This indispensable collection of forty-eight pieces from his brilliant oeuvre includes selections from classics such as Ever Since Darwin and The Mismeasure of Man, plus articles and speeches never before published in book form.This volume, the last that will bear his name, spotlights his elegance, depth, and sheer pleasure in our world—a true celebration of an extraordinary mind.

    Our sense of its age was vague and vastly off the mark, and much of the knowledge of our own species’ history was a set of fantastic myths and fairy tales. In the tradition of The Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Sean Carroll leads a rousing voyage that recounts the most important discoveries in two centuries of natural history: from Darwin’s trip around the world to Charles Walcott’s discovery of pre-Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon; from Louis and Mary Leakey’s investigation of our deepest past in East Africa to the trailblazers in modern laboratories who have located a time clock in our DNA.

    Over the last two decades, it has emerged as a powerful tool for solving crimes and determining guilt and innocence. But, very recently, an important new aspect of DNA has been revealed—it contains a detailed record of evolution. That is, DNA is a living chronicle of how the marvelous creatures that inhabit our planet have adapted to its many environments, from the freezing waters of the Antarctic to the lush canopy of the rain forest.In the pages of this highly readable narrative, Sean Carroll guides the general reader on a tour of the massive DNA record of three billion years of evolution to see how the fittest are made. And what a eye-opening tour it is—one featuring immortal genes, fossil genes, and genes that bear the scars of past battles with horrible diseases. This book clinches the case for evolution, beyond any reasonable doubt.

    Evolutionary Dynamics is concerned with these equations of life. In this book, Martin A. Nowak draws on the languages of biology and mathematics to outline the mathematical principles according to which life evolves. His work introduces readers to the powerful yet simple laws that govern the evolution of living systems, no matter how complicated they might seem. Evolution has become a mathematical theory, Nowak suggests, and any idea of an evolutionary process or mechanism should be studied in the context of the mathematical equations of evolutionary dynamics. His book presents a range of analytical tools that can be used to this end: fitness landscapes, mutation matrices, genomic sequence space, random drift, quasispecies, replicators, the Prisoner's Dilemma, games in finite and infinite populations, evolutionary graph theory, games on grids, evolutionary kaleidoscopes, fractals, and spatial chaos. Nowak then shows how evolutionary dynamics applies to critical real-world problems, including the progression of viral diseases such as AIDS, the virulence of infectious agents, the unpredictable mutations that lead to cancer, the evolution of altruism, and even the evolution of human language. His book makes a clear and compelling case for understanding every living system--and everything that arises as a consequence of living systems--in terms of evolutionary dynamics.

    Gorgeous and ethereal illustrations and a story that brings children into a state of connectedness with the universe makes this an amazing book for parents and teachers who want to instill in kids a deep appreciation for themselves, their community, and the need to protect this planet that we all reside.This remarkable evolution series, narrated by the Universe itself, concludes with this third book, the amazing story of mammals and humans. It picks up after From Lava to Life: The Universe Tells Our Earth Story with the extinction of dinosaurs, and tells how tiny mammals survived and morphed into lots of new Earthlings—horses, whales and a kind of mammal with a powerful imagination—you! It's a story of chaos, creativity and heroes? the greatest adventure on Earth! And it's a personal story . . . about our bodies, our minds, our spirits. It's our story. As the president of the American Montessori Society said, "These books are alive with wonder, radiance, and deep relevance."A perfect series of kids' books for:teachers and librarians looking for a series of books that explains the story of our universe.Parents and teachers following Montessori's cosmic curriculum.Long time fans of Dawn Publications starting with the classic Sharing Nature With Children.

