The term was originally coined in the 19th century by the founding sociologist and philosopher of science, Auguste Comte, and has become a major topic for psychologists ( especially evolutionary psychology researchers ), evolutionary biologists, and ethologists.

An evolutionary psychology explanation is that increased anxiety serves the purpose of increased vigilance regarding potential threats in the environment as well as increased tendency to take proactive actions regarding such possible threats.

One view, especially held in evolutionary psychology, is that the presence of venomous spiders led to the evolution of a fear of spiders or made acquisition of a fear of spiders especially easy.

According to the theory, the human experience of moral obligations was the result of evolutionary pressures, which attached a sense of morality to human psychology because it was useful for moral development ; this entail that moral values do not exist independently of the human mind.

Evolutionary aesthetics refers to evolutionary psychology theories in which the basic aesthetic preferences of Homo sapiens are argued to have evolved in order to enhance survival and reproductive success.

Bodily beauty, evolutionary psychology proposes that a symmetrical body signals genetical health to a potential mate and so is the product of a morphologically stable line of people who physically developed without interference by disease.

In " Intimate Behaviour " Morris studies the human side of intimate behaviour by comparing mans earlier evolutionary psychology to that of modern man and how man copes with an increasingly rigid society empty of physical interaction in public by enacting intimate behaviour in other forms in private or deviant behaviour in public.

A recent example is evolutionary psychologists ' criticism that the DSM does not differentiate between genuine cognitive malfunctions and those induced by psychological adaptations, a key distinction within evolutionary psychology, but one widely challenged within general psychology.

This stems from Gould's long-running public debate with E. O. Wilson and other evolutionary biologists over human sociobiology and its descendant evolutionary psychology, which Gould and Richard Lewontin opposed, but which Dennett advocated, together with Dawkins and Steven Pinker.

Such approaches may be based in scientific fields such as evolutionary psychology or sociobiology, with a focus on understanding and explaining observed ethical preferences and choices.

Since the late 1980s, the field has been revived in the wake of progress made in the related fields of psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science.

In game theory, behavioural ecology, and evolutionary psychology, an evolutionarily stable strategy ( ESS ) is a strategy which, if adopted by a population of players in a given environment, cannot be invaded by any alternative strategy that is initially rare.

First developed in 1973, the ESS is widely used in behavioural ecology and economics, and has been used in anthropology, evolutionary psychology, philosophy, and political science.

* In evolutionary psychology, ESS is used primarily as a model for human biological evolution.

Evolutionary psychology ( EP ) is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective.

Some evolutionary psychologists apply the same thinking to psychology, arguing that the mind has a modular structure similar to that of the body, with different modular adaptations serving different functions.

Evolutionary psychologists suggest that EP is not simply a subdiscipline of psychology but that evolutionary theory can provide a foundational, metatheoretical framework that integrates the entire field of psychology, in the same way it has for biology.

It may also refer specifically to the role of Charles Darwin as opposed to others in the history of evolutionary thought — particularly contrasting Darwin's results with those of earlier theories such as Lamarckism or later ones such as the modern synthesis.

From an evolutionary psychology perspective, different fears may be different adaptations that have been useful in our evolutionary past.

There may be evolutionary causes for irrational beliefs — irrational beliefs may increase our ability to survive and reproduce.

Thus, from an evolutionary perspective men may have had more to gain from a large increase in resources than women have had, which may be one explanation for why men, and especially poor men, tend to gamble more than women.

It may be argued, therefore, that the ability to grow long, straight, densely packed hair provides a distinct evolutionary advantage in cold climate ; however, it would be a distinct disadvantage in a hot climate, when compared to loosely packed, spongy, closely cropped hair.

Rushton describes " ethnic conflict and rivalry " as " one of the great themes of historical and contemporary society ", and suggests that this may have its roots in the evolutionary impact on individuals from groups " giving preferential treatment to genetically similar others.

The Komodo dragon may have evolved to feed on the extinct dwarf elephant Stegodon that once lived on Flores, according to evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond.

Among the prevailing types of theories that attempt to account for the existence of love there are: psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider love to be very healthy behavior ; there are evolutionary theories which hold that love is part of the process of natural selection ; there are spiritual theories which may, for instance consider love to be a gift from God ; there are also theories that consider love to be an unexplainable mystery, very much like a mystical experience.

