Introduction to Human Evolution Human evolution Human evolution is the lengthy process of change by which people originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years. One of the earliest defining human traits, bipedalism -- the ability to walk on two legs -- evolved over 4 million years ago. Other important human characteristics -- such as a large and complex brain, the ability to make and use tools, and the capacity for language -- developed more recently. Many advanced traits -- including complex symbolic expression, art, and elaborate cultural diversity -- emerged mainly during the past 100,000 years. Humans are primates. Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans. Early humans first migrated out of Africa into Asia probably between 2 million and 1.8 million years ago. Paleoanthropology The process of evolution
Raven paradox The raven paradox suggests that both of these images contribute evidence to the supposition that all ravens are black. The raven paradox, also known as Hempel's paradox or Hempel's ravens, is a paradox arising from the question of what constitutes evidence for a statement. Observing objects that are neither black nor ravens may formally increase the likelihood that all ravens are black – even though, intuitively, these observations are unrelated. The paradox[edit] Hempel describes the paradox in terms of the hypothesis:[2][3] (1) All ravens are black. In strict logical terms, via contraposition, this statement is equivalent to: (2) Everything that is not black is not a raven. It should be clear that in all circumstances where (2) is true, (1) is also true; and likewise, in all circumstances where (2) is false (i.e. if a world is imagined in which something that was not black, yet was a raven, existed), (1) is also false. (3) Nevermore, my pet raven, is black. Proposed resolutions[edit] is if . If
Human Evolution Cookies on the New Scientist website close Our website uses cookies, which are small text files that are widely used in order to make websites work more effectively. To continue using our website and consent to the use of cookies, click away from this box or click 'Close' Find out about our cookies and how to change them Log in Your login is case sensitive I have forgotten my password close My New Scientist Look for Science Jobs Human evolution Introduction: Human evolution The incredible story of our evolution from ape ancestors spans 6 million years or more. Human 'missing link' fossils may be jumble of species THIS WEEK: 19:00 09 April 2014 The extinct Australopithecus sediba is hailed as a transitional form between ape-like australopithecines and early humans, but it may actually be two species Denisovans: The lost humans who shared our world FEATURE: 20:00 03 April 2014 They lived on the planet with us for most of our history, yet until six years ago we didn't know they existed. Most read Subscribe
Epistemology Branch of philosophy concerning knowledge In these debates and others, epistemology aims to answer questions such as "What do people know?", "What does it mean to say that people know something?" Etymology[edit] The etymology of the word epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epistēmē, meaning "knowledge, understanding, skill, scientific knowledge",[7][note 1] and the English suffix -ology, meaning "the science or discipline of (what is indicated by the first element)".[9] The word "epistemology" first appeared in 1847, in a review in New York's Eclectic Magazine : The title of one of the principal works of Fichte is 'Wissenschaftslehre,' which, after the analogy of technology ... we render epistemology.[10] The word was first used to present a philosophy in English by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier in 1854. This section of the science is properly termed the Epistemology—the doctrine or theory of knowing, just as ontology is the science of being... Knowledge[edit]
How the Concept of "God" Influences Goal Pursuit Does thinking about god help you in life? It’s a question whose answer will likely never be accepted by many, but that hasn’t stopped researchers from trying to find it. A new study examining self-regulation reveals that thinking about god does help you achieve your goal, but only if your goal is to successfully resist the urge to do something. Leveraging classic and recent theorizing on self-regulation and social cognition, we predict and test for 2 divergent effects of exposure to notions of God on self-regulatory processes. Specifically, we show that participants reminded of God (vs. neutral or positive concepts) demonstrate both decreased active goal pursuit (Studies 1, 2, and 5) and increased temptation resistance (Studies 3, 4, and 5). The researchers believe the findings are due to god’s reputation for omnipotence and omniscience. From an evolutionary standpoint, the idea that God helps you resist temptation while decreasing your pursuit of other goals makes a lot of sense.
Scientific realism Scientific realism is, at the most general level, the view that the world described by science is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science, it is often framed as an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" The debate over what the success of science involves centers primarily on the status of unobservable entities apparently talked about by scientific theories. Generally, those who are scientific realists assert that one can make valid claims about unobservables (viz., that they have the same ontological status) as observables, as opposed to instrumentalism. Main features of scientific realism[edit] Scientific realism involves two basic positions. According to scientific realism, an ideal scientific theory has the following features: The claims the theory makes are either true or false, depending on whether the entities talked about by the theory exist and are correctly described by the theory. [edit]
The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science Illustration: Jonathon Rosen "A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." Festinger and several of his colleagues had infiltrated the Seekers, a small Chicago-area cult whose members thought they were communicating with aliens—including one, "Sananda," who they believed was the astral incarnation of Jesus Christ. Through her, the aliens had given the precise date of an Earth-rending cataclysm: December 21, 1954. Festinger and his team were with the cult when the prophecy failed. Read also: the truth about Climategate.At first, the group struggled for an explanation. From that day forward, the Seekers, previously shy of the press and indifferent toward evangelizing, began to proselytize. In the annals of denial, it doesn't get much more extreme than the Seekers. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.