    Each is awe-inspiring in its division of labor--collective defense, foraging, and nestbuilding. Yet E. O. Wilson cautioned back in 1971 that sociality should be defined more broadly, "in order to prevent the arbitrary exclusion of many interesting phenomena." Thirty-five years later, James T. Costa gives those interesting phenomena their due. He argues that, in trying to solve the puzzle of how highly eusocial behaviors evolved in a few insect orders, evolutionary biologists have neglected the more diverse social arrangements in the remaining twenty-eight orders--insect societies that don't fit the eusocial schema. Costa synthesizes here for the first time the scattered literature about social phenomena across the arthropod phylum: beetles and bugs, caterpillars and cockroaches, mantids and membracids, sawflies and spiders. This wide-ranging tour takes a rich narrative approach that interweaves theory and data analysis with the behavior and ecology of these remarkable groups. This comprehensive treatment is likely to inspire a new generation of naturalists to take a closer look.

    Its geology, its unique flora and fauna, and its striking role in human history intersect in surprising and dynamic ways. This book is the most wide-ranging and beautifully illustrated book available on the famous islands. Not since Darwin’s Naturalist’s Voyage has a book combined so much scientific and historic information with firsthand accounts that bring the Galápagos to life.Galápagos: The Islands That Changed the World describes how tragedy and murderous pirates curtailed settlement of the islands and how the islands’ pristine nature, spectacular geology, and defining isolation inspired Darwin’s ideas about evolution. The book explores the diverse land and marine habitats that shelter Galápagos species and considers the islands’ importance today as a frontier for science and a refuge for true wilderness. The book’s extensive gazetteer provides details about endemic plants and animals as well as travel advice about visitors’ sites, diving, photography, when to go, and what to take. Vividly illustrated throughout, this guide is an indispensable reference for natural history enthusiasts, armchair travelers, and island visitors alike.

    With discussion that celebrates the fascination to be found in studying the diversity and complexity of life, this examination suggests with some urgency that the science of evolution is crucial to the existence of science itself.

    Now, for the first time, journalist and geologist Chris Turney explains to the non-specialist exactly how archaeologists, paleontologists, and geologists "tell the time". Each chapter explores one famous event or object from the past, walking readers step by step through the detective work used to determine when things happened. From the Ice Age to the pyramids, from human evolution to the Shroud of Turin, Turney reveals how written records, carbon, pollen, constellations, DNA sequencing, and more all play a part in solving the mystery of the true age of objects and events. As we struggle to manage current environmental threats and conservation troubles, we ignore or misunderstand these techniques and their results at our peril.

    Light breaks through the clouds of confusion as bestselling author and respected astronomer Ross unveils a testable creation model that can settle this raging dispute.

    Luisi takes the reader through the consecutive stages from prebiotic chemistry to synthetic biology, uniquely combining both approaches. This book presents a systematic course discussing the successive stages of self-organisation, emergence, self-replication, autopoiesis, synthetic compartments and construction of cellular models, in order to demonstrate the spontaneous increase in complexity from inanimate matter to the first cellular life forms. A chapter is dedicated to each of these steps, using a number of synthetic and biological examples. With end-of-chapter review questions to aid reader comprehension, this book will appeal to graduate students and academics researching the origin of life and related areas such as evolutionary biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, biophysics and natural sciences.

     For this highly anticipated revision of Raup and Stanley’s one-term undergraduate text, two of Raup’s former students—Michael Foote and Arnold Miller—use that defining core approach to present a thoroughly up-to-date portrait of a field that has undergone major transformations in the last two decades.

    But some genes spread in spite of being harmful to the host organism--by distorting their own transmission to the next generation, or by changing how the host behaves toward relatives. As a consequence, different genes in a single organism can have diametrically opposed interests and adaptations.Covering all species from yeast to humans, Genes in Conflict is the first book to tell the story of selfish genetic elements, those continually appearing stretches of DNA that act narrowly to advance their own replication at the expense of the larger organism. As Austin Burt and Robert Trivers show, these selfish genes are a universal feature of life with pervasive effects, including numerous counter-adaptations. Their spread has created a whole world of socio-genetic interactions within individuals, usually completely hidden from sight.Genes in Conflict introduces the subject of selfish genetic elements in all its aspects, from molecular and genetic to behavioral and evolutionary. Burt and Trivers give us access for the first time to a crucial area of research--now developing at an explosive rate--that is cohering as a unitary whole, with its own logic and interconnected questions, a subject certain to be of enduring importance to our understanding of genetics and evolution.

