Evolution category: 1570 books
Moral Origins
The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame
Language: English
Release Date: May 1, 2012
From the age of Darwin to the present day, biologists have been grappling with the origins of our moral sense. Why, if the human instinct to survive and reproduce is "selfish," do people engage in self-sacrifice, and even develop ideas like virtue and shame to justify that altruism? Many...
This View of Life
Completing the Darwinian Revolution
Language: English
Release Date: February 26, 2019
It is widely understood that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution completely revolutionized the study of biology. Yet, according to David Sloan Wilson, the Darwinian revolution won’t be truly complete until it is applied more broadly—to everything associated with the words “human,” “culture,”...
A New History of Life
The Radical New Discoveries about the Origins and Evolution of Life on Earth
Language: English
Release Date: April 7, 2015
The history of life on Earth is, in some form or another, known to us all--or so we think. A New History of Life offers a provocative new account, based on the latest scientific research, of how life on our planet evolved--the first major new synthesis for general readers in two decades.
Charles...
The Most Dangerous Animal
Human Nature and the Origins of War
Language: English
Release Date: August 7, 2007
Almost 200 million human beings, mostly civilians, have died in wars over the last century, and there is no end of slaughter in sight.
The Most Dangerous Animal asks what it is about human nature that makes it possible for human beings to regularly slaughter their own kind. It tells the story of why...
The Goodness Paradox
The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution
Language: English
Release Date: January 29, 2019
“A fascinating new analysis of human violence, filled with fresh ideas and gripping evidence from our primate cousins, historical forebears, and contemporary neighbors.”
—Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature
We Homo sapiens can be the nicest of species and also the...
by
Language: English
Release Date: August 12, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: August 12, 2009
In a Darwinian world, religious behavior - just like other behaviors - is likely to have undergone a process of natural selection in which it was rewarded in the evolutionary currency of reproductive success. This book aims to provide a better understanding of the social scenarios in which selection...
Death on Earth
Adventures in Evolution and Mortality
Language: English
Release Date: March 10, 2016
There is nothing more life-affirming than understanding death in all its forms.
Natural selection depends on death; little would evolve without it. Every animal on Earth is shaped by its presence and fashioned by its spectre. We are all survivors of starvation, drought, volcanic eruptions,...
A Taste for the Beautiful
The Evolution of Attraction
Language: English
Release Date: January 16, 2018
From one of the world's leading authorities on animal behavior, the astonishing story of how the female brain drives the evolution of beauty in animals and humans
Darwin developed the theory of sexual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty, from the brilliant colors...
Politics as If Evolution Mattered
Darwin, Ecology, and Social Justice
Language: English
Release Date: August 25, 2011
In this scientifically authoritative essay collection, Salzman, a seasoned and provocative environmentalist, demonstrates how evolutionary theory penetrates nearly all aspects of human society. She faults social justice movements for their short-sighted focus on human needs to the exclusion of nonhuman...
Homo Sapiens
Psychology as seen from Evolution
Language: English
Release Date: April 29, 2013
The themes discussed in this book form part of a revolutionary discipline known under the name of evolutionary psychology, a discipline that has become the most powerful tool discovered to date for man to understand himself. Much of the knowledge revealed by human science is explained as a result of...
Death Rules
How Death Shapes Life on Earth, and What it Means For Us
Language: English
Release Date: September 23, 2014
Death Rules explores life from the perspective of death. We are all going to die; our lifespan is limited. That is the way it is. And yet we do our best to avoid death, and at almost any cost. While we accept the fact of death, we seldom talk about it. Now, in the 21st century, science is offering us...
I, Mammal
The Story of What Makes Us Mammals
Language: English
Release Date: November 2, 2017
Humans are mammals. Most of us appreciate that at some level. But what does it mean for us to have more in common with a horse and an elephant than we do with a parrot, snake or frog?
After a misdirected football left new father Liam Drew clutching a uniquely mammalian part of his anatomy,...
by
Language: English
Release Date: May 9, 2017
Language: English
Release Date: May 9, 2017
This book presents a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of mutualism origin, plant–pollinator specificity, mutualism stability, and reciprocal diversification. In particular, it focuses on the natural history and evolutionary history of the third example of obligate pollination...
The First Word
The Search for the Origins of Language
Language: English
Release Date: July 19, 2007
An accessible exploration of a burgeoning new field: the incredible evolution of language
The first popular book to recount the exciting, very recent developments in tracing the origins of language, The First Word is at the forefront of a controversial, compelling new field. Acclaimed science...