O objetivo principal desta pesquisa foi estudar a história dos animais na cidade de São Paulo no contexto das transformações urbanas, científicas, tecnológicas e socioculturais do final do século XIX às primeiras décadas do XX. Tendo como eixo central da investigação a questão da Modernidade e da Revolução Científico-Tecnológica, procurou-se compreender as singularidades e os impactos desses eventos sobre diversas espécies de animais que existiam na capital paulista; de que maneiras elas foram usadas para o processo de "modernização" da cidade; e quais as múltiplas relações estabelecidas entre elas e o homem. Através de fontes diversas (registros literários e iconográficos, leis municipais, relatórios de prefeitos, periódicos, etc.) essa história foi reconstruída em cinco dimensões interpretativas: os animais e o poder público municipal; os animais e instituições de pesquisas científicas; os animais e as modernas tecnologias; os animais e o cotidiano da cidade; os animais e as práticas humanas de sensibilidade, respeito e convivência. Os estudos e reflexões de Walter Benjamin sobre a Modernidade e a metrópole moderna assim como os pressupostos da hermenêutica desenvolvidos por Hans-George Gadamer; as teorias do cotidiano e do informal de Michel Maffesoli e de Michel de Certeau; a fenomenologia da percepção de Maurice Merleau-Ponty e as múltiplas temporalidades de Reinhart Koselleck; a estocástica de Ilya Prigogine...

Dissertação (Mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas. Programa de Pós-graduação em Filosofia.; O objetivo deste estudo é contrastar a tese da auto-organização de Stuart Kauffman e a tese da contingência de Stephen Jay Gould com a visão darwiniana da evolução. Inicialmente, caracterizamos o darwinismo como o que Kim Sterelny e Paul Griffiths chamaram de "visão aceita da evolução", acrescida dos três princípios gouldianos que detalham o papel da seleção natural na teoria darwiniana. A tese da auto-organização pode ser caracterizada como nomológica, na medida em que procura mostrar como as leis da auto-organização são responsáveis por grande parte da ordem biológica. A tese da contingência, por outro lado, enfatiza o papel do acaso e da imprevisibilidade na evolução, podendo assim ser vista como a defesa de uma abordagem idiográfica para a biologia.

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências da Educação, Programa de Pós-graduação em Educação Científica e Tecnológica, Florianópolis, 2013; As pesquisas já produzidas sobre o ensino de Evolução Biológica apontam que tanto professores como alunos, quando indagados sobre processos evolutivos, compartilham pontos em comum, como o de que a Evolução Biológica é linear, visa ao melhoramento dos organismos e possui um propósito último. Essa variedade de interpretações aponta para uma questão central para o entendimento da Evolução Biológica: a existência (ou não) de progresso. Sobre esse tema debruçaram-se, ao longo do tempo, autores como Charles Darwin, Francisco José Ayala e Stephen Jay Gould, cujos argumentos são debatidos no presente trabalho, constituindo o pano de fundo para uma investigação que visa identificar e caracterizar os entendimentos associados ao progresso biológico/evolutivo, presentes em um dos principais recursos didáticos utilizados na escola, os livros didáticos, neste caso, aqueles selecionados pelo Plano Nacional do Livro Didático 2012. Com base nas resenhas do Guia do Livro Didático de 2012, foram selecionados e analisados dez livros. O percurso metodológico qualitativo da pesquisa baseou-se na Análise de Conteúdo...

In some literature variations in photosynthetic rates are considered to be of little relevance for individual fitness. This depends among other things on how one defines fitness, i.e. if one takes strictly Darwinian fitness as seed production or if one needs to evaluate particular traits and consider plant establishment. It also matters if one takes the Darwinian "organism individual" as the central entity in evolution ("individual fitness") or the "species individual" in a modified "Structure of Evolutionary Theory" sensu Stephen Jay Gould. A phenotypically expressed trait like photosynthetic rate, even if intra- and interspecific differences may be small, can matter in habitat performance and niche acquisition. Light dependence curves (LCs) of photosynthetic rates are now readily measured under field conditions using miniaturized equipment of pulse amplitude modulated fluorometers. In contrast to actual momentary measurements of quantum yield of photosynthesis under actually prevailing ambient conditions, LC measurements reflect the expressed intrinsic capacity of photosynthesis. In this review we explore the power of LC measurements yielding cardinal points such as maximum apparent electron transport rate of photosystem II (ETRmax) and saturating photosynthetically active radiation (PARsat) in making intra- and interspecific comparisons of plant performance and synecological fingerprinting in ecophysiological studies across species...