    And despite his father's efforts to turn young Darwin — a poor student — into a doctor or clergyman, the born naturalist jumped instead at the chance to sail around South America, observing and collecting flora and fauna all the way. In a clear, engaging narration, Kathryn Lasky takes readers along on Darwin's journey, from his discovery of seashells on mountaintops that revealed geological changes to his observations of variations in plants and animals, suggesting that all living things are evolving over time. Matthew Trueman's striking mixed-media illustrations include actual objects found in nature, enhancing this compelling look at the man behind the bold theory that would change the way we think about the world — and ourselves.

    The author's interest is not primarily directed to questions such as the epistemological status of scientific versus religious knowledge or the possibility of a Darwinian ethics, but rather to the problems, and various responses to the problems, raised in a particular historical period in the West for the Bible by the massive extension of the duration of geological time and human history.

    In his groundbreaking Before the Dawn, Wade reveals humanity's origins as never before--a journey made possible only recently by genetic science, whose incredible findings have answered such questions as: What was the first human language like? How large were the first societies, and how warlike were they? When did our ancestors first leave Africa, and by what route did they leave? By eloquently solving these and numerous other mysteries, Wade offers nothing less than a uniquely complete retelling of a story that began 500 centuries ago.

    It was a world of truly fantastic creatures, a genetic stew of the ancient and the modern. During this time the Earth took its first steps toward the creation of modern terrestrial ecosystems. This incredibly exciting period is brought vividly to life in the words of paleontologist Nicholas Fraser and the consummate artistry of Douglas Henderson. Together they have created a book in which the riches of Triassic life are presented with clarity, scientific accuracy, and imaginative recreation. Every lover of the life of the past will treasure Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

    This can be grasped from understanding the complex social processes of evolution. From looking at recent developments in other disciplines but particularly in science - and the biology of complex systems - she argues that we are currently going through a paradigm shift in the long revolution of modern thought, from 'The Age of Reduction' to 'The Age of Emergence'. Through looking at the complex emergence of human society and culture, we can get a better understanding of how 'the whole creature' operates. Such an understanding serves to undermine the neoliberal philosophy of possessive individualism, whose outlook could be seen to be underpinned by a crude Social Darwinism; but, equally, its sense of humans as evolved and embodied creatures also undermines those who believe there is no existence outside discourse.

    Long known to be important for memory, it has been a prime focus of neuroscience research for many years. The Hippocampus Book promises to facilitate developments in the field in amajor way by bringing together, for the first time, contributions by leading international scientists knowledgeable about hippocampal anatomy, physiology, and function. This authoritative volume offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date account of what the hippocampus does, how it does it, and whathappens when things go wrong. At the same time, it illustrates how research focusing on this single brain structure has revealed principles of wider generality for the whole brain in relation to anatomical connectivity, synaptic plasticity, cognition and behavior, and computational algorithms.Well-organized in its presentation of both theory and experimental data, this peerless work vividly illustrates the astonishing progress that has been made in unraveling the workings of the brain. The Hippocampus Book is destined to take a central place on every neuroscientist's bookshelf.

