Research Catalog

Title

The life and behavior of living organisms : a general theory / Elliott Jaques.

Author

Jaques, Elliott.

Publication

Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 280 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Subjects

• Decision making
• Judgment
• Psychology, Comparative
• Goal (Psychology)
• Psychology > Philosophy

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-271) and index.

Contents

• Preface: Brief Biosketch and Acknowledgments -- Pt. I. Introduction. Ch. 1. What Is Life? Overview -- Pt. II. A Half-Century of Findings on Work, Complexity, and Capability. Ch. 2. Work as Goal-Directed Choice (Laboro Ergo Sum). Ch. 3. Complexity and Capability in Living Organisms -- Pt. III. Laying the Groundwork. Ch. 4. Awareness, Signaling, Language, and Other Basic Concepts. Ch. 5. Minds, Bodies, Reductionism, and Systems Theory. Ch. 6. Potential and Applied Capability Throughout the Living Kingdom -- Pt. IV. Life in the Prelinguistic World. Ch. 7. The Choice-Making Functions of All Living Organisms. Ch. 8. The Whole Organisms and Its Parts. Ch. 9. The Organisms in Action: Needs, Intentions, Goals, Attention, and Association Theory. Ch. 10. Reality in the Sensible World as Cause-and-Effect Testing -- Pt. V. The Language-Suffused World of Humans. Ch. 11. The Evolutionary Emergence of Homo Sapiens, with Language and Consciousness. Ch. 12. The Fruits of Evolution.
• Ch. 13. The Spread of Homo Sapiens Across the World. Ch. 14. The Language-Suffused World: Prometheus, Pandora, and the Unicorns. Ch. 15. Modern Alchemy and the Disruption of Capitalist Democracy -- Pt. VI. Time, Science, and Freedom. Ch. 16. Toward a Science-Based Art of Social Ordering. Ch. 17. Values for a Living World: Freedom and Constraint, and Mutual Trust and Morals. Ch. 18. Some Retrospective Musings.

ISBN

0275975010 (alk. paper)

LCCN

2001036316

OCLC

• ocm47283337
• SCSB-4289435

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries