Evolution category: 1570 books

Michael Tomasello offers the most detailed account to date of the evolution of human moral psychology. Based on experimental data comparing great apes and human children, he reconstructs two key evolutionary steps whereby early humans gradually became an ultra-cooperative and, eventually, a moral species capable of acting as a plural agent “we”.

Few people have done as much to change how we view the world as Charles Darwin. Yet On the Origin of Species is more cited than read, and parts of it are even considered outdated. In some ways, it has been consigned to the nineteenth century. In The Theory That Changed Everything, the renowned cognitive...

In this fascinating and bold discussion, a renowned neurobiologist serves as guide to the most complex physical object in the living world: the human brain. Taking into account the newest brain research—morphological, physiological, chemical, genetic—and placing these findings in the context of...

A smart, witty, and fresh look at the male side of the male-female relationship from a science writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer. In The Score, Faye Flam examines how the desire to "score" has profoundly shaped males over millions of years. Sweeping from the origin of the sexes to the sexual...

Thomas H. Huxley was one of the first supporters of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, and he did more than any other writer to advance its acceptance among scientists and nonscientists alike. His most famous book, Man’s Place in Nature, published only five years after...

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading. Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature (1863) has been considered the most important of Thomas Huxley’s Darwinian writings. Despite warnings from friends that publishing an argument in support of evolution could ruin...

“Well-written and fascinating . . . this is the kind of book you want everyone to read.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer “Curiosity, awareness, attention,” Laurence Gonzales writes. “Those are the tools of our everyday survival. . . . We all must be scientists at heart or be victims of forces...

After several million years of jostling for ecological space, only one survivor from a host of hominid species remains standing: us. Human beings are extraordinary creatures, and it is the unprecedented human brain that makes them so. In this delightfully accessible book, the authors present the first...

With the emergence of the new field of evolutionary developmental biology we are witnessing a renaissance of Darwin's insights 150 years after his On the Origin of Species. Thus far, the exciting findings from 'evo-devo' have only been trickling into college courses and into the domain of non-specialists....

Do we have free will? Answering this question using logic drives us into paradox. Instead, the author takes us to a world where people know they really do have free will. As a result their science takes a different direction, leading them to an evolutionary theory totally different from ours. In this...

The purpose of this book is to examine the apparent paradox that exists between science and religion and how they relate to the current state of the Universe and our existence. Some claim that science and religion cannot coexist. Religious dogma often ignores the proven claims of science. Science...

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality. In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that...

Hans Thewissen, a leading researcher in the field of whale paleontology and anatomy, gives a sweeping first-person account of the discoveries that brought to light the early fossil record of whales. As evidenced in the record, whales evolved from herbivorous forest-dwelling ancestors that resembled...

Is it possible to explain and predict the development of living things? What is development? Articulate answers to these seemingly innocuous questions are far from straightforward. To date, no systematic, targeted effort has been made to construct a unifying theory of development. This novel work...