PSYB30H3 Chapter 2: Chapter 2 Notes
Document Summary
Contemporary scientific understanding of human nature focus on human evolution like all living organisms, human beings have evolved to survive and reproduce. Those features of human adaptation that have indeed promoted survival and reproduction are, ipso facto, what human nature is fundamentally about. A fundamental property of living things is that they propagate all animals and plants produce similar versions of themselves, in one way or another, making for this continuity of life from one generation to the next. The key to evolution over time is natural selection, a process whereby nature gradually selects those characteristic of organisms that promote survival and reproductive success. Nature selects, and causes to persist, the most adaptive characteristics in a species. Today, we know that genes are responsible for the inheritance of characteristics. In a literal sense, it is the genes, not the organisms themselves, that are replicated.
