Richard O. Prum is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He has conducted field work throughout the world, and has studied fossil theropod dinosaurs in China. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.
发表于2024-12-22
The Evolution of Beauty 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书
什么是美?谁来定义美?美在不同的时代与社会中又是如何变化的?美存在于人类社会,亦存在于动物界,假如美有人或动物中的某一部分个体或群体主导,那么这个主导的人是谁?——这些宏大的问题必然三言两语难以尽述,因此不妨化繁为简,从相对简单一些的鸟类谈起,这也便是《美...
评分The Evolution of Beauty 英文版刚刚上市时,我就在不少国外科普媒体上注意到了它。当时我还算半个“自由撰稿人”(说的太好听了,实际上就是四处给别人码点儿字写科普),对自然博物类科普的话题一直很感兴趣。这本书一经出版便受到了学界与科普界的高度关注,随之而来的则是...
评分《美的进化》 这本非常美的书,不仅颜值高而且很有颠覆性。 我其实读了蛮久,前半部分讲鸟,后半部分讲人,因为对鸟不是很了解,想象力也不够丰富,就在网上找了很多鸟的图片和视频,作者是鸟类学家、生态学家,对鸟是真爱,我觉得这种喜欢动物的人还是有很多相似点,比如达尔...
评分一 关于阅读本书的乐趣和价值 这本书的阅读是非常有趣的,无论是大道理还是小事例,都不断激发着我的脑电波。我以为很多社会风潮、流行言论、社会现象,都可以在这本书中,从非人动物那里找到相似、甚至一模一样的现象,于是接下来是欣慰还是惊醒就看个人的悟性了。这种跨物种...
图书标签: 科普 进化论 非虚构 生物学 心理学 2017 英文 美国
A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed “the taste for the beautiful”—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world.
In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature?
Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin’s own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin’s long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change.
Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time.
The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature’s splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.
孤陋寡闻如我,直到听了这本书才知道进化学里adaptationist和pluralist之争,顺藤摸瓜去看,原来还是此领域最为火热的学派争论之一,而这本书的作者,是反对adaptationism的。这本书的中心议题是性选择(sexual selection),与传统适应主义相比,性选择并不认为后代的健康和生育能力是唯一的选择标杆与进化动力,相反,它认为物种在选择配偶上的主观倾向起到很大的作用。有时候这类倾向仅建立在审美之上,而且像所有主观倾向一样,有时候合理(带来更健康和有生育力),有时并不。有时某一种trait最开始受到青睐的时候也许带有合理性,但后来则在军备竞赛般的夸大中丢掉了最初的合理性——文中用08年房贷泡沫来比拟非常形象。总之是一本很有意思的书,可是不知道有没有时间具体写书评。
评分非常好看!颠覆了我对演化论的认知。从鸟类谈到人类,并为现在方兴未艾的女权主义与LGBT平权运动提供了理论支援(虽然后几章脑洞略大...).不愧是同时入选《纽约时报》与《华尔街日报》2017年度书单的著作。
评分听的audible上的有声书,上一秒还在讲羽毛和歌声,下一秒就讲生殖器,没有目录看就是这么精彩。这本很喜欢了,female choice在进化过程中的作用,比我们想象的大,不一定是生理性的,还有文化层面的。同性性行为的原因。这种切片很容易被当成武断,但其实我们连切片断面都不懂。
评分将达尔文被忽视的伴侣选择理论深化并延伸,提供新视角来审视择偶偏好的形成和进化,否定且diss了以自然选择为基础的主流观点和进化心理学理论,强调“美”和女性择偶偏好的主导作用。作为去年纽约时段的十佳,很值得读,里面众多观点很有趣。
评分啰嗦是缺点,话题和观点很有意思。
The Evolution of Beauty 2024 pdf epub mobi 电子书