Their struggle to survive on the open grasslands required a shift from individualism to a new form of collectivism, which forever altered the way our mind works. It changed the way we fight and our proclivity to make peace, it changed the way we lead and the way we follow, it made us innovative but not inventive, it created a new kind of social intelligence, and it led to new sources of life satisfaction.In The Social Leap, William von Hippel lays out this revolutionary hypothesis, tracing human development through three critical evolutionary inflection points to explain how events in our distant past shape our lives today. From the mundane, such as why we exaggerate, to the surprising, such as why we believe our own lies and why fame and fortune are as likely to bring misery as happiness, the implications are far reaching and extraordinary.Blending anthropology, biology, history, and psychology with evolutionary science, The Social Leap is a fresh and provocative look at our species that provides new clues about who we are, what makes us happy, and how to use this knowledge to improve our lives.

    Now, in The New Science of the Human Past, Reich describes just how the human genome provides not only all the information that a fertilized human egg needs to develop but also contains within it the history of our species. He delineates how the Genomic Revolution and ancient DNA are transforming our understanding of our own lineage as modern humans; how genomics deconstructs the idea that there are no biologically meaningful differences among human populations (though without adherence to pernicious racist hierarchies); and how DNA studies reveal the deep history of human inequality--among different populations, between the sexes, and among individuals within a population.

    It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we're but a tiny, fleeting fragment.

    Just ask biotechnologist Matti Leisola. It all started when a student loaned the Finnish scientist a book criticizing evolutionary theory. Leisola reacted angrily, and set out to defend evolution, but found his efforts raised more questions than they answered. He soon morphed into a full-on Darwin skeptic, even as he was on his way to becoming a leading bio-engineer.Heretic is the story of Leisola's adventures making waves-and many friends and enemies-at major research labs and universities across Europe. Tracing his investigative path, the book draws on Leisola's expertise in molecular biology to show how the evidence points more strongly than ever to the original biotechnologist-a designing intelligence whose skill and reach dwarf those of even our finest bioengineers, and leave blind evolution in the dust.Endorsements "Award-winning Finnish biotechnologist Matti Leisola has written a fascinating account of what happens when a scientist follows the evidence wherever it leads. Leisola's account of how he succeeded should inspire up-and-coming scientists who face the same challenge." Biologist Jonathan Wells, PhD, author of Icons of Evolution and Zombie Science "Scientists, like all other intellectuals, have ideas about what constitutes and what does not constitute reality. However, they are often not aware-and sometimes not ready to admit-that such ideas represent the principles of their philosophy. Leisola and Witt's Heretic is a unique first-hand account of the life-long adventures of a scientist who dared to challenge philosophical principles of colleague scientists. In my opinion, the outcome shows that to many scientists their philosophy is dearer than their science." Biochemist and inventor Branko Kozulic, PhD "This book is an exciting story about how a scientist's relentless search for truth makes him a heretic in the eyes of a cultural community more concerned about prestige than principle." Tapio Puolimatka, PhD and EdD, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland "This book is a personal, strong, and motivated plea for intelligent design (ID) and 'swims against the current' of Darwinian evolution, now generally accepted in scientific circles and society. I personally do not endorse ID, but I am a good friend of the author, whom I also highly respect as a scientist active in academia and in the biotech industry over so many years. Heretic inspires readers to think critically and to open up a civilized discussion on neo-Darwinism versus ID. It covers the science and philosophical parts adequately; it is accessible to a large readership; and statements are underpinned by relevant research and literature data. Its value lies in the author's lifelong engagement and personal crusade to stimulate the public debate among scientists as well as laymen over Darwinism (chance/random mutation and natural selection) versus ID, a vision that Leisola strongly advocates." Dr. Erick J. Vandamme, Emeritus Professor of Bioscience Engineering, Ghent University, Belgium "Matti Leisola has written the exciting story of almost the entire spectrum of aberrant motives, absurd fears, and unreasonable reactions to intelligent design (ID) by evolutionary scientists, clergymen, and church institutions alike, notably during his career as a scientist over the last some forty years. I would add a word on the fears of so many critics that accepting ID also means accepting the dogmata of some 1700 years of church history. ID is thoroughly neutral concerning such topics. So, the reader is invited to carefully check the historical and, what is more, the enormous wealth of scientific data Matti Leisola has presented in the present book: Test them carefully with an open mind and form your own independent opinion!" Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lonnig, geneticist, Cologne,

