... underlying changing biological patterns. Organisms and environments co-evolve through this bi-directional causal intra-action. Not only does natural selection change biological populations to adapt to environments; organisms are niche constructive, altering environments and changing selection pressures...

...Understanding language natureculturally as niche-constructive replaces representational relations between intralinguistic word uses and worldly entities with the discursive articulation and spatial, temporal, conceptual, and imaginative extension of human developmental environments. Linguistic...

.... It links the environment to organisms’ phenotypes and genotypes, making it a third element in the information-transmitting processes of evolution. The linkage holds for cultural phenotypes as well as biological ones, and niche construction models therefore can integrate culture into selective processes...

...Recognizing language and other conceptual capacities as forms of behavioral niche construction that involve practical-perceptual skill requires understanding conceptual contentfulness in those terms. This chapter argues that proto-linguistic capacities for symbolic displacement are not sufficient...

... of conceptual patterns in the world and scientific capacities for pattern recognition show why scientific understanding is a form of material and discursive niche construction rather than linguistic representation, in order to account for the two-dimensional normativity of conceptual understanding. Boyle Robert...

... equilibria or punctuated equilibrium gradualism Homo Paranthropus process biogeography Denisovans fossil record migration development ontogenetic genetic drift paleoecology constraint niche construction feedback Galápagos Grant Peter and Rosemary heritability heredity Lamarck Jean Baptiste...

..., addressing many of the issues and concepts associated with the evolution of complex systems. The book's paradigm embraces and integrates many related theoretical developments of recent years, from multilevel selection theory to niche construction theory, gene-culture coevolution theory, and theories of self...

...Naturalistic accounts of language and conceptual capacities more generally have heretofore been guided by the neo-Darwinian evolutionary synthesis. Niche construction and other aspects of an “extended” evolutionary synthesis suggest a different approach. This chapter develops a naturalistic account...

...This chapter considers the normativity (“objectivity”) of conceptual understanding as a form of behavioral niche construction. Objectivity is first considered as an epistemic concept, applicable to judgments as knowledge claims, along with influential criticisms of these epistemic conceptions...

... is thus itself a form of behavioral and material niche construction, and scientific understanding extends beyond linguistic expressions of knowledge claims to incorporate the institutionally and culturally situated practice of scientific research. As embodied in ongoing research, scientific understanding...

... approaches to naturalism. First, the book explicates conceptual understanding (intentionality) as biologically evolved capacities developed through niche construction, which co-evolve with the human lineage. The normativity of the resulting discursive practices is temporally constituted as two-dimensional...

...” of ourselves-in-the-world. The first part shows how language and scientific practices exemplify the evolutionary process of niche construction. Conceptual capacities arise from the normativity of discursive practice within an evolving developmental niche, in place of familiar naturalistic appeals...

...Languages are biological phenomena. Humans coevolved and codevelop with linguistic expressions in communicative use, as lineal patterns of behavioral and material niche construction salient in human developmental environments. This chapter argues that prominent pragmatist conceptions of language...

... situations. Human bodily postures are distinctive: in responding to circumstances extensively reconstructed to accommodate their needs and activities; migrating among niche-constructed, practice-differentiated settings; responding to conceptually articulated performances; and actively teaching others...

... generations and traditions of knowledge and learned practice accumulate. To understand the impact of culture on niche construction and coevolution, we need to describe basic distinctions among several different elements: information, hugely dispersed across the cosmos; sign-making or semiosis, restricted...

... construction theory gut microbiomes niche construction theory lateral gene transfer Godfrey Smith Peter reproduction requirement evolution by natural selection genes gene technologies multilevel selection theory selfish DNA theory biological hierarchies overviews Dawkins Richard drift process gene...