Darwin famously described special difficulties in explaining social evolution in insects. More than a century later, the evolution of sociality - defined broadly as cooperative group living - remains one of the most intriguing problems in biology. Providing a unique perspective on the study of social evolution, this volume synthesizes the features of animal social life across the principle taxonomic groups in which sociality has evolved. The chapters explore sociality in a range of species, from ants to primates, highlighting key natural and life history data and providing a comparative view across animal societies. In establishing a single framework for a common, trait-based approach towards social synthesis, this volume will enable graduate students and investigators new to the field to systematically compare taxonomic groups and reinvigorate comparative approaches to studying animal social evolution.
- Establishes a framework for a common, trait-based approach to social synthesis and the evolution of sociality in animals, allowing any biologist to compare distant or unfamiliar taxonomic groups
- Highlights key natural and life history data in all the major taxonomic groups of animals in which sociality - cooperative group living - occurs
- Brings together the biological and ecological commonalities of social species in disparate taxa to reinvigorate comparative approaches to studying animal social evolution

This book is a history of the influence of Dante on English poetry. The focus us not primarily upon stylistic influences or attempts to imitate Dante's manner of writing, but rather on the different guises in which the enormous presence of Dante has made itself felt, and how that presence has affected some of the central concerns of the poets in question. The poets considered are Shelley, Byron, Browning, Rossetti, Yeats, Pound and Eliot. In addition to analysing the way Dante is approached by these poets in their major poetry, Dr Ellis also discusses relevant critical works: Shelley's Defence of Poetry, Pound's The Spirit of Romance and Yeats' A Vision. The critical survey is unified by the attempt to show certain recurrent preoccupations in the work of these writers, such as the need to define a tradition in which Dante is a necessary forerunner. Ellis also shows that Dante has been read in a very partial way by these poets and the images of him which emerge in their works are inevitably varied and contradictory.

The late Professor Basil Willey's important and influential inquiry into the history of religious and moral ideas in the nineteenth century has become (since its first appearance in 1949) a seminal study for all students of English literature and the history of ideas. Instead of surveying a complex nexus of ideas from a single vantage point, the author examines a shifting succession of beliefs. Religion and ethics are both the clue to those beliefs and an index of their fluctuations, and Professor Willey offers a lucid exposition and impartial evaluation of the issues raging at the heart of Victorian life: progress, original sin, enlightened self-interest and the moral imperative. Individual chapters are devoted to Coleridge, Thomas Arnold, Newman, Carlyle, Bentham, Mill, Comte, George Eliot and Matthew Arnold. Professor Willey's particular achievement is to have clarified and reanimated these controversies so as to show their continuing relevance.

An anthology of works on the philosophy of economics, including classic texts and essays exploring specific branches and schools of economics. Completely revamped, this text contains new selections, a revised introduction and bibliography bringing this volume up to date. The volume contains 26 chapters organized into five parts: (I) Classic Discussions, (II) Positivist and Popperian Views, (III) Ideology and Normative Economics, (IV) Branches and Schools of Economics and Their Methodological Problems and (V) New Directions in Economic Methodology. It includes crucial historical contributions by figures such as Mill, Marx, Weber, Robbins, Knight, and Veblen and works by most of the leading contemporary figures writing on economic methodology, including five Nobel Laureates in Economics.

Analyzing the causes behind thirty six revolutions in the Third World between 1910 and the present, this text attempts to explain why so few revolutions have succeeded, while so many have failed. The book is divided into chapters that treat particular sets of revolutions including the great social revolutions of Mexico (1910), China (1949), Cuba (1959), Iran (1979)and Nicaragua (1979), the anticolonial revolutions in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe from the 1940s to the 1970s, and the failed revolutionary attempts in El Salvador, Peru, and elsewhere.

Volumes Seven and Eight of The Cambridge History of China are devoted to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), providing the largest and most detailed account in any language. Summarizing all modern research, Volume Eight offers detailed studies of governmental structure, the fiscal and legal systems, international relations, social and economic history, transportation networks, and the history of ideas and religion. Although written by specialists, these volumes intend to explain and describe the Ming period to general readers without a specialized knowledge of Chinese history, as well as scholars and students.

