Gregory Cochran | |
---|---|
Born | Gregory M. Cochran 1953 (age 70–71) |
Citizenship | American |
Alma mater | University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign |
Known for | The 10,000 Year Explosion |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physics, Anthropology |
Institutions | University of Utah |
Gregory M. Cochran (born 1953) is an American anthropologist and author who argues that cultural innovation resulted in new and constantly shifting selection pressures for genetic change, thereby accelerating human evolution and divergence between human races. From 2004 to 2015, he was a research associate at the anthropology department at the University of Utah. [1] He is co-author of the book The 10,000 Year Explosion .
In opposition to what he sees as the conventional wisdom that civilization has been a static environment which imposed stabilizing selection on humans, Cochran, along with like-minded anthropologists such as John D. Hawks, [2] contends that haplotype and other data indicate the selection of genes has been strongest since the advent of farming and civilization. [3]
Cochran and co-authors Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending suggest that the high average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews may be attributed to natural selection for intelligence during the Middle Ages and a low rate of genetic inflow. Cochran and his colleagues hypothesize that the occupational profile of the Jewish community in medieval Europe had resulted in selection pressure for mutations that increase intelligence, but can also result in hereditary neurological disorders. [4] [5] [6] Cochran was featured in an episode of the Norwegian television show Hjernevask ("Brainwash") in which he discusses race and intelligence, using Ashkenazi intelligence as compared to the rest of the Israeli Jewish population as an example of differences between groups. [7]
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In 2000, Cochran and evolutionary biologist Paul W. Ewald co-authored a paper in which they proposed that most human diseases were the result of pathogenic infections (viruses, bacteria, parasites). [8] They argue that most fitness-reducing diseases would be eliminated through natural selection, but since germs can evolve faster than humans, they are a likely culprit. Cochran and Ewald point to stomach ulcers, which were once thought to be caused by a variety of environmental factors such as smoking, diet and drugs, but were later attributed to bacteria. [9]
Cochran has argued that male homosexuality is caused by an unknown pathogen because it reduces or eliminates reproductive output. He argues it is unlikely to be explained by many popular theories, because natural selection should quickly eliminate an evolutionarily disadvantageous trait. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] He does not suggest that the infectious agent that causes homosexuality is necessarily spread by homosexuals. One suggestion is that a widespread virus which infects everybody on the planet, only causes homosexuality in a few percent of people. [9]
In 1999, journalist Caleb Crain published an article in the gay magazine Out in which he spoke with Cochran and several sexual orientation researchers about the hypothesis. [10] Geneticist Dean Hamer, who had researched the genetics of homosexuality, called it "a very interesting idea" which would need to be tested by experimentation, but he was skeptical as homosexuality doesn't appear in clusters. J. Michael Bailey wanted to see evidence, but gave Cochran the "benefit of the doubt". Elaine F. Walker, who researched a pathogenic cause of schizophrenia during pregnancy, did not find it plausible. [10]
The dominant hypothesis in the scientific literature is that male homosexuality may be a result of incomplete masculinisation of the brain during fetal development, under the influence of sex hormones. [14] Maternal immune responses have also been implicated. [15] Male homosexuality is often preceded by gender nonconforming behavior in early childhood, which according to Bailey, is "often evident by age 2". [14]
John Philippe Rushton was a Canadian psychologist and author. He taught at the University of Western Ontario until the early 1990s, and became known to the general public during the 1980s and 1990s for research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and other purported racial correlations.
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Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether in embryonic development or in learning. Genetic reductionism is a similar concept, but it is distinct from genetic determinism in that the former refers to the level of understanding, while the latter refers to the supposedly causal role of genes. Biological determinism has been associated with movements in science and society including eugenics, scientific racism, and the debates around the heritability of IQ, the basis of sexual orientation, and sociobiology.
The relationship between biology and sexual orientation is a subject of on-going research. While scientists do not know the exact cause of sexual orientation, they theorize that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences. However, evidence is weak for hypotheses that the post-natal social environment impacts sexual orientation, especially for males.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997 transdisciplinary non-fiction book by the American author Jared Diamond. The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians, he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.
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Harald Meldal Eia is a Norwegian comedian, and sociologist. In recent years, Eia has also made TV-documentaries and written books.
Paul W. Ewald is an American evolutionary biologist, specializing in the evolutionary ecology of parasitism, evolutionary medicine, agonistic behavior, and pollination biology. He is the author of Evolution of Infectious Disease (1994) and Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease (2002), and is currently director of the program in Evolutionary Medicine at the Biology Department of the University of Louisville.
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal is a 1991 book by academic and popular science author Jared Diamond, in which the author explores concepts relating to the animal origins of human behavior. The book follows a series of articles published by Diamond, a physiologist, examining the evidence and its interpretation in earlier treatments of the related species, including cultural characteristics or features often regarded as particularly unique to humans. The book was released in the United Kingdom in 1991 by Radius under the title The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee: How Our Animal Heritage Affects the Way We Live and in the United States in 1992 by HarperCollins under the title The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. In 2014, Diamond published an adapted version for young people with Seven Stories Press titled, The Third Chimpanzee for Young People.
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Ego-dystonic sexual orientation is a highly controversial mental health diagnosis that was included in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) from 1980 to 1987 and in the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD) from 1990 to 2019. Individuals could be diagnosed with ego-dystonic sexual orientation if their sexual orientation or attractions were at odds with their idealized self-image, causing anxiety and a desire to change their orientation or become more comfortable with it. It describes not innate sexual orientation itself, but a conflict between the sexual orientation a person wishes to have and their actual sexual orientation.
Henry Cosad Harpending was an American anthropologist, population geneticist, and writer. He was a distinguished professor at the University of Utah, and formerly taught at Penn State and the University of New Mexico. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is known for the book The 10,000 Year Explosion, which he co-authored with Gregory Cochran.
Evolution of Infectious Disease is a 1993 book by the evolutionary biologist Paul W. Ewald. In this book, Ewald contests the traditional view that parasites should evolve toward benign coexistence with their hosts. He draws on various studies that contradict this dogma and asserts his theory based on fundamental evolutionary principles. This book provides one of the first in-depth presentations of insights from evolutionary biology on various fields in health science, including epidemiology and medicine.
The relationship between the environment and sexual orientation is a subject of research. In the study of sexual orientation, some researchers distinguish environmental influences from hormonal influences, while other researchers include biological influences such as prenatal hormones as part of environmental influences.
The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution is a 2009 book by anthropologists Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. Starting with their own take on the conventional wisdom that the evolutionary process stopped when modern humans appeared, the authors explain the genetic basis of their view that human evolution is accelerating, illustrating it with some examples.
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The Journal of Biosocial Science is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the intersection of biology and sociology. It was the continuation of The Eugenics Review, published by the Galton Institute from 1909 till 1968. It obtained its current name in 1969, with volume numbering re-starting at 1, and switched publishers to Cambridge University Press. The editor-in-chief is Dr Alejandra Núñez-de la Mora.
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Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, often referred to as "Jewish genius", is a subject that explores the perception that Ashkenazi Jews tend to have a higher intelligence than all other ethnic groups and excel disproportionately in many fields and has been an occasional subject of scientific controversy.
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