Download Word , Ch. 10 (2009 ed.)

Study Questions for Ten Theories, Chapter 10: Darwinian Theories
1. What teaching have most people come to accept, according to Stevenson? (201)
What does he predict that “we will see”? (202)
2. What views concerning the age of the solar system were propounded by Kant in the 18th
century and about the age of observable rock strata by Lyell in the 1830’s? (202)
What idea associated with Charles Darwin was defended a couple generations before
Darwin himself? (202)
3. What was the “great contribution” of Charles Darwin? (203)
What was Lamarck’s view?
What four “large empirical generalizations” lies at the heart of Darwin’s argument for
natural selection?
Why did Darwin call it natural selection? (204)
4. Why is there “competition to survive and to reproduce”? (204)
Does this mean that competitors are constantly engaged in physical combat with one
another? (205)
5. What does it mean to say that some animals or plants are “the fittest”? (205)
What is need so that different species can evolve from common ancestors? (205)
6. How does “sexual selection” work? (205)
7. Why was the Origin of Species a major achievement? (205-206)
8. What did Darwin argue in The Descent of Man?
Why is the evolution of species from simpler forms of life now regarded biologists as a fact,
not just a theory? (207)
9. Can scientific research of this sort determine, by itself, what human beings ought to do?
Explain. (207)
10. Who used the words “survival of the fittest” before Darwin?
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What questionable application did he and his followers of make of it? (207-208)
11. How did such ideas get used to endorse racialist attitudes and practices? (208)
12. What conclusion does not logically follow from the fact that some human groups may
be fitter than others in terms of survival and reproduction? (208)
13. What point does Stevenson make by noting that both Spencer and Marx endorsed
Darwin’s work? (208)
14. What would Darwin think of claims made by Descartes and others that human mental
capacities are radically different from capacities found in nonhuman animals? (209)
15. Did Darwin believe that human moral qualities are advanced mainly through natural
selection?
If not, through what?
Did he think that scientific discovery endorses a callous attitude toward “the weaker
members” of our society?
Explain. (210)
16. What was Darwin’s speculative explanation of variations within a species? (212)
Did Darwin’s mistake on this invalidate his main theory of evolution? Explain. (212)
17. What contribution did Gregor Mendel make that helped explain these variations? (21213)
What other cause of variation was later established? (213)
18. What racist and sexist applications were made of the anti-Lamarck principle that no
characteristics acquired from experience are inherited?
What is eugenics? (213-14)
19. What are some ethical arguments against positive and negative eugenics? (214)
Did Darwin believe that “races” are separate species? (215)
20. How was evolutionary biology used in the late 19th and early 20th century to reinforce
racial and ethnic bias and discriminatory legislation? (215)
With respect to women, was Darwin unambiguously sexist? (216)
21. What distinction makes it possible to criticize Darwin’s claims regarding the
comparative “mental power” of men and women? (216)
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22. What were “intelligence tests” thought to measure?
How were they practically applied in the early 20th century? (216-17)
What challenges to the concept of intelligence and to the so-called intelligence tests are
possible? (217)
23. What did the founders of social science hold? (217)
For what did Emile Durkheim argue?
What was Kroeber thinking of when he referred to the “superorganic”? (218)
24. What empirical study by Franz Boas dealt a major blow to “scientific” racism?
What impact did Boas’ activity—not only his empirical study on the dimensions of human
heads!--have on American academia?
What liberal values motivated Boas (and other opponents of academic racism)?
Is there any evidence that Boas’ values distorted his research? (218-219)
25. What distinction does Stevenson make toward the bottom of p. 219?
Does the fact that this distinction can be made provide an argument against extinction of
cultures? Explain. (219)
26. Explain the difference between “equality feminists” and “difference feminists.” (220)
27. What instincts did Freud hypothesize?
How did William James define instinct?
What was Watson’s behaviorist psychology?
What did he forbid?
What did he proclaim? (220-221)
28. What two assumptions did B. F. Skinner tend to make?
How can the second be refuted?
What consideration seems to undercut his first assumption? (221)
29. What is the main idea of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene?
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What notion did Dawkins introduce in his final chapter?
For each of these claims, state one consideration that should lead us to qualify it. (222-23)
30. How did ethologists like Tinbergen challenge behaviorism? (223)
31. What did Konrad Lorenz claim about aggressive behavior?
Into what trap did he (and others) tend to fall? (225)
32. What was Skinner’s theory of language learning and how did Noam Chomsky challenge
it? (225)
How did Chomsky explain the amazing speed at which human children learn their native
language? (226)
33. What does it mean to say that the linguistic ability described by Chomsky is an
adaptation? (226)
34. What claim did Edward Wilson make in the final chapter of his Sociobiology?
Is Wilson a consistent reductionist, who aims to explain the subject matter of the social
sciences and humanities in terms of physics? (227-28; see also 229 top)
35. In what way do Wilson’s utterances contradict Durkheim’s position on social facts?
(228)
What explains the objections aimed at sociobiology by Wilson’s colleagues Lewontin and
Gould? (228)
36. What are the three main premises of “the Santa Barbara school”? (After stating the
second, explain the distinction between “adaptation” and “adaptive behavior” in
evolutionary thought. Might it happen that adaptations are no longer adaptive at all?) (230231)
37. What issues does the Santa Barbara integrated account seem to ignore, in spite of its
complexity? (232-233)