Baldwinian evolution is a theory proposed by United StatespsychologistJames Mark Baldwin which states that organisms can pass on learned abilities to their offspring. It can be said to be an intermediate form of evolution between natural selection and social adaptation. Sometimes called ontogenic evolution, the proposed mechanism does not involve direct transfer of learned abilities from generation to generation — that would require invoking discredited Lamarckian evolution. Instead, Baldwin proposes a mechanism for non-specific selection for learning ability. Selected offspring would then tend to be more "phenotypically plastic". That is, they would have an increased capacity for learning new skills (including skills previously learned by their ancestors) rather than being confined to genetically coded, relatively fixed abilities. Theory has a number of distinct meanings in different fields of knowledge, depending on the context and their methodologies. ... Psychology (ancient Greek: psyche = soul or mind, logos/-ology = study of) is an academic and applied field involving the study of the mind and behavior, both human and (less frequently) nonhuman. ... James Mark Baldwin (Columbia, South Carolina, 1861—1934) was an American philosopher, educated at Princeton and several German universities. ... Charles Darwin in 1859 in his book The Origin of Species defined Natural selection as the principle, by which each slight variation [of a trait], if useful, is preserved. ... It has been suggested that Racial memory be merged into this article or section. ...
The human mind is the most phenotypically flexible entity in the living world, enabling a human of given genotype virtually infinite phenotypic flexibility through the acquisition of skills and learning. Baldwinian evolution may be a crucial factor in explaining the rapid evolution of human cognitive capacity, which some consider anomalous if only natural selection forces are considered.
The Baldwin effect is a theory of James Mark Baldwin in which individual learning of a characteristic significantly affects the evolution of a species with respect to that characteristic. ...
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Baldwinian evolution
The Evolution of Phenotypic Plasticity through the Baldwin Effect
In biology, evolution is the process by which populations of organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation, affecting the overall makeup of the population and even leading to the emergence of new species.
Baldwinianevolution refers to the way human beings, as cultured animals capable of symbolic (extrasomatic) learning, can change their environment, or the environment of any species, in such a way as to result in new selective forces.
The belief in a telelogical evolution of this sort is known as orthogenesis, and is not supported by the scientific theory of evolution.
In biology, evolution is a process by which organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation.
One of the first theories of biological evolution was proposed in the early 19th century by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, though his idea that individual organisms acquire traits during their lifetimes that they pass on to offspring was fundamentally flawed.
In the modern synthesis, "evolution" means a change in the frequency of an allele within a gene pool from one generation to the next.
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