The Cambridge History of China is one of the most far-reaching works of international scholarship ever undertaken, exploring the main developments in political, social, economic and intellectual life from the Ch'in empire to the present day. The contributors are specialists from the international community of sinological scholars. Many of the accounts break new ground; all are based on fresh research. The works are written not only with students and scholars but also with the general reader in mind. No knowledge of Chinese is assumed, though for readers of Chinese, proper and other names are identified with their characters in the index. Numerous maps and tables illustrate the text. Volume 3, covers the second great period of unified imperial power, 589 906, when China established herself as the centre of a wider cultural sphere, embracing Japan, Korea and Vietnam. It was an era in which there was a great deal of rapid social and economic change, and in which literature and the arts reached new heights of attainment.

This is the second of two volumes of this authoritative history which review the Republican period. The titanic drama of the Chinese Revolution is one of the major world events of modern times. The fifteen authors of this volume are pioneers in its exploration and analysis, and their text is designed to meet the needs of non-specialist readers. After a preliminary overview stressing economic and social history, the History presents a narrative of events in China's foreign relations to 1931, and in the political history of the Nationalist government and its Communist opponents from 1927 to 1937. Subsequent chapters analyse key governmental, educational and literary - offering critical appraisal of the major achievements and problems in each of these areas. Finally, the volume examines China's war of resistance, the civil war to 1949, and the portentous development of the thought of Mao Tse-tung before coming to power.

This study focuses on the role of institutions and organizations in the development of corporate finance from the Italian merchant banks of the Renaissance through the formation of conglomerates and leveraged-buy-out partnerships in contemporary Wall Street. It also puts forth a compelling argument for the closer integration of historical and quantitative research methodologies in financial theory. The epilogue contains an original algorithm that explains the relationship between the short-term, firm-specific factors and longer-term environmental elements that have shaped the historical development of finance.

The First Modern Economy, first published in 1997, provides a comprehensive economic history of the Netherlands during its rise to European economic leadership, the 'Golden Age', and subsequent decline (1500-1815). The authors argue that it was the first modern economy, and defend their position with detailed analyses of its major economic sectors, as well as investigations of social structure and macro-economic performance. Dutch economic history is placed in its European and world context, and inter-continental and colonial trade are discussed fully. Special emphasis is placed on the environmental context of economic growth and later decline, as well as on demographic developments. The authors also argue that the Dutch model of development and stagnation is applicable to currently maturing economies.

Causality is a key part of many fields and facets of life, from finding the relationship between diet and disease to discovering the reason for a particular stock market crash. Despite centuries of work in philosophy and decades of computational research, automated inference and explanation remains an open problem. In particular, the timing and complexity of relationships has been largely ignored even though this information is critically important for prediction, explanation and intervention. However, given the growing availability of large observational datasets including those from electronic health records and social networks, it is a practical necessity. This book presents a new approach to inference (finding relationships from a set of data) and explanation (assessing why a particular event occurred), addressing both the timing and complexity of relationships. The practical use of the method developed is illustrated through theoretical and experimental case studies, demonstrating its feasibility and success.

This book, geared toward academic researchers and graduate students, brings together research on all facets of how time and causality relate across the sciences. Time is fundamental to how we perceive and reason about causes. It lets us immediately rule out the sound of a car crash as its cause. That a cause happens before its effect has been a core, and often unquestioned, part of how we describe causality. Research across disciplines shows that the relationship is much more complex than that. This book explores what that means for both the metaphysics and epistemology of causes - what they are and how we can find them. Across psychology, biology, and the social sciences, common themes emerge, suggesting that time plays a critical role in our understanding. The increasing availability of large time series datasets allows us to ask new questions about causality, necessitating new methods for modeling dynamic systems and incorporating mechanistic information into causal models.

In his brilliant and tragically brief career, Kenneth Craik anticipated certain ideas which since his death in 1945 have found wide acceptance. As one of the first to realise that machines share with the brain certain principles of functioning, Craik was a pioneer in the development of physiological psychology and cybernetics. Craik published only one complete work of any length, this essay on The Nature of Explanation. Here he considers thought as a term for the conscious working of a highly complex machine, viewing the brain as a calculating machine which can model or parallel external events, a process that is the basic feature of thought and explanation. He applies this view to a number of psychological and philosophical problems (such as paradox and illusion) and suggests possible experiments to test his theory. This book is of interest to those concerned with the concepts of brain and mind.

