of Orchids" as his first detailed demonstration of the power of natural selection, explaining the complex ecological relationships and making testable predictions. As his health declined, he lay on his sickbed in a room filled with inventive experiments to trace the movements of climbing plants.
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Brian Skyrms Brian Skyrms (born 1938) is a Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and Economics at the University of California, Irvine and a Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. He has worked on problems in the philosophy of science, causation, decision theory, game theory, and the foundations of probability. Most recently, his work has focused on the evolution of social norms using evolutionary game theory. His two recent books "Evolution of the Social Contract" and "The Stag Hunt" are both on this topic. These books use arguments and examples from evolutionary game theory to cover topics of interest to political philosophy, philosophy of social science, philosophy of language, and the philosophy of biology.
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John Endler John A. Endler (born 1947) is an ethologist and evolutionary biologist noted for his work on the adaptation of vertebrates to their unique perceptual environments, and the ways in which animal sensory capacities and colour patterns co-evolve.
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Thomas H. Jukes Thomas Hughes Jukes (August 26, 1906 – November 1, 1999) was a British-American biologist known for his work in nutrition, molecular evolution, and for his public engagement with controversial scientific issues, including DDT, vitamin C and creationism. He was the co-author, with Jack Lester King, of the 1969 "Science" article "Non-Darwinian Evolution" which, along with Motoo Kimura's earlier publication, was the origin of the neutral theory of molecular evolution.
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Lynn Margulis Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander; March 5, 1938 – November 22, 2011) was an American evolutionary theorist and biologist, science author, educator, and popularizer, and was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution. Historian Jan Sapp has said that "Lynn Margulis's name is as synonymous with symbiosis as Charles Darwin's is with evolution." In particular, Margulis transformed and fundamentally framed current understanding of the evolution of cells with nuclei – an event Ernst Mayr called "perhaps the most important and dramatic event in the history of life" – by proposing it to have been the result of symbiotic mergers of bacteria. Margulis was also the co-developer of the Gaia hypothesis with the British chemist James Lovelock, proposing that the Earth functions as a single self-regulating system, and was the principal defender and promulgator of the five kingdom classification of Robert Whittaker.
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Stan Gooch Stan Gooch (born 1932 in Lewisham, London, died 13 September 2010) was a British psychologist and author who is probably best known as the proponent of a "hybrid-origin theory" of human evolution.
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Martin Browning Martin James Browning (born 1946) is Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford, Oxford, England, a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a Fellow of the European Economic Association.
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Alexander Carr-Saunders Sir Alexander Morris Carr-Saunders, {'1': ", '2': ", '3': ", '4': "} (14 January 1886 – 6 October 1966) was an English biologist, sociologist, academic, and academic administrator. He was Director of the London School of Economics from 1937 to 1957.
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Adam Smith School of Economics and Finance The Adam Smith Business School (formerly known as 'Adam Smith School of Economics and Finance') at Glasgow University continues an academic record which dates back to the father of economics, Adam Smith (1723–1790). Serving as Professor of Moral Philosophy, he published a series of seminal works such as The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations and Lectures on Jurisprudence; the culmination of which set a foundational precedent for classical economic theory 300 years after the university's inception in 1451.
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Sexual selection in humans Sexual selection in humans concerns the concept of sexual selection, introduced by Charles Darwin as an element of his theory of natural selection, as it affects humans. The role of sexual selection in human evolution has not been firmly established although neoteny has been cited as being caused by human sexual selection. It has been suggested that the human brain is itself a product of sexual selection, i.e. it has developed as a sexual ornamentation to be used in courtship rather than for survival itself, and that it has developed in ways outlined by Ronald Fisher in the Fisherian runaway model. Fisher also stated that the development of sexual selection was "more favourable" in humans.
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Edward Kravitz Edward Arthur Kravitz (born December 19, 1932) is the George Packer Berry Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. He is widely recognized for demonstrating that gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) functions as a neurotransmitter. In addition, he and Antony Stretton were the first to use the intracellular dye procion yellow to visualize neuronal architecture. Later, Kravitz’s work with neuroamines demonstrated that serotonin and octopamine act as synaptic modulators. Kravitz continued to explore the function of amines using "Homarus americanus", the American lobster, as a model organism to study aggression. He currently works on aggressive behavior using the genetically manipulable model organism, "Drosophila melanogaster", the fruit fly.
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John Gould John Gould FRS ( ; 14 September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist and bird artist. He published a number of monographs on birds, illustrated by plates that he produced with the assistance of his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists including Edward Lear, Henry Constantine Richter, Joseph Wolf and William Matthew Hart. He has been considered the father of bird study in Australia and the Gould League in Australia is named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Gould's work is referenced in Charles Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species".