    In Darwin Comes to Town, evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen shows that evolution can in fact happen extremely quickly, and in the strangest of places: the heart of the city.Menno Schilthuizen is one of a growing number of “urban ecologists” studying how our manmade environments are accelerating the evolution of the animals and plants around us. Cities are extreme environments and, in a world of adapt or die, the wildlife sharing these spaces with us is being forced to adopt fascinating new ways of surviving, and often thriving.--Carrion crows in the Japanese city of Sendai have learned to use passing traffic to crack nuts.--Spiders in Vienna are adapting to build their webs near moth-attracting streetlights, while moths in some cities are developing a resistance to the lure of light bulbs.--Certain Puerto Rican city lizards are evolving feet that better grip surfaces like concrete.--Europe’s urban blackbirds sing at a higher pitch than their rural cousins, to be heard over the din of traffic, while many pigeons have eschewed traveling “as the crow flies” in favor of following manmade roads.Darwin Comes to Town draws on these and other eye-popping examples to share a stunning vision of urban evolution in which humans and wildlife co-exist in a unique harmony. It reveals that evolution can happen far more rapidly than Darwin dreamed, while providing a glimmer of hope that our race toward overpopulation might not take the rest of nature down with us.

    But the biggest question of all cannot be answered: Where did that one dot come from?One Day a Dot is a beautiful and vibrant picture book that uses the visual motif of circles as to guide young readers through the stages of life on Earth.

    In the blink of an evolutionary eye we have spread around the globe, taken control of Earth's biological and mineral resources, transformed the environment, discovered the secrets of the universe and travelled into space.Yet just 7 million years ago, we were just another species of great ape making a quiet living in the forests of East Africa. We do not know exactly what this ancestor was like, but it was no more likely than a chimpanzee or gorilla to sail across the ocean, write a symphony, invent a steam engine or ponder the meaning of existence. How did we get from there to here?Human Origins recounts the most astonishing evolutionary tale ever told. Discover how our ancestors made the first tentative steps towards becoming human, how we lost our fur but gained language, fire and tools, how we strode out of Africa, invented farming and cities and ultimately created modern civilisation - perhaps the only one of its kind in the universe. Meet your long-lost ancestors, the other humans who once shared the planet with us, and learn where the story might end. ABOUT THE SERIESNew Scientist Instant Expert books are definitive and accessible entry points to the most important subjects in science; subjects that challenge, attract debate, invite controversy and engage the most enquiring minds. Designed for curious readers who want to know how things work and why, the Instant Expert series explores the topics that really matter and their impact on individuals, society, and the planet, translating the scientific complexities around us into language that's open to everyone, and putting new ideas and discoveries into perspective and context.

    From the moment life crawled out of the oceans and onto land, to when our primate ancestors climbed down from the trees, the history of Planet Earth is filled with incredible stories. This beautifully illustrated guide explores some of the most exciting and incredible events in evolution, through 13 case studies. Step back in time and discover a world where whales once walked, crocodiles were warm-blooded, and snakes had legs! Meet terrifying giant birds, and tiny elephants living on islands in this fascinating creature guide like no other. Learn how whales once walked on four legs before taking to the oceans; how dinosaurs evolved into birds; and how the first cats were small and lived in trees. Featuring a stunning mix of annotated illustrations, illustrated scenes, and family trees, evolution is explained here in a captivating and novel style that  will make children look at animals in a whole new way.

