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TERM
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DEFINITION
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Behavioral Genetics
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The identification
of the hereditary basis of mental development and process.
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Bioaesthetics
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The study of the biological basis of aesthetics response.
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Biophilia
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A term coined by Professor Wilson to describe humankind?s innate affiliation with nature.
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Cognitive Neuroscience
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The mapping of brain activity, defining mental development and
process.
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Consilience
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Consilience is the key to unification. The word
?consilience? was first used
by the philosopher and historian of science William Whewell
in 1840. It refers to a "jumping together" of knowledge
by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines
to create a common groundwork of explanation.
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Environmental Science
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The description of the environment to which humanity has adapted.
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Epigenetic Rules
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Epigenetic rules are the inherited regularities of mental development.
These rules are the genetic and hereditary biases; the way our
senses perceive the world, the symbolic coding by which we represent
the world, the options we open to ourselves, and the responses
we find easiest and most rewarding to make. The epigenetic rules
alter the way we see and linguistically classify color. They
cause us to evaluate the aesthetics of artistic design according
to elementary abstract shapes and the degrees of complexity.
They lead us to differentially acquire fears and phobias, to
communicate with certain facial expressions, forms, and body
language. Most of the epigenetic rules are evidently ancient,
dating back millions of years.
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Epistemology
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The theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge.
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Ethnographic Data
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The database of anthropology.
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Ethology
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The study of animal behavior under natural conditions.
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Evolutionary Biology
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The reconstruction of the evolutionary history of life and its
determinants.
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Genetics
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The study of genes, chemistry, transmission, and effects.
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Human Nature
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Human nature is not the genes, which prescribe it, or culture,
its ultimate product. Rather, human nature is the epigenetic
rules, the hereditary regularities of mental development that
bias cultural evolution in one direction as opposed to another,
and thus connect the genes to culture.
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Humanistic Sciences
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The study of human activity, thought, and behavior.
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Ideograph
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A character or figure symbolizing the idea of a thing, as the Chinese
characters and most Egyptian hieroglyphics.
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Mendeleyev
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Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev,
(1834-1907), Russian chemist, best known for his development
of the periodic law of the properties of the chemical elements.
This law states that elements show a periodicity (regular pattern)
of properties when they are arranged according to atomic weight.
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Munsell Color Array
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A set of 320 color chips of forty equally spaced hues and eight
degrees of brightness, all at maximum saturation, and nine chips
of neutral hue (white, black and grays).
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Natural Sciences
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The study of the natural world, comprising physics, chemistry and
biology.
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Neurobiology
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The study of nerve cells, and of the brain, in both development
and evolution, and their relation to behavior.
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Phylogeny
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Evolutionary history of species.
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Reductionism
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The explanation of complex systems by reduction of the systems
to their component parts and processes, as cells by reduction
to molecules.
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Westermarck Effect
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The Westermarck Effect, named after Finnish anthropologist Edward
Westermarck, was discovered almost a century ago. It is the
basis for incest avoidance in humans. When 2 people live in
close domestic proximity during the first 30 months of the life
of either one, both are desensitized to later close sexual attraction
and bonding. The Westermarck Effect has been well documented
in anthropological studies. Non-human primates
whose sexual behavior has been closely studied, with reference
to behavioral development, all display the Westermarck Effect.
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