    

    And yet, in practical terms, neither the lawbreakers the law addresses nor officers of the law behave as the hyperrational beings postulated by rational choice. Critics of rational choice and believers in fast and frugal heuristics propose another approach: using certain formulations or general principles (heuristics) to help navigate in an environment that is not a well-ordered setting with an occasional disturbance, as described in the language of rational choice, but instead is fundamentally uncertain or characterized by an unmanageable degree of complexity. This is the intuition behind behavioral law and economics. In Heuristics and the Law, experts in law, psychology, and economics explore the conceptual and practical power of the heuristics approach in law. They discuss legal theory; modeling and predicting the problems the law purports to solve; the process of making law, in the legislature or in the courtroom; the application of existing law in the courts, particularly regarding the law of evidence; and implementation of the law and the impact of law on behavior.ContributorsRonald J. Allen, Hal R. Arkes, Peter Ayton, Susanne Baer, Martin Beckenkamp, Robert Cooter, Leda Cosmides, Mandeep K. Dhami, Robert C. Ellickson, Christoph Engel, Richard A. Epstein, Wolfgang Fikentscher, Axel Flessner, Robert H. Frank, Bruno S. Frey, Gerd Gigerenzer, Paul W. Glimcher, Daniel G. Goldstein, Chris Guthrie, Jonathan Haidt, Reid Hastie, Ralph Hertwig, Eric J. Johnson, Jonathan J. Koehler, Russell Korobkin, Stephanie Kurzenh�user, Douglas A. Kysar, Donald C. Langevoort, Richard Lempert, Stefan Magen, Callia Piperides, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Clara Sattler de Sousa e Brito, Joachim Schulz, Victoria A. Shaffer, Indra Spiecker genannt D�hmann, John Tooby, Gerhard Wagner, Elke U. Weber, Bernd Wittenbrink

    Authors Juan Luis Arsuaga and Ignacio Martinez are world-renowned paleoanthropologists and co-directors of the excavations at Atapuerca - a World Heritage Site and Europe's oldest known burial site - where their team discovered a new human species, homo antecessor. Their work has changed the way we see human evolution. Here, the authors draw on their rich experience to provide a fascinating account of our origins. They reconstruct the sequence of events, give an account of how, when, and why man evolved, and draw conclusions based on verifiable facts and well-founded argument. The Chosen Species combines scientific rigor with a spellbinding style that will grip readers as they follow the tale to its end.

    Natalie and Joseph Henrich examine this phenomena with a unique fusion of theoretical work on the evolution of cooperation, ethnographic descriptions of social behavior, and a range of other experimental results.Their experimental and ethnographic data come from a small, insular group of middle-class Iraqi Christians called Chaldeans, living in metro Detroit, whom the Henrichs use as an example to show how kinship relations, ethnicity, and culturally transmitted traditions provide the key to explaining theevolution of cooperation over multiple generations.

    Samir Okasha's comprehensive analysis gives a clear account of the philosophical issues at stake in the current debate.

    Includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was an English scientist and naturalist. Darwin is the originator of the the theory of Evolution by means of natural selection.This unexpurgated edition contains the complete text with errors and omissions corrected.

    Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human reveals the perils and the promises of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.

    In this clear and comprehensive introduction to the field, Kenneth De Jong presents an integrated view of the state of the art in evolutionary computation. Although other books have described such particular areas of the field as genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, and evolutionary programming, Evolutionary Computation is noteworthy for considering these systems as specific instances of a more general class of evolutionary algorithms. This useful overview of a fragmented field is suitable for classroom use or as a reference for computer scientists and engineers.

    With full appreciation for the contributions to psychology of history, philosophy, literature, and neuroscience, he approaches a wide range of fascinating topics, including:·   the abandonment of orthodox forms of behaviorism and psychoanalysis·   the forces that inspired later-twentieth-century curiosity about young children·   why B. F. Skinner chose to study psychology·   why the study of science less often ignites imaginations today·   our society’s obsession with erotic love·   the resurgence of religious fanaticism and the religious RightEmbedded in Kagan’s discussions is a rejection of the current notion that a mature neuroscience will eventually replace psychology. He argues that a complete understanding of brain is not synonymous with a full explanation of mind, and he concludes with a brief prediction of the next five decades in the field of psychology.