    Here, Michael Tomasello proposes a complementary theory of human uniqueness, focused on development. Building on the seminal ideas of Vygotsky, his data-driven model explains how those things that make us most human are constructed during the first years of a child's life.Tomasello assembles nearly three decades of experimental work with chimpanzees, bonobos, and human children to propose a new framework for psychological growth between birth and seven years of age. He identifies eight pathways that starkly differentiate humans from their closest primate relatives: social cognition, communication, cultural learning, cooperative thinking, collaboration, prosociality, social norms, and moral identity. In each of these, great apes possess rudimentary abilities. But then, Tomasello argues, the maturation of humans' evolved capacities for shared intentionality transform these abilities--through the new forms of sociocultural interaction they enable--into uniquely human cognition and sociality. The first step occurs around nine months, with the emergence of joint intentionality, exercised mostly with caregiving adults. The second step occurs around three years, with the emergence of collective intentionality involving both authoritative adults, who convey cultural knowledge, and coequal peers, who elicit collaboration and communication. Finally, by age six or seven, children become responsible for self-regulating their beliefs and actions so that they comport with cultural norms.Becoming Human places human sociocultural activity within the framework of modern evolutionary theory, and shows how biology creates the conditions under which culture does its work.

    More important, it's a book about selective breeding on a far, far grander scale--a scale that encompasses all life on Earth. We'd call it evolution.A unique fusion of art, science, and history, this book celebrates the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's monumental work The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, and is intended as a tribute to what Darwin might have achieved had he possessed that elusive missing piece to the evolutionary puzzle--the knowledge of how individual traits are passed from one generation to the next. With the benefit of a century and a half of hindsight, Katrina van Grouw explains evolution by building on the analogy that Darwin himself used--comparing the selective breeding process with natural selection in the wild, and, like Darwin, featuring a multitude of fascinating examples.This is more than just a book about pets and livestock, however. The revelation of Unnatural Selection is that identical traits can occur in all animals, wild and domesticated, and both are governed by the same evolutionary principles. As van Grouw shows, animals are plastic things, constantly changing. In wild animals the changes are usually too slow to see--species appear to stay the same. When it comes to domesticated animals, however, change happens fast, making them the perfect model of evolution in action.Suitable for the lay reader and student, as well as the more seasoned biologist, and featuring more than four hundred breathtaking illustrations of living animals, skeletons, and historical specimens, Unnatural Selection will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in natural history and the history of evolutionary thinking.

    From his five-year voyage across the high seas to 20 years of research, follow Darwin on his adventure to prove a theory that would change the world.Little Guides to Great Lives is a brand new series of small-format guides introducing children to the most inspirational figures from history in a fun, accessible way. From Curie to Kahlo and Darwin to Da Vinci, Little Guides to Great Lives tells the stories of the most amazing people from all over the world and across history, with colorful illustrations and fresh design to bring their incredible stories to life.

    The Ascent of Birds is divided into self-contained chapters, or stories, that collectively encompass the evolution of modern birds from their origins in Gondwana, over 100 million years ago, to the present day. The stories are arranged in chronological order, from tinamous to tanagers, and describe the many dispersal and speciation events that underpin the world's 10,500-plus species. Although each chapter is spearheaded by a named bird and focuses on a specific evolutionary mechanism, the narrative will often explore the relevance of such events and processes to evolution in general. The book starts with The Tinamou's Story, which explains the presence of flightless birds in South America, Africa, and Australasia, and dispels the cherished role of continental drift as an explanation for their biogeography. It also introduces the concept of neoteny, an evolutionary trick that enabled dinosaurs to become birds and humans to conquer the planet. The Vegavis's Story explores the evidence for a Cretaceous origin of modern birds and why they were able to survive the asteroid collision that saw the demise not only of dinosaurs but of up to three-quarters of all species. The Duck's Story switches to sex: why have so few species retained the ancestral copulatory organ? Or, put another way, why do most birds exhibit the paradoxical phenomenon of penis loss, despite all species requiring internal fertilisation? The Hoatzin's Story reveals unexpected oceanic rafting from Africa to South America: a stranger-than-fiction means of dispersal that is now thought to account for the presence of other South American vertebrates, including geckos and monkeys. The latest theories underpinning speciation are also explored. The Manakin's Story, for example, reveals how South America's extraordinarily rich avifauna has been shaped by past geological, oceanographic and climatic changes, while The Storm-Petrel's Story examines how species can evolve from an ancestral population despite inhabiting the same geographical area. The thorny issue of what constitutes a species is discussed in The Albatross's Story, while The Penguin's Story explores the effects of environment on phenotype ― in the case of the Emperor penguin, the harshest on the planet. Recent genomic advances have given scientists novel approaches to explore the distant past and have revealed many unexpected journeys, including the unique overland dispersal of an early suboscine from Asia to South America (The Sapayoa's Story) and the blackbird's ancestral sweepstake dispersals across the Atlantic (The Thrush's Story). Additional vignettes update more familiar concepts that encourage speciation: sexual selection (The Bird-of-Paradise's Story); extended phenotypes (The Bowerbird's Story); hybridisation (The Sparrow's Story); and 'great speciators' (The White-eye's Story). Finally, the book explores the raft of recent publications that help explain the evolution of cognitive skills (The Crow's Story); plumage colouration (The Starling's Story); and birdsong (The Finch's Story)

    Xenophobia.  Racism.  Fascism.  Intolerance.  Inhumanity.  Coercion. Right wing populists increasingly draw attention around the globe, but the attention is misdirected.  The real problem is not the the authoritarian, but the authoritarian personalities who follow him.  If people do not blindly follow and obey the despot, he is irrelevant.Why do we attach ourselves to demagogues and mountebanks?  Why do we defend even their most obvious hypocrisies and lies?The answer is found in the history of civilization.  For the past 10,000 years, those who disagreed with the king or his nobles risked ruin and death. But that is only part of the answer.  The other part is that, despite our romantic traditions, kings and conquerors were vicious criminals.  They represent the most evil psychopaths, narcissists, and sadists in the history of humanity.

    This zone isn't fixed in size: if you're nervous, it grows; if you're relaxed, it shrinks. It also depends on your cultural upbringing. Personal space is small in Japan and large in Australia. This safety zone, called personal space, provides an invisible spatial scaffold that frames our social interactions. As Michael Graziano argues in The Spaces Between Us, it also organizes our social and emotional spacing, influences our facial expressions, and shapes our interactions with everyday objects including tools, furniture, and clothing. Even ordinary actions like walking are informed by a continuous under-the-surface calculation of threats and obstacles around the body: what Graziano calls a virtual bubble-wrap of active neurons that fire and move us to action, even before we may be conscious of our course corrections in real time. Humans evolved a complex way of interacting with others and their environment, and The Spaces Between Us looks at how this infrastructure may have led to the first smile and to a host of other human activities, from tool use, to courtship, and to a sense of self. The book concludes with a case study of Graziano's son, who had heart-breaking difficulties developing a functioning personal space. Written with poignant narrative clarity, Graziano makes the case for the interested scientific public that this system in the brain is more than a fascinating scientific topic: it's deeply personal and shapes our human nature.

       Take a look at the life of the incredible scientist who forever altered our view of life on earth. Darwin follows the man from his birth to his last days, delving into his groundbreaking publications, far-flung travels, and theories on evolution. More than 160 stunning images and illustrations include personal diary entries, letters, and handwritten notes, as well as sketches from Darwin's famous works. In compelling detail, this illustrated biography covers not only Darwin’s scientific career and On the Origin of Species, but also his personal struggles, allowing us to truly see and understand the human being.

    Her focus on this tiny network of cells has yielded valuable insights into the much more complex workings of the human brain; she has become a leading voice in neuroscience. In Lessons from the Lobster, Charlotte Nassim describes Marder's work and its significance accessibly and engagingly, tracing the evolution of a supremely gifted scientist's ideas.From the lobster's digestion to human thought is very big leap indeed. Our brains selectively recruit networks from about ninety billion available neurons; the connections are extremely complex. Nevertheless, as Nassim explains, Marder's study of a microscopic knot of stomatogastric neurons in lobsters and crabs, a small network with a countable number of neurons, has laid vital foundations for current brain research projects.Marder's approach is as intuitive as it is analytic, but always firmly anchored to data. Every scrap of information is a pointer for Marder; her discoveries depend on her own creative thinking as much as her laboratory's findings. Nassim describes Marder's important findings on neuromodulation, the secrets of neuronal networks, and homeostasis. Her recognition of the importance of animal-to-animal variability has influenced research methods everywhere.Marder has run her laboratory at Brandeis University since 1978. She was President of the Society for Neuroscience in 2008 and she is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2016 Kavli Award in Neuroscience and the 2013 Gruber Prize in Neuroscience. Research that reaches the headlines often depends on technical fireworks, and especially on spectacular images. Marder's work seldom fits that pattern, but this book demonstrates that a brilliant scientist working carefully and thoughtfully can produce groundbreaking results.

    Combining advances in molecular biology and genomics with mathematical and empirical findings from population genetics, work in molecular population genetics has uncovered theextraordinary history of natural selection and demographic shifts in many organisms, including humans. While basic descriptions of the methods and tools of this field can be found in disparate places, no previous book has brought them together in a single volume. Rather than cobble together piecesfrom books, reviews, and primary research articles, Molecular Population Genetics presents a coherent user's guide to the field. Intended as a text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, the book will also be useful as a detailed reference for active professionals.

    That world was not imaginary; it was the earth more than 300 million years ago in the Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic era. In Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction, George R. McGhee Jr. explores that ancient world, explaining its origins; its downfall in the end-Permian mass extinction, the greatest biodiversity crisis to occur since the evolution of animal life on Earth; and how its legacies still affect us today.McGhee investigates the consequences of the Late Paleozoic ice age in this comprehensive portrait of the effects of ancient climate change on global ecology. Carboniferous Giants and Mass Extinction examines the climatic conditions that allowed for the evolution of gigantic animals and the formation of the largest tropical rainforests ever to exist, which in time turned into the coal that made the industrial revolution possible--and fuels the engine of contemporary anthropogenic climate change. Exploring the strange and fascinating flora and fauna of the Late Paleozoic ice age world, McGhee focuses his analysis on the forces that brought this world to an abrupt and violent end. Synthesizing decades of research and new discoveries, this comprehensive book provides a wealth of insights into past and present extinction events and climate change.

    Looking at psychopathology through the lens of evolution is the only way to understand the deeper nature of mental disorders and turn a mass ofbehavioral, genetic, and neurobiological findings into a coherent, theoretically grounded discipline. The rise of evolutionary psychopathology is part of an exciting scientific movement in psychology and medicine -- a movement that is fundamentally transforming the way we think about health anddisease.Evolutionary Psychopathology takes steps toward a unified approach to psychopathology, using the concepts of life history theory -- a biological account of how individual differences in development, physiology and behavior arise from tradeoffs in survival and reproduction -- to build an integrativeframework for mental disorders. This book reviews existing evolutionary models of specific conditions and connects them in a broader perspective, with the goal of explaining the large-scale patterns of risk and comorbidity that characterize psychopathology. Using the life history framework allowsfor a seamless integration of mental disorders with normative individual differences in personality and cognition, and offers new conceptual tools for the analysis of developmental, genetic, and neurobiological data. The concepts presented in Evolutionary Psychopathology are used to derive a newtaxonomy of mental disorders, the Fast-Slow-Defense (FSD) model. The FSD model is the first classification system explicitly based on evolutionary concepts, a biologically grounded alternative to transdiagnostic models. The book reviews a wide range of common mental disorders, discusses theirclassification in the FSD model, and identifies functional subtypes within existing diagnostic categories.

    Focusing on the production of scientific knowledge over the last three centuries, Terence Keel uncovers the persistent links between pre-modern Christian thought and contemporary scientific perceptions of human difference. He argues that, instead of a rupture between religion and modern biology on the question of human origins, modern scientific theories of race are, in fact, an extension of Christian intellectual history.Keel's study draws on ancient and early modern theological texts and biblical commentaries, works in Christian natural philosophy, seminal studies in ethnology and early social science, debates within twentieth-century public health research, and recent genetic analysis of population differences and ancient human DNA. From these sources, Keel demonstrates that Christian ideas about creation, ancestry, and universalism helped form the basis of modern scientific accounts of human diversity-despite the ostensible shift in modern biology towards scientific naturalism, objectivity, and value neutrality. By showing the connections between Christian thought and scientific racial thinking, this book calls into question the notion that science and religion are mutually exclusive intellectual domains and proposes that the advance of modern science did not follow a linear process of secularization.

