The use of informational terms is widespread in molecular and developmental biology. The usage dates back to Weismann. In both protein synthesis and in later development, genes are symbols, in that there is no necessary connection between their form (sequence) and their effects. The sequence of a gene has been determined, by past natural selection, because of the effects it produces. In biology, the use of informational terms implies intentionality, in that both the form of the signal, and the response (...) to it, have evolved by selection. Where an engineer sees design, a biologist sees natural selection. (shrink)

Introduction, W G Runciman Social Evolution in Primates: The Role of Ecological Factors and Male Behaviour, Carel P van Schaik Determinants of Group Size in Primates: A General Model, R I M Dunbar Function and Intention in the Calls of Non-Human Primates, Dorothy L Cheney & Robert M Seyfarth Why Culture is Common, but Cultural Evolution is Rare, Robert Boyd & Peter J Richerson An Evolutionary and Chronological Framework for Human Social Behaviour, Robert A Foley Friendship and the Banker?s Paradox: (...) Other Pathways to the Evolution of Adaptations for Altruism, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides The Early Prehistory of Human Social Behaviour: Issues of Archaeological Inference and Cognitive Evolution, Steven Mithen The Emergence of Biologically Modern Populations in Europe: A Social and Cognitive ?Revolution??, Paul Mellars Responses to Environmental Novelty: Changes in Men?s Marriage Strategies in a Rural Kenyan Community, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder Genetic Language Impairment: Unruly Grammars, M Gopnik, J Dalalakis, S E Fukuda, S Fukuda & E Kehayia The Emergence of Cultures among Wild Chimpanzees, Christophe Boesch Terrestriality, Bipedalism and the Origin of Language, Leslie C Aiello Conclusions, John Maynard Smith. (shrink)

Concentrating on problems that commonly perplex general readers and beginning students, John Maynard Smith discusses fundamental issues in biology, with emphasis on evolution, development, and cognition. He provides a nontechnical account of molecular genetics, which is the foundation of modern biology, and explores such issues as heredity, animal behavior, the definition and origin of life, the brain and how we know things, artificial and natural intelligence, and genetics. The book is unique in presenting modern ideas in terms that (...) can be understood without an in-depth knowledge of biology. (shrink)

Inevitably, much of this reply will concern points on which I disagree with one or other of the commentators. I should start, therefore, by saying that I am delighted to find that their thinking is in many ways similar to my own, and that a serious attempt is under way to clarify the concept of information in biology.

During the war, I worked in aircraft design. About a year after D-day, an exhibition was arranged at Farnborough of the mass of German equipment that had been captured, including the doodlebug and the V2 rocket. I and a friend spent a fascinating two days wandering round the exhibits. The questions that kept arising were ‘Why did they make it like that?’, or, equivalently ‘I wonder what that is for?’ We were particularly puzzled by a gyroscope in the control system (...) of the V2. One's first assumption was that the gyroscope maintained the rocket on its course, but, instead of being connected to the steering vanes, it was connected to the fuel supply to the rocket. Ultimately my friend remembered that the rate of precession of a gyro depends on acceleration, and saw that the Germans had used this fact to design an ingenious device for switching off the engines when the required velocity had been reached. (shrink)

The handicap principle has come under significant challenge both from empirical studies and from theoretical work. As a result, a number of alternative explanations for honest signaling have been proposed. This paper compares the evolutionary plausibility of one such alternative, the "hybrid equilibrium," to the handicap principle. We utilize computer simulations to compare these two theories as they are instantiated in Maynard Smith's Sir Philip Sidney game. We conclude that, when both types of communication are possible, evolution is (...) unlikely to lead to handicap signaling and is far more likely to result in the partially honest signaling predicted by hybrid equilibrium theory. (shrink)

In this paper we show that there are certain limits as to what applications of Maynard Smith’s concept of evolutionarily stable strategy can tell us about evolutionary processes. We shall argue that ESS is very similar in spirit to a particular branch of rational choice game theory, namely, the literature on refinements of Nash equilibrium. In the first place, ESS can also be viewed as a Nash equilibrium refinement. At a deeper level, ESS shares a common structure with (...) other rational choice equilibrium refinements. An equilibrium is evaluated according to whether it persists under specific kinds of perturbations. In the case of ESS, these perturbations are mutations. However, from a dynamical point of view, focusing exclusively on perturbations of equilibria provides only a partial account of the system under consideration. We will show that this has important consequences when it comes to analyzing game-theoretic models of evolutionary processes. In particular, there are non-ESS states which are significant for evolutionary dynamics. (shrink)

Maynard Smith is right that one of the most striking features of contemporary biology is the ever-increasing prominence of the concept of information, along with related concepts like representation, programming, and coding. Maynard Smith is also right that this is surely a phenomenon which philosophers of science should examine closely. We should try to understand exactly what sorts of theoretical commitment are made when biological systems are described in these terms, and what connection there is between (...) semantic descriptions in biology and in other domains. (shrink)

v. 1. Nicomachean ethics. Politics. The Athenian Constitution. Rhetoric. On Poetics.--v. 2. Logic.--v. 3. Physics. Metaphysics. On the soul. Short physical treaties.--v. 4. On the heavens. On generation and corruption. Meteorology. Biological treatises.

