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The evolution of beauty
The evolution of beauty
Description
Book Introduction
A word from MD
Women's choices evolve humanity!
An ornithologist who has observed and studied the various beauties displayed by birds for 30 years looks into humanity through the evolutionary dynamics of birds.
It reveals the theory of sexual selection, which was hidden by natural selection, and tells the story of nature and humanity evolving toward narrowing differences and becoming equal.
April 23, 2019. Natural Science PD Kim Tae-hee
2017 New York Times Book of the Year · 2018 Pulitzer Prize Finalist
An invitation to a vivid scene where sexual selection and the beauty of animals unfold.


At the 2013 Princeton University commencement, Ben Bernanke (then Chairman of the Federal Reserve) said, “Gentlemen, take this to heart.
“Physical beauty is an evolutionary way of ensuring that other people don’t have a lot of intestinal parasites,” he said.
This is based on the belief that external beauty is an honest sign of physical excellence.
According to this 'adaptationist' theory, 'sexual selection' in animals that prefer beauty is ultimately just a side effect of 'natural selection' based on the law of survival of the fittest.
Even among biologists, this belief is deeply entrenched.
Even Darwin, who first proposed the concepts of natural and sexual selection, never considered sexual selection inferior to natural selection! Richard Frum, the author of this book, has spent over 30 years traveling the world, including Suriname and the Andes, observing and studying the diverse beauty of birds.
And I realized that all these wonders and beauties of nature could never be explained by “natural selection alone.”
Sexual selection is by no means the beginning or end of natural selection.

The author of this book states, “I can confidently say that we do not know the real Darwin,” and brings to the forefront Darwin’s forgotten theory of ‘sexual selection.’
He wrote this book after witnessing the amazing variety of natural beauty during his 30 years of bird watching and being deeply fascinated by Darwin's ideas that had been hidden.
Although this was the author's first published book, the rich and captivating ideas contained in it immediately captivated countless people.
It proudly took its place as the only science book among the ten books selected by The New York Times as a Best Book of the Year in 2017, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction in 2018.
This is a truly 'outrageous' problematic work that will cause indescribable discomfort to those who have blindly believed in adaptationism and natural selection.
However, this book will also provide even greater pleasure to all those who purely love 'beauty' and who long for a theory that can clearly explain the beauty of nature.

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index
Praise poured in for "The Evolution of Beauty"
prolog
1.
Darwin's truly dangerous idea
2.
There are all kinds of beauties in this world.
3.
Dancing and singing manakins
4.
Decadent beauty that squanders a lifetime
5.
The duck penis that shook the White House
6.
Stop dating violence!
7.
Bromance before romance
8.
There are all kinds of beauties in people.
9.
There are all kinds of pleasures in this world.
10.
Peace brought by sex strike
11.
Homo-sexuality of Homo sapiens
12.
Beauty for beauty's sake
Acknowledgements
main
References
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Into the book
The most striking and progressive aspect of Darwin's theory of sexual selection is its distinct aesthetic orientation.
He understood the evolutionary origin of beauty in nature as 'the result of the animalistic desire to be beautiful.'
What makes this idea radical is that it positions living organisms (especially females) as active agents in the evolution of species.
Natural selection is a process that arises from external forces such as competition, predation, climate, and geography acting on organisms. In contrast, sexual selection is an independent and self-directed process that organisms themselves undertake.
Darwin described females as "beings with aesthetic tastes" and "aesthetic beings," and males as "beings who try to attract a mate."
--- p.
44

In this passage we witness the birth of adaptationism.
Adaptationists believe that 'adaptation by natural selection' is the most powerful and universal force and will always dominate the evolutionary process.
Or, as Wallace asserted, “natural selection operates so continuously and on such a massive scale that it neutralizes all other evolutionary mechanisms.”
Wallace transformed Darwin's "fertile, creative, and diverse intellectual legacy" into "an intellectually impoverished and monolithic theory," the Darwinism commonly accepted today being closer to the latter.
Another notable aspect of Wallace's behavior around this time was that he established a style characteristic of adaptationist argumentation, characterized by dogmatism and stubbornness.
--- p.
60

In any case, the symmetry hypothesis can only partially explain the evolution of complex ornamentation, such as the patterns on the wing and tail feathers of the blue orchid.
Even if such an aspect exists, 'natural selection for perfectly symmetrical signals' cannot explain a single one of the countless unique and complex details hidden in the plumage and display traits of the blue orchid.
--- p.
129

Although there are violent attempts everywhere to destroy the freedom of mate choice, beauty will continue to evolve as long as female mate choice remains dominant.
However, it should be noted that female sexual autonomy is not a form of 'exercising power over males', but rather a mechanism to ensure freedom of mate selection.
Female ducks do not assert sexual dominance over males and can flirt with their preferred mate at any time.
Females did not evolve to dominate males in response to sexual violence; they evolved only to ensure their freedom of choice.
--- p.
266