Two major clarifications have greatly abetted the understanding and fruitful expansion of the theory of natural selection in recent years: the acknowledgment that interactors, not replicators, constitute the causal unit of selection; and the recognition that interactors are Darwinian individuals, and that such individuals exist with potency at several levels of organization (genes, organisms, demes, and species in particular), thus engendering a rich hierarchical theory of selection in contrast with Darwin’s own emphasis on the organismic level. But a piece of the argument has been missing, and individuals at levels distinct from organisms have been denied potency (although granted existence within the undeniable logic of the theory), because they do not achieve individuality with the same devices used by organisms and therefore seem weak by comparison. We show here that different features define Darwinian individuality across scales of size and time. In particular, species-individuals may develop few emergent features as direct adaptations. The interactor approach works with emergent fitnesses, not with emergent features; and species, as a consequence of their different mechanism for achieving individuality (reproductive exclusivity among subparts...

In 1979, Lewontin and I borrowed the architectural term “spandrel” (using the pendentives of San Marco in Venice as an example) to designate the class of forms and spaces that arise as necessary byproducts of another decision in design, and not as adaptations for direct utility in themselves. This proposal has generated a large literature featuring two critiques: (i) the terminological claim that the spandrels of San Marco are not true spandrels at all and (ii) the conceptual claim that they are adaptations and not byproducts. The features of the San Marco pendentives that we explicitly defined as spandrel-properties—their necessary number (four) and shape (roughly triangular)—are inevitable architectural byproducts, whatever the structural attributes of the pendentives themselves. The term spandrel may be extended from its particular architectural use for two-dimensional byproducts to the generality of “spaces left over,” a definition that properly includes the San Marco pendentives. Evolutionary biology needs such an explicit term for features arising as byproducts, rather than adaptations, whatever their subsequent exaptive utility. The concept of biological spandrels—including the examples here given of masculinized genitalia in female hyenas...

According to Stephen Jay Gould, “we have a strong preference for seeing trends as entities moving somewhere.” However, trends may instead be the product of relative expansions and contractions of different subpopulations constituting the system. Variation in attributes of coronary heart disease cases during the decline in coronary heart disease mortality suggests a change in the primary source-subpopulation of cases over time. It is proposed that an early 20th-century expansion of a coronary heart disease–prone subpopulation, characterized by high serum-cholesterol phenotype and high case-fatality—which contributed to most of the coronary heart disease cases and deaths during the 1960s—may have been a late result of the 1918 influenza pandemic. The same unusual immune response to infection that in 1918 killed preferentially men, whites, and those born from 1880 to 1900 (20–40 years old) may have “primed” survivors of those birth cohorts to late coronary heart disease mortality. Ecologic evidence in favor of a birth cohort and geographic association between both epidemics is presented. Cross-reactive auto-immune response upon reinfection could explain the excess coronary heart disease deaths reported during influenza epidemics from the late 1920s onward. Mimicry between the viral hemagglutinin and the apolipoprotein B or the low-density lipoprotein receptor could be the link between infection and hypercholesterolemia. The extinction of those birth cohorts would result in a relative increase in cases coming from a 2nd subpopulation...

Proyecto fin de carrera en Biología Evolutiva y Biodiversidad; Se ha realizado una herramienta denominada Red Evolutiva de Stephen Jay Gould; una plataforma que surge de la lectura y análisis de la producción evolucionista de este importante investigador. La Red Evolutiva se divide en dos secciones: una primera en la que se analiza una parte sustancial de su extensa bibliografía, filtrando la información y analizando el ideario evolutivo y científico de Gould; una segunda en la que toda la información cristaliza en una herramienta de carácter tecnológico, Gouldle, que permite la búsqueda asistida de la información a partir de las fuentes primarias y su uso para el estudio de la historia de la biología, particularmente, del ideario evolutivo

This article is about convergence and why not. How about a ride to space in an elevator? Why not? A single nanotube could stretch from earth to the stratosphere and be able to support its own weight. This fact spurred NASA to review ideas proposed by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1895) a Russian visionary and Arthur C. Clarke in The Fountains of Paradise (1978). The idea is to build an elevator (lift) that will travel 60,000 miles from the earth’s surface into space carrying cargo and humans. It is predicted that the ‘space elevator’ will lower the cost of positioning a satellite in space from $10,000 to $100 per pound. NASA provided $570,000 to Bradley Edwards to provide details. Bradley Edwards’ proposal calls for a single nanotube about 75 cm wide and thinner than a piece of paper that will stretch 60,000 miles from the surface of the earth or the ocean floor (The Space Elevator by Bradley Edwards, 2002). A 3-day NASA conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico (September 2003) drew 60 scientists and engineers working on the concept. The outcome of the meeting: “it is plausible.” (Gentry Lee, Chief Engineer, JPL, Cal Tech). The ‘space elevator’ apparatus would lift up to 13 tons of cargo in a week to reach the geosynchronous orbit (22...

