The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex | work by Darwin | Britannica (original) (raw)
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animal learning
In animal learning: Complex problem solving …however, the publication of Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) that stimulated scientific interest in the question of mental continuity between man and other animals. Darwin’s young colleague, George Romanes, compiled a systematic collection of stories and anecdotes about the behaviour of animals, upon which he built an elaborate theory of… Read More
anthropology
In anthropology: History of anthropology In 1871 Darwin published The Descent of Man, which argued that human beings shared a recent common ancestor with the great African apes. He identified the defining characteristic of the human species as their relatively large brain size and deduced that the evolutionary advantage of the human species was… Read More
discussed in biography
In Charles Darwin: The private man and the public debate …by Darwin in his two-volume The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). The book was authoritative, annotated, and heavily anecdotal in places. The two volumes were discrete, the first discussing the evolution of civilization and human origins among the Old World monkeys. (Darwin’s depiction of a… Read More
evolution
In evolution: Charles Darwin …other books as well, notably The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), which extends the theory of natural selection to human evolution. Read More
In heredity: Human evolution …by suggesting in his book The Descent of Man that humans and apes share a common ancestor. Darwin’s assertion was based on the many shared anatomical features of apes and humans. DNA analysis has supported this hypothesis. At the DNA sequence level, the genomes of humans and chimpanzees are 99… Read More
In human evolution …Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871). Darwin never claimed, as some of his Victorian contemporaries insisted he had, that “man was descended from the apes,” and modern scientists would view such a statement as a useless simplification—just as they would dismiss any popular notions that a… Read More
instinct
In instinct: Instinct as behaviour His answer, in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), was “sexual selection”—enhancement of reproductive success as a consequence of behaviour that includes conspicuous courtship displays. This comes in two forms: (1) competition between members of one sex for access to the other sex,… Read More
