Social evolution

The core aim of this interdisciplinary research is to provide a critical analysis of the influence of Darwinism and Social Darwinism on a sample of modern Chinese writings. To achieve these aims, the researcher uses a range of both Chinese and English sources to explore their cl…

This thesis re-examines the writing of Raymond Williams. It has two goals. Firstly, it explores Williams's concept of cultural materialism, which theorises the role played by cultural forms in the creation and contestation of a national political order. Secondly, it extrapolates…

Human culture has been proposed to uniquely exhibit a ‘ratchet effect’, with beneficial modifications being made to cultural traits over many generations. This is widely thought to have allowed an accumulation of technology and knowledge over time, and to be of central importanc…

Ant colonies are a hub of diverse interactions that are affected by a multitude of factors, such as colony members, external environment, and possibly the symbiotic bacteria that live within individual colony members. While symbiotic microbes are well-known to manipulate the phy…