    Hayes, this groundbreaking book offers a glimpse into the histories of these two schools of thought, and provides a sound rationale for their reintegration.Evolutionary science (ES) provides a unifying theoretical framework for the biological sciences, and is increasingly being applied to the human-related sciences. Meanwhile, contextual behavioral science (CBS) seeks to understand the history and function of human behavior in the context of everyday life where behaviors occur, and to influence behavior in a practical sense. This volume seeks to integrate these two bodies of knowledge that have developed largely independently.In Evolution and Contextual Behavioral Science, two renowned experts in their fields argue why ES and CBS are intrinsically linked, as well as why their reintegration—or, reunification—is essential. The main purpose of this book is to continue to move CBS under the umbrella of ES, and to help evolutionary scientists understand how working alongside contextual behavioral scientists can foster both the development of ES principles and their application to practical situations.Rather than the sequential relationship that is typically imagined between these two schools of thought, this volume envisions a parallel relationship between ES and CBS, where science can best influence positive change in the real world.

    Unlike what was previously thought, we learn that DNA-based life did not emerge from random events in a primordial soup. Indeed, the first molecules of DNA were fabricated by a previous life form. By describing the fascinating events referred to as Phenotypic Revolutions, this book provides a dire warning to humanity: if humans continue to play with their own genes, we will be the next life form to fall to our own creation.

    Throughout these remarkable space adventures, does Star Trek reflect biology and evolution as we know it? What can the science in the science fiction of Star Trek teach us? In Live Long and Evolve, biologist and die-hard Trekkie Mohamed Noor takes readers on a fun, fact-filled scientific journey.Noor offers Trekkies, science-fiction fans, and anyone curious about how life works a cosmic gateway into introductory biology, including the definitions and origins of life, DNA, reproduction, and evolutionary processes, such as natural selection and genetic drift. For instance, he shows how the rapid change in a population of nanite robots follows basic principles of natural selection that apply to species on Earth. He explains how certain creatures depicted in the series are bisexual, not asexual, and what evolutionary advantage that difference provides. And he considers factors that affect successful interspecies mating and delves into what keeps species distinct. Noor discusses the importance of research and how Star Trek has influenced scientists to engage in cutting-edge work.Giving readers irresistible and entertaining insights, Live Long and Evolve looks at some of the powerful science behind one of the most popular and longest-running science-fiction series.

    David Berlinski, a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, writes about three profound mysteries: the existence of the human mind, the existence and diversity of living creatures, and the existence of matter. Berlinski's other books include The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, Newton's Gift, and A Tour of the Calculus.

    Technological advancement is creating a perfect storm of disruption, changing the way we shop, eat, work and communicate. The population is becoming increasingly polarised, and the public increasingly distrusts both the establishment and media, relying instead on alternative sources of information that feed their biases. The traditional structures that underpin Western society are all unravelling; identity politics is running rampant, and there is a heightened sense of victimhood with demands for the state to intervene. These seem like unparalleled times – or are they?Sean Culey’s new book, Transition Point, begins with an examination into why human progress suddenly exploded in 18th Century Britain, rather than in larger or more culturally advanced civilisations. He explains why the societal structures and individual freedoms that developed in Britain allowed the population’s innovative capabilities to flourish while the political structures that existed elsewhere held them back. Culey investigates the form and structure of this technologically driven progress, and why it is cyclical, not linear. Culey then explains why we are now in the transition point between the fifth and sixth technological waves, in a time the old and new co-exist, creating a society with one foot in the past and one in the future. This is a time of winners and losers, of people with capital and those with just labour. People with desired new wave skills and mindsets, and those with redundant old-wave ones. In Part Two of the book, Culey details the technological advancements contained in this new wave, showing exactly how they are going to combine to automate every aspect of the global workplace, from manual labour to office jobs. Innovations capable of not just replacing jobs, but also capabilities such as vision, hearing and speech, creating a future where humans are no longer the cheapest or smartest workers around.In the third and most substantial part of the book, Transition Point examines the impact this new wave is going to have on the nature of business practices, on our scientific and technological advancement, on the economy and, most controversially, on the future of our society. Culey explains what actions are needed to prevent the economy from transforming into a nightmare of uncaring corporatism; a world where the wealth flows into the technocrats, establishment and capital owners, and the modern-day John Henry’s are left behind, outperformed by AI systems, robots and algorithms that work for electricity and never take a break.Culey explains why, during this disruptive period, control is likely to be retained via the rolling back of the freedoms and liberties that made this period of progress possible in the first place. As China increasingly utilises technology to gamify life, creating a surveillance society designed to ensure its citizens comply with the rules passed down by their omnipresent government, the West will do likewise, only without the same level of openness and honesty. As western society continues to self-implode through a lack of belief in itself, its heritage or its traditions, these new wave technologies will become instruments of control and much as convenience. Once the citizens realise that their hard-fought freedoms no longer exist there will be resistance, but it will be too late, for once installed there is no going back. New generations will be born into a world of basic income bread and virtual circuses; a life of entertainment, enhancements and limited responsibilities. And knowing no different, they will just accept it, mourning not for that which they never experienced.Finally, Culey explains why the collapse of the sixth wave may tear away the last threads holding together society, creating social disruption on a global scale. By the middle of the century, we may see the human race divided by their opinions on whether some humans should become gods - a society split into those who embrace a future of technological and genetic enhancement, and those who strive to retain our human traditions and lifestyle. This is unlikely to be a civilised divorce, and if care is not taken and conscious effort made, the end of the century may well see Homo sapiens go the way of the Neanderthals.Transition Point was a finalist in the Independent Book of the Year Awards, 2019

