How can a literary theorist account for unselected texts and narratives, and measure the importance of voices no longer audible to readers today? The following dissertation uses various, and variously successful 19th century literary texts as a point of departure for considering the complex forces affecting the fragment of texts selected over time from within a wider field of anonymous and unwritten narratives. Bridging literary theory and Darwinian science, "Evolutionary Landscapes" argues that concepts of mutation, replication and selection can provide a framework for thinking about how narratives and genre developed in the 19th century United States. Current attempts to bring biological insights directly into literary study through evolutionary psychology or cognitive Darwinism ignore the complex systems, including cultural and market forces, that might have been used to predict a given text's chances for longer-term survival. The figure I choose to represent these economic, unwritten, and cultural influences on literary texts is the "adaptive landscape" developed by the geneticist Sewall Wright, and recently adapted by the evolutionary theorist Michael Ruse. The relationships between texts and ecologies fore-grounded in the following chapters, even when dealing with individual authors, necessitates looking at literature from the point of view of the random mutation and subsequent selection of texts in the face of a collectively determined ecology of formal expectations. My approach to the evolution of literature builds on the work of the literary critic Franco Moretti and the philosopher Daniel Dennett, although a turn to U.S. rather than British fiction casts a different light on literary evolution than that described yet by Moretti, and deals more specifically with questions of literary and cultural history than either Dennett's philosophy of memetics or Carroll's socio-biologically inflected Literary Darwinism alone would allow. The 19th century literary ecology to which the fictions of Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Edward Bellamy and Mary Wilkins Freeman were well or poorly adapted can be imagined as a kind of fitness landscape where literary publications are drawn towards the peaks climbed by previous writers, representing conventions or formula that proven successful in the past. A gradualist focus on textual silence and extinction within literary evolution, along with evolutionary and ecological theory, can provide abstract models to make visible the complex ecology of oral, cultural, written, printed and reprinted information that constitutes the "soft tissues" always missing from the archival past.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

As organizations continue to invest heavily in Information Systems (IS) to support business processes, the underutilization of such systems is a key concern that challenges efforts to exploit their benefits. What is most desirable is for users to engage in forms of deep use that effectively leverage the features of the IS for work tasks. But, too often users engage in surface-level use, minimizing their interactions with the IS. Yet for many users how they use an IS changes over time to become progressively deeper as the IS is embedded more in the performance of various tasks. To date there has been limited research on post-adoption IS use, particularly on how individuals choose to or are influenced to learn about, selectively adopt and apply, and then extend IS use. This research therefore seeks to bridge a gap in the literature by responding to calls for greater attention to changes in IS post-adoption use. This study draws on evolutionary theory, that is, Generalized Darwinism and its key principles of variation, selection and retention, to understand and explain how individuals’ IS use change over time, as they enact routines supported by the IS. Using a multi-method research design, this study includes an exploratory phase (qualitative) followed by a confirmatory phase (quantitative). For the qualitative phase, case studies were used to explore change in IS use; a cross-section of 39 users (i.e. basic, intermediate and advanced) of large-scale IS (e.g. CRM) from across three (3) organizations were interviewed. The findings from the qualitative phase coupled Generalized Darwinism principles of variation, selection and retention, supporting theories (e.g. motivation theory) and prior research in IS, were used to develop a conceptual model that framed changes in post-adoption use for further analysis. The model was then tested using data collected from a field survey (86 users) and analyzed using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach to structural equation modeling. The study showed that variations occur as individuals used formerly unused (available) features, modified use of currently used sets of features, substituted or replaced one (already-used) feature with another feature and found novel or innovative uses of IS features. There were also a number of similarities in the findings from the case study and the survey regarding the triggers and enablers of variations and the impact of variations on retention, and in turn the impact of retention on deeper use via emergent use, integrative use and extended use. Both the case studies and the survey confirmed the importance of feedback valence, intrinsic motivation, and domain-related knowledge and of key sub-dimensions such as intrinsic motivation to learn, knowledge of IS features and work process understanding as triggers of variations. Satisfaction, in addition to variations was also instrumental in determining which variants in use were selected and incorporated into one’s work routine (retention). Furthermore, the results suggest that as changes occurred over time, such changes resulted in more deeply ingrained use behaviours, by way of infusion. At the same time, some differences were observed among the case studies and between the case study outcomes and the survey findings, with some of the factors identified as important in the case findings, such as peer learning, extrinsic motivation, and perceived (IS) resources, not being significant as predictors of variations in the survey context. Overall, the findings on changes in IS use and factors involved provided insights into how change occurs via variation, selection and retention and the outcome of the change (i.e. deeper use). It is anticipated that the findings of this research will contribute to the post-adoption IS use literature and provide useful insights for managers as they tackle the problem of IS underutilization.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2005. / Thesis advisor: Jason B. Jones. "... submitted as the capstone requirement for the Master of Arts Degree in English." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-69). Also available via the World Wide Web.

'Culture' is defined as information, such as knowledge, beliefs, skills, attitudes or values, that is passed from individual to individual via social (or cultural) transmission and expressed in behaviour or artifacts. 'Cultural evolution' holds that this cultural inheritance system is governed by the same Darwinian processes as gene-based biological evolution. In Part A of this thesis it is argued that as compelling a case can now be made for a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution as Darwin himself presented in The Origin Of Species for biological evolution, If culture does indeed evolve, then it follows that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should broadly resemble that of the science of biological evolution. Hence Part A concludes by outlining a unified science of cultural evolution based on the sub-disciplines of evolutionary biology. Parts B and C comprise original empirical and theoretical work constituting two branches of this science of cultural evolution. Part B describes a series of experiments testing for a number of hypothesised biases in cultural transmission. Evidence was found for a 'social bias' that acts to promote information concerning third-party social relationships over equivalent non-social information, and a 'hierarchical bias' that acts to transform knowledge of everyday events from low-level actions into higher-level goals. Three other hypothesised biases concerning status, anthropomorphism and neoteny were not supported, although each gave rise to potential, future work using this methodology. Part C presents a theoretical investigation into the coevolution of the genetic bases of human mating behaviour and culturally inherited folk beliefs regarding paternity. Gene-culture coevolution and agent-based models suggested that beliefs in 'partible paternity' (that more than one man can father a child) create a new more polygamous form of society compared with beliefs in singular paternity (that only one man can father a child).

[pt] O conceito de memes surgiu em 1976 com Richard Dawkins como um análogo cultural dos genes. Deveria ser possível estudar a cultura através do processo de evolução por seleção natural de memes, ou seja, de comportamentos, idéias e conceitos. O filósofo Daniel Dennett utilizou tal conceito como central em sua teoria da consciência e pela primeira vez divulgou para o grande público a possibilidade de uma ciência dos memes chamada memética. A pesquisadora Susan Blackmore, 1999, foi quem mais se aproximou de uma defesa completa de tal teoria. No entanto, a memética sofreu pesadas críticas e ainda não se constituiu como uma ciência, com métodos e uma base empírica bem definida. A presente tese visa entrar nesta discussão, analisando todas as principais críticas que foram feitas com o objetivo de analisar se a memética poderia de fato ser uma ciência e também que tipo de ciência ela seria. / [en] The concept of memes was created by Richard Dawkins in 1976 as an analogue of genes. It suggests the possibility of studying culture through a process of evolution through natural selection of memes, that is, of behaviors, ideas and concepts. The concept became central for the philosopher Daniel Dennett, who employed it in his theory of consciousness and made the possibility of a science of memes called memetics known to the general public. Researcher Susan Blackmore, 1999, came very close to a complete defense of such theory. However, memetics was the target of heavy criticism, and could still not establish itself as a science, with specific methods and a well-defined empirical base. The present work aims to engage in this discussion, examining the main critics and seeking to establish whether memetics could in fact be a science, and, if so, what kind of science it would be.

