Sexual revolution essay

The term coitus is derived from the Latin word coitio or coire, meaning "a coming together or joining together" or "to go together", and it describes a variety of sexual activities under ancient Latin names, but usually refers exclusively to penile—vaginal penetration.

Support Aeon Donate now When researchers at Emory University in Atlanta trained mice to fear the smell of almonds by pairing it with electric shocksthey foundto their consternation, that both the children and grandchildren of these mice were spontaneously afraid of the same smell.

That is not supposed to happen. Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that the inheritance of acquired characteristics is impossible. A mouse should not be born with something Sexual revolution essay parents have learned during their lifetimes, any more than a mouse that loses its tail in an accident should give birth to tailless mice.

Yet as novel ideas flood in from genomics, epigenetics and developmental biology, most evolutionists agree that their field is in flux. Much of the data implies that evolution is more complex than we once assumed.

Some evolutionary biologists, myself included, are calling for a broader characterisation of evolutionary theory, known as the extended evolutionary synthesis EES.

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A central issue is whether what happens to organisms during their lifetime — their development — can play important and previously unanticipated roles in evolution. The orthodox view has been that developmental processes are largely irrelevant to evolution, but the EES views them as pivotal.

Protagonists with authoritative credentials square up on both sides of this debate, with big-shot professors at Ivy League universities and members of national academies going head-to-head over the mechanisms of evolution.

Some people are even starting to wonder if a revolution is on the cards. In his book On Human Sexual revolution essaythe evolutionary biologist Edward O Wilson claimed that human culture is held on a genetic leash. The metaphor was contentious for two reasons.

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Second, while there must be a genetic propensity for cultural learning, few cultural differences can be explained by underlying genetic differences. Nonetheless, the phrase has explanatory potential. Imagine a dog-walker the genes struggling to retain control of a brawny mastiff human culture.

Now imagine the same dog-walker struggling with multiple dogs, on leashes of varied lengths, with each dog tugging in different directions.

Sexual revolution - Wikipedia

All these tugs represent the influence of developmental factors, including epigenetics, antibodies and hormones passed on by parents, as well as the ecological legacies and culture they bequeath.

Image courtesy the author. The struggling dog-walker is a good metaphor for how EES views the adaptive process. Does this require a revolution in evolution? Before we can answer this question, we need to examine how science works. The best authorities here are not biologists but philosophers and historians of science.

He maintained that scientists should strive to carry out critical experiments that could potentially falsify their theories.

Is evolutionary science due for a major overhaul – or is talk of ‘revolution’ misguided?

Contemporary thinking in these fields is better captured by the Hungarian philosopher Imre Lakatos in The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes The history of science refutes both Popper and Kuhn: Scientific observations are susceptible to errors of measurement; scientists are human beings and get attached to their theories; and scientific ideas can be fiendishly complex — all of which makes evaluating scientific hypotheses a messy business.

This sort of behaviour is clearly manifest in scientific debates over evolution. Take the idea that new features acquired by an organism during its life can be passed on to the next generation. This hypothesis was brought to prominence in the early s by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who used it to explain how species evolved.

Everything from diet to air pollution to parental behaviour can influence the addition or removal of these chemical marks, which switches genes on or off.

There are now hundreds of such studiesmany published in the most prominent and prestigious journals. Biologists dispute whether epigenetic inheritance is truly Lamarckian or only superficially resembles it, but there is no getting away from the fact that the inheritance of acquired characteristics really does happen.

Yet, by and large, evolutionary biologists have not rushed to change their theories. Rather, as Lakatos anticipated, we have come up with auxiliary hypotheses that allow us to retain our long-held beliefs ie, that inheritance is pretty much explained by the transmission of genes across generations.

These include the ideas that epigenetic inheritance is rare, that it does not affect functionally important traits, that it is under genetic control, and that it is too unstable to underpin the spread of traits through selection. Unfortunately for the traditionalists, none of these attempts to bracket epigenetic inheritance look credible.

It is now known to be widespread in naturewith more and more examples appearing every day. In some systems where rates of epigenetic change have been measured carefully, such as the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the pace has been found to be low enough to be selected and lead to cumulative evolution.

Mathematical models have shown that systems with epigenetic inheritance evolve differently from those solely reliant on genetic inheritance — for instance, selection on epigenetic marks can cause changes in gene frequencies.

Epigenetics is only part of the story. Through culture and society, all of us inherit knowledge and skills acquired by our parents. Evolutionary biologists have accepted this for at least a century, but until recently it was considered to be restricted to humans.Monica Lewinsky writes in Vanity Fair for the first time about her affair with President Clinton: “It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue .

Dec 07,  · We are in the midst of a revolution. From allegations against studio heads and journalists, to hotel maids recounting abuses on the job, women are exposing the truth and men are losing their jobs.

Argumentative Essay Topics From Team At Essay Basics Click To See Examples Of Argumentative Writing. When it comes to essay writing professors usually supply students with topics to write regardbouddhiste.comr, there are cases when . The trouble is that sex is clearly different, as the lasting unhappiness of so many women attests.

If acknowledging that endangers one of the achievements of the sexual revolution, then so be it. Monica Lewinsky writes in Vanity Fair for the first time about her affair with President Clinton: “It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress.” She also says: “I, myself, deeply.

Sexual intercourse may be called coitus, copulation, coition, or intercourse (the last of which is typically shorthand for sexual intercourse).Coitus is derived from the Latin word coitio or coire, meaning "a coming together or joining together" or "to go together", and is known under different ancient Latin names for a variety of sexual activities, but usually denotes penile–vaginal.