Is Bauer an aesthetic building? Absolutely.
Will Bauer protect (the female)? Indeed, he does.
The reason Bauer has evolved to be aesthetically complex and diverse is precisely because of its protective function.
Essentially, the evolutionary function of the bower is to provide an environment for aesthetic evaluation, an environment that protects females from date rape.
Once free to choose thanks to Bauer, females are free to pursue aesthetic preferences for more diverse and complex forms of beauty.
--- pp.
309~310

It is a well-established fact that women's preference for equal body size leads to a 'reduction in men's physical superiority over women' and improves their chances of resisting violence, including sexual coercion.
Furthermore, a reduction in body size dimorphism through female mate choice may lead to associated behavioral changes in males (particularly reduced aggression and increased social tolerance).
--- p.
444

More specifically, female sexual autonomy, which developed over the millions of years since humans diverged from a common ancestor with chimpanzees (evolutionary context 2), has been challenged by two relatively recent cultural innovations.
One is agriculture, and the other is a market economy that developed alongside agriculture.
These "twin innovations" emerged 600 generations ago, when our ancestors lived in poverty, creating opportunities for wealth creation and differential distribution.
As men seized these opportunities to seize cultural control over material resources, new opportunities were created to consolidate male social power.
Patriarchy, which was invented simultaneously in many cultures around the world, has served the function of transferring control over virtually every area of ​​women's lives to men.
In short, the main culprit that has prevented modern women from fully enjoying the sexual autonomy they acquired through evolution in the past has been the cultural evolution of patriarchy.
--- p.
496

As if to justify the power and privilege they enjoy, defenders of patriarchy often denounce feminism as an “ideology for seizing power.”
They argue that:
“Feminists seek to control men’s lives, deny them their natural, biological privileges, and relegate them to a secondary position.” For example, one anti-feminist legal scholar wrongly criticizes even the legal right to sexual self-determination as “an attempt to impose one’s personal sexual desires on others.”
Even though sexual self-determination forms the basis of most laws that define rape and sexual crimes.
Such absurd criticism stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of sexual self-determination and its biological and cultural origins.

--- p.
499
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Publisher's Review
Females of the world, unite!
The history of all animals is a history of gender struggle.


“Humans and non-human animals are clearly different.
“Equating forced mating among non-human animals with human rape risks obscuring the social context of human rape,” has been a widely held view among animal behaviorists.
But conversely, doesn't this "distinction" distract us from the social and biological implications of forced mating in animals? This bias led to the derisive term "Duckpenisgate" when it was revealed that government funding had been allocated to a study of duck reproductive organs at Yale University during the Obama administration.
Research on duck reproductive organs and sexual culture has been cited as a prime example of the Obama administration's budget waste.
But studying duck reproductive organs is by no means a waste of money.
Rather, this is a report full of new implications for biological evolution.

Some species of duck boast penises as long as 42 centimeters, far exceeding the average female's body length of 32 centimeters.
On the other hand, the female's reproductive organs are winding and rough, making them difficult to move through.
This is the result of a fierce arms race between males who try to force mating and females who try to prevent it by any means necessary.
It's not just ducks.
Female chimpanzees avoid the domineering alpha male and embark on a sweet honeymoon with the male of their choice.
In the case of bowerbirds, where the male builds a stage for courtship, the female will not even approach a stage that does not have an 'emergency escape route'.
To avoid dating violence that occurs coercively.
It is absurd to ignore the social context in which these gender conflicts unfold, unfolding in such a surprising and diverse way.
Not only humans, but all animals are fighting their own battlefields to secure sexual self-determination and autonomy! The history of this arduous struggle is etched into the bodies of living animals in the form of "evolution."
The history of animal evolution is a history of gender struggle.

Are the 'differences' between the sexes biologically natural?
We have evolved toward narrowing our differences and becoming equal.

Defenders of patriarchy often claim that feminism is nothing more than an ideology that denies natural, biological differences and seeks to degrade men and seize power.
The call to recognize gender differences as "differences" rather than "discrimination" appears, at first glance, to be based on biological and scientific facts.
But is that really true? Richard Frum confronts the dismissive notion that feminism is nothing more than a "constructed illusion."
It is based on that very ‘science’.
If feminism is truly an illusion, how can we explain the evolutionary history of various animals, each of which has chosen and evolved to secure its own "sexual autonomy"? Furthermore, how can we explain the completely different physical characteristics of humans, despite descending from a common primate/ape ancestor? In the case of bonobos and chimpanzees, our closest apes, the body size difference between males and females is approximately 25-35 percent, while in humans, males are only about 16 percent larger than females.
Look at our unusually small canines compared to other primates! Humans have evolved to minimize the possibility of physical coercion and violence.
It is through ‘women’s choice’.
It may be difficult to describe this as 'feminist' in the sense commonly used today.
But at least the fight for equality and sexual autonomy between the sexes is a pan-animal, scientific phenomenon that has been going on since time immemorial.
In this book, Richard Frum presents a new basis for what can be called 'scientific feminism.'