Modeling work by Brian Skyrms and others in recent years has transformed the theoretical role of David Lewis's 1969 model of signaling. The latter can now be understood as a minimal model of communication in all its forms. In this article, we explain how the Lewis model has been generalized, and consider how it and its variants contribute to ongoing debates in several areas. Specifically, we consider connections between the models and four topics: The role of common interest in communication, (...) signaling within the organism, meaning, and the evolution of human communication and language. (shrink)

A series of papers on different aspects of practical knowledge by Roderick Chisholm, Rudolf Haller, J. C. Nyiri, Eva Picardi, Joachim Schulte Roger Scruton, Barry Smith and Johan Wrede.

Early in this century, only a few biologists accepted that natural selection was the chief cause of evolution, until the independent calculations of John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964), Sewall Wright and R. A. Fisher demonstrated that ideal populations subject to Mendel's laws could behave as Darwin had said they would. Evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith, a student of Haldane's, has raised the question of why Haldane, who was no naturalist, took up the subject of evolution, and he suggests (...) that the answer may have to do with Haldane's lively interest in religion. In fact Maynard Smith's answer has much more evidence in its favour than he knew. (shrink)

My interest in gathering together a collection of this sort was generated by a fortuitous combination of historical studies under Professor Keith Lehrer and studies in cognitive science under Professor R. Michael Harnish at the University of Arizona. Work on the volume began there while I was an instructor in the Department of Linguistics and was greatly encouraged by participants in the Faculty Seminar on Cognitive Science chaired by Professor Lance J. Rips. I wish to express my appreciation to all (...) of these and to many other individuals with whom I discussed the possibility of contribution to this work. I am especially grateful to the authors of the essays included here, as they showed more patience than I could have hoped for in seeing me through a number of uncertain stages in development of the project. My thanks are also due to my colleague Charles Reid for assistance in reviewing submissions, to Tim McFadden for computer resources, and again, to Keith Lehrer for continuing advice in arrangements for publication. Financial support for manuscript preparation was provided in part under University Research Grant No. 617 from the University Research Council, Youngstown State University. (shrink)

This paper explores John Maynard Smith’s conceptual work on animal signals. Maynard Smith defined animal signals as traits that (1) change another organism’s behaviour while benefiting the sender, that (2) are evolved for this function, and that (3) have their effects through the evolved response of the receiver. Like many ethologists, Maynard Smith assumed that animal signals convey semantic information. Yet his definition of animal signals remains silent on the nature of semantic information and (...) on the conditions determining its content. I therefore compare three ways to specify the semantic content of animal signals. The first suggestion models semantic content on Maynard Smith’s theory of genetic information. On the second proposal, semantic content is equated with a condition identified by conventional content ascriptions. The third suggestion is to explain semantic content in terms of consumer-based teleosemantics. I show how these accounts equate semantic content with distinct kinds of conditions and how they differ with respect to the kinds of traits that qualify as carrying semantic information. (shrink)

Richard Levins (1930-2016) was an outstanding ecologist, population geneticist, biomathematician, philosopher of science, complexity theorist, and Marxist. Key to all aspects of his work was a dialectical logic of process and change. His work provides a framework for the understanding of crises in environment and society and their analytic relationship with capitalism and imperialism, as well as the tools for the critique of biological determinist justifications for the existing structures of power. This anthology pays tribute to Levins by carrying forward (...) his work in the development of the understanding of the dialectics of nature and society. -/- The contributions are organized into four sections--Dialectics in Wholistic Research; Political Ecology and Health; Complex Systems; and Reminiscences and Tributes. The authors are as almost as hard to label as Levins; the fields they draw from range from biomathematics to NGO activism; environmental policy to island and aquatic ecology; eco-justice podcasting to biogeochemistry; reflective practice to science-in-society, agroecology to public health. (shrink)

In the recent past, several papers have pointed to the possibility that tumour removal generates a permissive environment in which tumour growth is potentiated. This phenomenon has been coined “perioperative tumour growth” and whilst it represents a departure in terms of our attitude to the surgical process, this concept was first hinted at by Paget1Sir James Paget (1814–1899) was a surgeon and physiologist who is widely held (along with Rudolph Virchow) to be the father of the science of pathology. Paget (...) described Paget's disease of the nipple as well as Paget's disease of bone. himself. Despite this, the time interval immediately before and after cancer surgery (i.e. the perioperative period) remains an underutilised interval during which chemotherapeutic regimens are rarely implemented. Herein, we present a summarised review of the literature that supports the concept that tumour removal may potentiate the growth of residual neoplastic disease. We also outline current knowledge regarding underlying mechanisms and in this manner highlight potential therapeutic entry points. Finally, we emphasise the urgent need for trials of agents that could protect patients against the harmful host–tumour interactions that may occur during the perioperative period. BioEssays 28: 433–437, 2006. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)