    Many species have now had their genomes sequenced, and molecular techniques allow genetic inspection of even non-model organisms. But as longtime Nature editor Henry Gee argues in Across the Bridge, despite these giant strides and our deepening understanding of how vertebrates fit into the tree of life, the morphological chasm between vertebrates and invertebrates remains vast and enigmatic. As Gee shows, even as scientific advances have falsified a variety of theories linking these groups, the extant relatives of vertebrates are too few for effective genetic analysis. Moreover, the more we learn about the species that do remain—from sea-squirts to starfish—the clearer it becomes that they are too far evolved along their own courses to be of much use in reconstructing what the latest invertebrate ancestors of vertebrates looked like. Fossils present yet further problems of interpretation. Tracing both the fast-changing science that has helped illuminate the intricacies of vertebrate evolution as well as the limits of that science, Across the Bridge helps us to see how far the field has come in crossing the invertebrate-to-vertebrate divide—and how far we still have to go.

    In this volume, Julie Lesnik highlights a different food source, tracing evidence that humans and their hominin ancestors also consumed insects throughout the entire course of human evolution. Lesnik combines primatology, sociocultural anthropology, reproductive physiology, and paleoanthropology to examine the role of insects in the diets of hunter-gatherers and our nonhuman primate cousins. She posits that women would likely spend more time foraging for and eating insects than men, arguing that this pattern is important to note because women are too often ignored in reconstructions of ancient human behavior. Because of the abundance of insects and the low risk of acquiring them, insects were a reliable food source that mothers used to feed their families over the past five million years. Although they are consumed worldwide to this day, insects are not usually considered food in Western societies. Tying together ancient history with our modern lives, Lesnik points out that insects are highly nutritious and a very sustainable protein alternative. She believes that if we accept that edible insects are a part of the human legacy, we may have new conversations about what is good to eat--both in past diets and for the future of food.

    He considers how the paradigm case involves treating an evolved organism as if it were an agent pursuing a goal, such as survival or reproduction, and seeing its phenotypic traits as strategies for achieving that goal or furthering its biological interests.As agential thinking deliberately transposes a set of concepts - goals, interests, strategies - from rational human agents and to the biological world more generally, Okasha's enquiry firstly looks at the justification for this: is it mere anthropomorphism, or does it play a genuine intellectualrole in the science? From this central question, key points are considered such as: how do we identify the 'goal' that evolved organisms will behave as if they are trying to achieve? Can agential thinking ever be applied to groups rather than to individual organisms? And how does agential thinkingrelate to the controversies over fitness-maximization in evolutionary biology?In addition, Okasha examines the relation between the adaptive and the rational by considering whether organisms can validly be treated as agent-like. Should we expect their evolved behaviour to correspond with that of rational agents as codified in the theory of rational choice? If so, does thismean that the fitness-maximizing paradigm of the evolutionary biologist can be mapped directly to the utility-maximizing paradigm of the rational choice theorist? All of these important questions are engagingly raised and discussed at length.

