No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--Central Connecticut State University, 2003. / Thesis advisor: James P. Mulrooney. " ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Biological Sciences." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-78). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This dissertation considers the history and philosophy of emergent evolution, and in particular the attempt to answer the question of the role of qualitative novelty in the evolutionary process. Chapter one examines the background to the theory of emergent evolution in the work of Charles Darwin. It is argued that Darwin's theory is neither tautologous nor revolutionary, and the application of Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolution to the case of Darwinian evolution is criticized. Chapter two analyzes the work of the comparative psychologist Conwy Lloyd Morgan, and his views on qualitative novelty are compared with those of other major contemporaneous emergentist theorists: Samuel Alexander, C. D. Broad and Roy Wood Sellars. Chapter three discusses the history of emergent evolution as a philosophical trend, up to and including the emergent materialism of Mario Bunge. An alternative emergentist view of the level structure of reality based on the four levels of matter, life, society and mind is proposed in the conclusion.

Ulm, Univ. Diss., 2006.

Diss.--Accademia di religion Cattolica a Roma. / Includes bibliographical references.

[No abstract available] / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

This thesis attempts to examine the use of pre-Darwinian evolutionary concepts in Victorian poetry by concentrating on the works of Tennyson, who gave fuller expression to them than any of his contemporaries. Works by other poets are examined for significant comparisons and contrasts with his; various works by Browning, Bailey, Arnold, and Bell Scott receive particular attention. The introduction distinguishes between Darwin's theory and pre-Darwinian evolutionary schemes, finding the latter to be characterized by the notions of teleology, progressivism, and vertical hierarchy. The historical development of evolutionism is traced from its origins in Romantic theories of the organic unity of nature, and the major varieties of considered positions on the subject available to a poet in the early nineteenth century are enumerated. Tennyson's early work is shown to develop from a basically static, non-evolutionary world-picture to a progressive one, making use of images of development drawn from embryology, astronomy, and reincarnation. The stages of composition of In Memoriam reveal the impact of Lyell, who emphasized the struggle for existence and necessary extinction, and later of Chambers, who proposed a concept of the progressive transformation of species. It is proposed that Tennyson found in Chambers' theory a way of transcending the bleak world-picture offered by Lyell, by uniting it with his conception of a spiritual reality behind (not immanent in) the material world. The final arrangement of In Memoriam develops the idea of evolution as the progress of the natural world toward the spiritual, a position analogous to a number of poetic and philosophical trends in the early nineteenth century. This process of evolution can be voluntarily aided by "typing" the higher, emergent forms in one's own life. Expanding on this notion, Tennyson's poetry of the late 1340's and 1350's demands the conscious participation of human society in the shaping of a higher being. With this development, Tennyson's philosophy of evolution is substantially complete. His later works reveal a gradual attenuation of his immediate hopes for the process, pushing the improvement of the species into the increasingly distant future, but remaining consistently meliorist; otherwise, his principle continues to be the one set forth in In Memoriam. The study concludes with a brief examination of Darwin's influence on later poets, showing it to have been generally confused and the result of misinterpretation. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Not available / text

Thesis (M.S.P.H.)--University of Michigan, 1941.

Thesis (M.S.)--Michigan State University. Interdepartmental Biological Sciences, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 30, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 130-131). Also issued in print.