In this dissertation I will consider the extent to which our ethical actions are determined by evolution, as well as the consequences of a view that holds that ethical behaviour arose from evolutionary processes. I will further investigate whether evolution can supply a complete account of ethics in the physical world, without sacrificing human freedom and rationality. To do this, I will start by considering the possible negative consequences of applying evolution to human behaviour, in the forms of Social Darwinism and eugenics. I will argue that while these systems of thought are ethically and scientifically unsound, there is strong evidence for the evolutionary origins of ethics, where ethics can be seen as an adaptation that offers a benefit to the individual exhibiting this behaviour. This view is supported by sociobiology, studies in primate behaviour and neuroscience. The implications of ethics as an evolutionary adaptation will be compared to Kantian morality, which is premised on freedom and autonomy, which I will argue are inconsistent with some scientific explanations. While an evolutionary account of ethics can lead to a deterministic view of our behaviour, new developments in neuroscience claim that freedom is an evolutionary adaptation. This naturally developed freedom, combined with self-consciousness, can supply us with an evolutionary account of ethics that does not need augmentation from transcendental principles. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lk2014 / Philosophy / MA / Unrestricted

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Political Studies, March 2017 / Hitler sought to apply Darwinist theories to German social life, under what was regarded as Social Darwinism. In his words; “If I can accept a divine commandment, it’s this one - thou shalt preserve thou species”. His most loyal and undying belief was that the Aryan race was the most superior race on the planet and that it was their right to “starve the weak” in the name of self-preservation. The Nazis saw it as a social obligation to ‘listen’ to the law of nature and embark on a war of territorial expansion and bloodshed. Darwinian thought provided a justification for Germany’s need for incessant colonialism and racial extermination. In this analysis, Lefort’s ‘Other’ becomes synonymous with Darwin’s ‘parasites’ and Hitler’s ‘enemy’. Through Social Darwinism, it is argued that Hitler ultimately achieved his God-given desire and goal, which was to get rid of the poisoners of the planet – the Jews. / XL2018

Focusing on Darwinism, David Hull argues that the protean character of conceptual systems is explained by their nature as historical entities which evolve. If they evolve as biological species do, Hull argues, then they cannot have an "essence" — a set of tenets that all and only instances of the conceptual system has throughout all time. There are no tenets a scientific research program must retain to count as an instance of a particular program. I advance two considerations against this view. First, research programs require a critical cohesiveness among their tenets to inspire and guide research. Second, it is the function of such programs to guide the search for answers to families of questions in a particular domain in a particular spirit. These factors dictate that conceptual systems must retain certain key tenets. This re-emergence of a sort of essentialism does not bar the evolution of conceptual systems, provided we recognize that there are patterns of evolution other than the one Hull considers (anagenesis). It also implies that conceptual systems simply evolve differently than species do. I defend this position by illustrating two episodes of conceptual evolution: the dispute between William Bateson and the British biometricians over discontinuous evolution, and the formation of Neo-Lamarckism in 19th century America. / Master of Arts

Like few other concepts in the history of science, Darwinian evolution prompted humans to question their most basic assumptions about themselves. Among the theory's most controversial implications, the principle of common descent insisted that humans were kin to other species. As such, common descent challenged the previously unquestioned tradition of anthropocentrism, which held that humans were distinct from and superior to other species. In order to discern common descent's impact on anthropocentrism, I will examine three court cases from an eighty-year span of American history, where resistance to common descent was especially virulent. Courtrooms provided the nation's leading critics of common descent an arena in which to protest the theory's most egregious offenses. As common descent garnered increasing support from scientists and educators, however, anthropocentrists modified their position accordingly. Initially, they stigmatized monkeys and apes precisely because those animals were the most genealogically proximate to humans. As common descent became more accepted, however, this position became increasingly difficult to defend. Accordingly, many anthropocentrists abandoned their obsession with primates and instead engaged the entire tree of life, including its mysterious origin. By the turn of the millennium, even as some anthropocentrists increasingly accepted humanity's kinship to other species, many continued to cite human intelligence as legitimate grounds for anthropocentric behavior. Thus, while anthropocentrism survived the threat of common descent, it had to accommodate the Darwinian onslaught in order to do so. / Master of Arts