It is surprising that the research and observations of a purely ornithologist, neither a social activist nor a sociologist, have led to the concept of 'sexual autonomy.'
This is a story that was naturally derived from studying the ecology of birds, evolution, and Darwin's aesthetics.
According to the author's inference, in an era when sexual coercion and physical oppression were prevalent, 'beauty' would have had no meaning.
Regardless of birds or primates.
Because 'beauty' had no practical use.
However, as animals evolved to secure sexual autonomy, 'beauty' finally gained meaning.
Now that they can no longer commit dating violence, male bowerbirds desperately stage a show to attract females, and the males prepare a dance among themselves.
Humans, regardless of gender, are also evolving their standards of beauty and their bodies to please each other.
When sexual autonomy of both sexes is guaranteed within a species, the only criterion for choosing a mate is ultimately pure 'beauty.'
A decadent beauty that is useless for survival!

A look into humans through the evolutionary dynamics of birds.
Deep insights from over 30 years of field research!

There was once a trend in the biology community to distinguish between those who worked on theory and mathematics in the lab and field biologists who went out and did the work themselves.
To use Matt Ridley's analogy, they are people who are "plugged into a computer" and "have beards and boots."
The author of this book dismisses such a dichotomous view with a single word: “It is absurd.”
As a bird enthusiast, Richard Frum has been observing bird ecology in the field for over 30 years, and his research has led to the establishment of a solid system based on theories he has accumulated in the laboratory.
The story, which continues with delicate detail and the serenade of birds, is fantastic beyond compare.
The author's story delves into not only the ecology, habitats, and courtship behavior of living birds, but also their ancestral stories, and even the culture and sexuality of apes and, more recently, human society.
As you turn the pages of 'Bird Watching Stories', you will find yourself in a place you never imagined.

In Genesis, did Jehovah really use Adam's "rib" to create Eve? Why did humans develop "extremely large" penises relative to their body size compared to other primates? The image of "heterosexual female-gay male friendship" is a common one, so why does "heterosexual male-gay female friendship" feel so unfamiliar? Like many animals, including ducks and bowerbirds, humans have evolved traits based on female preferences.
And humans evolved from 'frequently infanticide-committing, cruel primates' to 'socially intelligent, spousally bonding caregivers.'
But there is something that should never be misunderstood in this grand evolutionary history spanning millions of years.
This fierce arms race was never a fight for women to gain superior status.
Physically? The human body is the result of women who were prone to physical sexual coercion, violence, and oppression, striving for "peace."
This is a long-standing armistice agreement that dates back to prehistoric times.

A Hymn to Sexuality, Beauty, and Darwinian Aesthetics
Beauty has no sin, and neither has it any merit!

There is no one who does not know the name Charles Darwin and the place it occupies in biology.
Although he was so famous, Darwin's true ideas were shrouded in a thick veil.
Everyone knows about 『Origin of Species』, but not many know about Darwin's later work, 『The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection』.
Even the concept of ‘sexual selection’ is unfamiliar.
Only the half-assed sexual selection remains, as a mere continuation of natural selection.
After Darwin's death, the neo-Darwinists who falsely called themselves 'Darwinists' and left only 'natural selection' and excluded 'sexual selection' are the culprits.
Only the blind faith that seeks to functionally interpret all the mysteries of nature, called 'adaptationism,' remains and rages on.
However, the beauty that appears in nature can never be fully explained by the concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest alone.


According to the author, this dogma stems from the outdated monotheism that “everything that happens in nature must be explained by a single, powerful theory or process.”
The lineage of 'intellectual missionaries' who did not escape religious monotheism in the Victorian era, but simply 'converted' to the monotheistic religion of 'materialistic evolutionism', still continues.
Nature is not perfectly constructed into a single theory, as if someone had put it together.
Beauty has evolved in so many different ways that it cannot be explained by a single theory.
There is also useless beauty in nature.
That's why it shines even more brightly.
Beauty is beautiful just for beauty's sake.
Beauty itself is the goal.
And this book is not a single god or theory, but a hymn to a new era that praises all the beauty of this world, which has appeared in countless forms until now and may still be hidden somewhere, unseen.
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GOODS SPECIFICS
- Date of issue: April 17, 2019
- Page count, weight, size: 572 pages | 857g | 145*224*35mm
- ISBN13: 9788962622775
- ISBN10: 8962622777

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