Is capitalism inherently predatory? Must there be winners and losers? Is public interest outdated and free-riding rational? Is consumer choice the same as self-determination? Must bargainers abandon the no-harm principle? Prisoners of Reason recalls that classical liberal capitalism exalted the no-harm principle. Although imperfect and exclusionary, modern liberalism recognized individual human dignity alongside individuals' responsibility to respect others. Neoliberalism, by contrast, views life as ceaseless struggle. Agents vie for scarce resources in antagonistic competition in which every individual seeks dominance. This political theory is codified in non-cooperative game theory; the neoliberal citizen and consumer is the strategic rational actor. Rational choice justifies ends irrespective of means. Money becomes the medium of all value. Solidarity and good will are invalidated. Relationships are conducted on a quid pro quo basis. However, agents can freely opt out of this cynical race to the bottom by embracing a more expansive range of coherent action.

Data measured as angles or two-dimensional orientations are found almost everywhere in science. They commonly arise in biology, geography, geophysics, medicine, meteorology and oceanography, and many other areas. Examples of such data include departure directions of birds from release points, fracture plane orientations, the directional movement of animals after stimulation, wind and ocean current directions, and biorhythms. Statistical methods for handling such data have developed rapidly in the last twenty years, particularly data display, correlation, regression and analysis of tempered or spatially structured data. Further, some of the exciting modern developments in general statistical methodology, particularly nonparametric smoothing methods and bootstrap-based methods, have contributed significantly to relatively intractable data analysis problems. This book provides a unified and up-to-date account of techniques for handling circular data.

This 1994 book presents a detailed description and history of one of the most famous companies of the early fourteenth century. This analysis of the Peruzzi Company produces a radical reassessment of what made the Florentine 'super-companies' so exceptional: commodity trading, especially in grain, which required heavy capital, sophisticated organisation, and an international network. But the book also exposes the limitations of their financial power, and explodes the myth that the collapse of the Peruzzi and its joint-venture partner, the Bardi, was caused by bad loans to Edward III made to finance his invasions of France.

Review
"This book traces the processes that resulted in military strategies in 17 cases, ranging from ancient Greece and Rome to American nuclear strategy...Each essay is self-contained, and academics searching for brief but expert analyses of strategic case studies for teaching purposes will welcome this book." Foreign Affairs "...the essays, including those on Israel and the United States in the nuclear age, are presented with remarkable verve and freshness." Brian Bond, Times Literary Supplement "The essays by some of the finest strategic analysts in the world, both historians and historically minded political scientists, are of a uniformly high quality. The Making of Strategy is an exceptional work. Anyone who wishes to understand the essence of strategy-making as a process, and the factors that influence strategy-making will profit by reading these essays." Mackubin T. Owens, Strategic Review "One of the advantages of the book is its essays on lesser-known periods for some powers...Military historians and political scientists can benefit from this work, as can students from the upper-division undergraduate level onward." R. Higham, Choice "The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War offers an important collection of essays which examines the process of strategic decision-making from the Peloponnesian Wars to the nuclear age." The International History Review
Review
"This book traces the processes that resulted in military strategies in 17 cases, ranging from ancient Greece and Rome to American nuclear strategy....Each essay is self-contained, and academics searching for brief but expert analyses of strategic case studies for teaching purposes will welcome this book." Foreign Affairs
"...the essays, including those on Israel and the United States in the nuclear age, are presented with remarkable verve and freshness." Brian Bond, Times Literary Supplement
"The essays by some of the finest strategic analysts in the world, both historians and historically minded political scientists, are of a uniformly high quality. The Making of Strategy is an exceptional work. Anyone who wishes to understand the essence of strategy-making as a process, and the factors that influence strategy-making will profit by reading these essays." Mackubin T. Owens, Strategic Review
"One of the advantages of the book is its essays on lesser-known periods for some powers....Military historians and political scientists can benefit from this work, as can students from the upper-division undergraduate level onward." R. Higham, Choice
"The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War offers an important collection of essays which examines the process of strategic decision-making from the Peloponnesian Wars to the nuclear age." The International History Review