Matching Person & Technology Model The Matching Person & Technology Model organizes influences on the successful use of a variety of technologies: assistive technology, educational technology, and those used in the workplace, school, home; for healthcare, for mobility and performing daily activities. Specialized devices for hearing loss, speech, eyesight and cognition as well as general or everyday technologies are also included. Research shows that although a technology may appear perfect for a given need, it may be used inappropriately or even go unused when critical personality preferences, psychosocial characteristics or needed environmental support are not considered. MPT process with accompanying assessment measures[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] General Cook, A.M. and Hussey, S. (2001). Specific Jump up ^ Kormann & Petronko: (2003) Crisis and Revolution in Developmental Disabilities: The Dilemma of Community Based Services. External links[edit]
The Cognitive Science of Rationality (The post is written for beginners. Send the link to your friends! Regular Less Wrong readers may want to jump to the Stanovich material .) The last 40 years of cognitive science have taught us a great deal about how our brains produce errors in thinking and decision making, and about how we can overcome those errors. Long before the first Concorde supersonic jet was completed, the British and French governments developing it realized it would lose money. John tested positive for an extremely rare but fatal disease, using a test that is accurate 80% of the time. Mary gave money to a charity to save lives in the developing world. During the last four decades, cognitive scientists have discovered a long list of common thinking errors like these. How are these errors produced, and how can we overcome them? Rationality First, what is rationality ? Cognitive scientists recognize two kinds of rationality: is about forming true beliefs, about getting the to accurately reflect the . Notes
Why Does Beauty Exist? | Wired Science Over at the always excellent Not Exactly Rocket Science, Ed Yong summarizes a new investigation into the neural substrate of beauty: Tomohiro Ishizu and Semir Zeki from University College London watched the brains of 21 volunteers as they looked at 30 paintings and listened to 30 musical excerpts. All the while, they were lying inside an fMRI scanner, a machine that measures blood flow to different parts of the brain and shows which are most active. The recruits rated each piece as “beautiful”, “indifferent” or “ugly”.The scans showed that one part of their brains lit up more strongly when they experienced beautiful images or music than when they experienced ugly or indifferent ones – the medial orbitofrontal cortex or mOFC.Several studies have linked the mOFC to beauty, but this is a sizeable part of the brain with many roles. It’s also involved in our emotions, our feelings of reward and pleasure, and our ability to make decisions. But why does beauty exist?
A brief history of the brain Read full article Continue reading page |1|2|3|4 New Scientist tracks the evolution of our brain from its origin in ancient seas to its dramatic expansion in one ape – and asks why it is now shrinking See gallery: Your brain's family album, from hydra to human IT IS 30,000 years ago. A man enters a narrow cave in what is now the south of France. In 1933, Pablo Picasso creates a strikingly similar image, called Minotaur Assaulting Girl. That two artists, separated by 30 millennia, should produce such similar work seems astonishing. How did we acquire our beautiful brains? The story of the brain begins in the ancient oceans, long before the first animals appeared. The evolution of multicellular animals depended on cells being able to sense and respond to other cells - to work together. Releasing chemicals into the water is a very slow way of communicating with distant cells - it can take a good few minutes for a demosponge to inflate and close its channels. Deep roots More From New Scientist
Probing the Unconscious Mind SIGMUND FREUD popularized the idea of the unconscious, a sector of the mind that harbors thoughts and memories actively removed from conscious deliberation. Because this aspect of mind is, by definition, not accessible to introspection, it has proved difficult to investigate. Today the domain of the unconscious—described more generally in the realm of cognitive neuroscience as any processing that does not give rise to conscious awareness—is routinely studied in hundreds of laboratories using objective psychophysical techniques amenable to statistical analysis. Let me tell you about two experiments that reveal some of the capabilities of the unconscious mind. Both depend on “masking,” as it is called in the jargon, or hiding things from view. Unconscious Arithmetic The first experiment is a collaboration among Filip Van Opstal of Ghent University in Belgium, Floris P. de Lange of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and Stanislas Dehaene of the Collège de France in Paris.