This dissertation uses the public career of Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould to examine the place of evolution in American culture from 1960 to 2002. Gould was a professional paleontologist and public science writer who rose to fame through his participation in a series of American controversies over biology and society. Prior to the 1980s, Gould publicly disagreed with other biologists over the relationship between liberalism and scientific research. As a New Left activist, Gould advocated caution over public pronouncements on evolutionary explanations of race and sex. His opponents believed that science could provide objective standards for understanding human difference. This thesis shows how the resurgence of creationism in the context of the New Right brought a new community into dialogue with these generally left-oriented academics. Evolutionary scientists and writers solidified a new evolutionary orthodoxy in their attempt to close ranks against the political, social and intellectual threat of creationism. Gould's intellectual and political struggles with the rise of this Darwinian orthodoxy demonstrate the impact that the American public had on the terms of debate within professional evolutionary biology. By studying the impact of public religious controversy on scientific knowledge production...

La investigación realizada a lo largo de esta tesis tiene por objetivo general contribuir a la reflexión y elaborar una respuesta a la siguiente pregunta: ¿es posible establecer un marco teórico interdisciplinar que permita comprender la historia de la ocupación humana en América articulando todos sus niveles? Este problema se origina al observar que los modelos de poblamiento americano disponibles actualmente se construyen sobre fragmentaciones teóricas del fenómeno en estudio, bajo conceptos, metodologías y normas de investigación propios de cada una de las disciplinas que producen dicho conocimiento. De esta manera y en forma paralela, disciplinas como la arqueología, la antropología física, la genética de poblaciones y la lingüística histórica intentan modelizar el poblamiento del continente americano, consolidándose como enfoques cuyos principales resultados e interpretaciones son en apariencia disímiles, hasta incluso irreconciliables. En este sentido, el análisis histórico que se llevó a cabo en esta tesis ha permitido comprender y re-significar el estancamiento del debate en torno a este problema. Se concluye que la actual coyuntura es el producto contingente de la historia de las ideas acerca de la ocupación humana de América...

Stephen Jay Gould

Many natural phenomena evolve intermittently, with periods of tranquillity interrupted by bursts of activity, rather than following a smooth gradual path. Examples include earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, solar flares, gamma-ray bursts, and biological evolution. Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have coined the term "punctuated equilibria" for this behavior. We argue that punctuated equilibria reflects the tendency of dynamical systems to evolve towards a critical state, and review recent work on simple models. A good metaphoric picture is one where the systems are temporarily trapped in valleys of deformable, interacting landscapes. Similarities with spin glasses are pointed out. Punctuated equilibria are essential for the emergence of complex phenomena. The periods of stasis allow the system to remember its past history; yet the intermittent events permit further change.; Comment: 17 pages, latex, 4 ps-figures enclosed

Stephen Jay GOULD, Time's arrow, time's cycle. Myth and metaphor in the discovery of geological time

Eudald CARBONELL ; Robert SALA, Planeta humano. Josep CORBELLA ; Eudald CARBONELL ; Salvador MOYÀ ; Robert SALA, Sapiens. El largo camino de los homínidos hacia la inteligencia. Jaume BERTRANPETIT ; Cristina JUNYENT, Viaje a los orígenes. Una historia biológica del ser humano.

I outline Gould's conception of evolutionary theory and his ways of contrasting it with contemporary Darwinism; a contemporary Darwinism that focuses on the natural selection of individual organisms. Gould argues for a hierarchical conception of the living world and of the evolutionary processes that have built that living world: organisms are built from smaller components (genes, cells) and are themselves components of groups, populations, species, lineages. Selection, drift and constraint are important to all of these levels of biological organization, not just that of individual organisms. Moreover, both drift and constraint are more important than orthodoxy supposes. While having some sympathy for both of these lines of argument, I argue that they are more problematic than Gould supposes, and that he understates the power and the heterogeneity of orthodox conceptions of life's evolution.

Resenha do livro de Stephen Jay Gould. Tradução de Maria Elizabeth Martinez Martins Fontes.