    We now know that chimpanzees not only have genomes similar to our own but also plot political coups, wage wars over territory, pass on cultural traditions to younger generations, and ruthlessly strategize for resources, including sexual partners. In The New Chimpanzee, Craig Stanford challenges us to let apes guide our inquiry into what it means to be human.With wit and lucidity, Stanford explains what the past two decades of chimpanzee field research has taught us about the origins of human social behavior, the nature of aggression and communication, and the divergence of humans and apes from a common ancestor. Drawing on his extensive observations of chimpanzee behavior and social dynamics, Stanford adds to our knowledge of chimpanzees' political intelligence, sexual power plays, violent ambition, cultural diversity, and adaptability.The New Chimpanzee portrays a complex and even more humanlike ape than the one Jane Goodall popularized more than a half century ago. It also sounds an urgent call for the protection of our nearest relatives at a moment when their survival is at risk.

    However, recent technological innovations in the neurosciences, coupled with theoretical and methodological advances in creativity assessment, have enabled humans to gain unprecedented insights into the contributions of the brain to creative thought. This unique volume brings together contributions by the very best scholars to offer a comprehensive overview of cutting edge research on this important and fascinating topic. The chapters discuss creativity's relationship with intelligence, motivation, psychopathology and pharmacology, as well as the contributions of general psychological processes to creativity, such as attention, memory, imagination, and language. This book also includes specific and novel approaches to understanding creativity involving musicians, polymaths, animal models, and psychedelic experiences. The chapters are meant to give the reader a solid grasp of the diversity of approaches currently at play in this active and rapidly growing field of inquiry.

    

    Yet he was the first to collect the remains of giant extinct South American mammals; he worked out how coral reefs and atolls formed; he excavated and explained marine fossils high in the Andes; and he discovered a fossil forest that now bears his name. All of this research was fundamental in leading Darwin to develop his revolutionary theory of evolution.This richly illustrated book brings Darwin's fossils, many of which survive in museums and institutions around the world, together for the first time. Including new photography of many of the fossils--which in recent years have enjoyed a surge of scientific interest--as well as superb line drawings produced in the nineteenth century and newly commissioned artists' reconstructions of the extinct animals as they are understood today, Darwin's Fossils reveals how Darwin's discoveries played a crucial role in the development of his groundbreaking ideas.

    Our Human Story is a guide to our fossil relatives, from what may be the earliest hominins such as Sahelanthropus, dating back six to seven million years, through to our own species, Homo sapiens.Over the past 25 years there has been an explosion of species’ names in the story of human evolution, due both to new discoveries and to a growing understanding of the diversity that existed in the past.Drawing on this new information, as well as their own considerable expertise and practical experience, Louise Humphrey and Chris Stringer explain in clear and accessible language what each of the key species represents, and how it contributes to our knowledge of human evolution.

    This theme is explored and explained in this lucid, accessible book for lay readers. The author argues that, although evolution is the result of unpredictable events, these events have profound influences on subsequent developments. Life is thus a continuous interplay between unforeseeable events and their decisive consequences.As one example, the author cites the fusing of two chromosomes, which differentiated the human species from our closest animal relatives about 4 million years ago. This event was not predictable, but it had a profound effect on the evolution of our species thereafter. By the same token, certain unpredictable circumstances in the past enabled only Homo sapiens to survive to the present day, though we now know that other human-like species also once existed.The author contrasts such scientific concepts grounded in solid evidence with prevalent misconceptions about life: specifically, the notion that there is a plan and purpose behind life, the widespread perception that intelligent design governs the workings of nature, the persistent belief in destiny and fate, and the attribution of an overly deterministic role to genes.This excellent introduction for laypersons to core ideas in biology goes a long way toward dispelling such misconceptions and presents current scientific research in clearly understandable, jargon-free terms.