Furthermore, by adding Hebbian learning to neuronal replicators the power of neuronal evolutionary computation may actually be greater than natural selection in organisms.

For example geochemical signatures from rocks may help to discover when life first arose on Earth, and analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to identify climate changes and even to explain major transitions such as the Permian – Triassic extinction event .< ref name =" Twitchett "> A relatively recent discipline, molecular phylogenetics, often helps by using comparisons of different modern organisms ' DNA and RNA to re-construct evolutionary " family trees "; it has also been used to estimate the dates of important evolutionary developments, although this approach is controversial because of doubts about the reliability of the " molecular clock ".

The circumstance that specific phobias tend to be directed disproportionately against certain objects such as snakes and spiders may have evolutionary explanations.

Similarly, primary agoraphobia may be due to its once having been evolutionary advantageous to avoid exposed, large open spaces without cover or concealment.

For example, a defender of evolution may well accept that the current formulation of evolutionary theory is likely to be revised in the future, but she defends evolution because she believes current evolutionary theory is more likely than any current rival idea, such as Creationism.

This may be visualized in a phylogenetic tree, a hypothesis of the order in which evolutionary events are assumed to have occurred.

Some evolutionary biologists, for example Allan Wilson, have proposed that evolution in promoter or regulatory regions may be more important than changes in coding sequences over such time frames.

According to Gould " stasis may emerge as the theory's most important contribution to evolutionary science.

They reproduce via direct development, an ecological and evolutionary adaptation that has allowed them to be completely independent from free-standing water.

Carnegie claimed to be a champion of evolutionary thought particularly the work of Herbert Spencer, even declaring Spencer his teacher.

Individuals who survived to this, the latest and highest stage of evolutionary progress would be “ those in whom the power of self-preservation is the greatest — are the select of their generation .” Moreover, Spencer perceived governmental authority as borrowed from the people to perform the transitory aims of establishing social cohesion, insurance of rights, and security.

C. S. Lewis argued that, if evolutionary naturalism is accepted, human morality becomes worthless moral statements cannot be right or wrong.

In spite of the large evolutionary distance between insects and mammals, many aspects of Drosophila neurogenetics have turned out to be relevant to humans.

No modern species should be described as more " primitive " than others, strictly speaking, since each has an equally long evolutionary history — but the brains of modern hagfishes, lampreys, sharks, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals show a gradient of size and complexity that roughly follows the evolutionary sequence.

These individuals and the work of other biostatisticians, mathematical biologists, and statistically inclined geneticists helped bring together evolutionary biology and genetics into a consistent, coherent whole that could begin to be quantitatively modeled.

Nevertheless, some writers have argued that consciousness can be viewed from the standpoint of evolutionary biology as an adaptation in the sense of a trait that increases fitness.

Other philosophers, however, have suggested that consciousness would not be necessary for any functional advantage in evolutionary processes.

At any intermediate stage of this evolutionary process, the element in question can be described as a " clitic ".

Macaque monkeys drum objects in a rhythmic way to show social dominance and this has been shown to be processed in a similar way in their brains to vocalizations suggesting an evolutionary origin to drumming as part of social communication.

Mayr insisted throughout his career that the gene as the target of selection cannot and should not be considered a valid idea in modern evolutionary thought.

In response to Haeckel ’ s evolutionary claim that all vertebrates are essentially identical in the first month of embryonic life as proof of common descent, His responds by insisting that a more skilled observer would recognize even sooner that early embryos can be distinguished.

* In February 2006 a fossil, the Gawis cranium, was found which might possibly be a species intermediate between H. erectus and H. sapiens or one of many evolutionary dead ends.

The excretion of the resin by certain plants is thought to be an evolutionary adaptation for protection from insects and to seal wounds caused by damage elements.

Using uniformitarianism, which states that one cannot make an appeal to any force or phenomenon which cannot presently be observed ( see catastrophism ), Darwin theorized that the evolutionary process must occur gradually, not in saltations, since saltations are not presently observed, and extreme deviations from the usual phenotypic variation would be more likely to be selected against.