Evolution category: 1570 books

Charles Darwin's words first appeared in print as a student at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1829, and in almost every subsequent year of his life he published essays, articles, letters to editors, or other brief works. These shorter publications contain a wealth of valuable material. They represent...

Embryogenesis is an unusual book in that it brings together a highly illustrated, practical embryology book in simple language, perfect for health practitioners, with a fascinating read on the history and philosophy of biological science. It discusses the various stages of embryonic development (meiosis,...

Our genetic trace is splintered and has millions of discarded attempts and millions of successful living forms. The trace of emerging awareness is less fractured, has fewer discards, and is easier to follow, but is more difficult to analyze. Form and awareness are inexorably linked and have always...

Does Aging Stop? reveals the most paradoxical finding of recent aging research: the cessation of demographic aging. The authors show that aging stops at the level of the individual organism, and explain why evolution allows this. The implications of this counter-intuitive conclusion are profound,...

How human language evolved from the need for social communication The origins of human language remain hotly debated. Despite growing appreciation of cognitive and neural continuity between humans and other animals, an evolutionary account of human language—in its modern form—remains as...

In the association of the bee and the flower is a very advanced reflection of the process of evolution through natural selection. Nature's Holism explores the coevolution of long associated species arriving at a holistic view of nature where the compatibility between species is significant. In nature...

Seventy years ago, Erwin Schrödinger posed a profound question: 'What is life, and how did it emerge from non-life?' This problem has puzzled biologists and physical scientists ever since. Living things are hugely complex and have unique properties, such as self-maintenance and apparently purposeful...

Individuals are things that everybody knows—or thinks they do. Yet even scholars who practice or analyze the biological sciences often cannot agree on what an individual is and why. One reason for this disagreement is that the many important biological individuality concepts serve very different...

The idea that life is a cosmic, rather than a purely terrestrial phenomenon, has progressed from scientific heresy to mainstream science within the short timespan of a few decades. The theory of cometary panspermia developed by Fred Hoyle and the present author in the 1970's has been vindicated by...

Might human morality be a product of evolution? An increasing number of philosophers and scientists believe that moral judgment and behaviour emerged because it enhanced the fitness of our distant ancestors. This volume collects some recent explorations of the evidence for this claim, as well as papers...

Evolutionary approaches to the study of human beings have been able to explain the origin and maintenance of many of the features of our bodies. Many thinkers believe that an evolutionary approach will be equally fruitful when it comes to explaining the features of our minds. Since our behaviour is...

Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection challenges our very sense of belonging in the world. Unlike prior evolutionary theories, Darwinism construes species as mutable historical products of a blind process that serves no inherent purpose. It also represents a distinctly modern kind of fallible...

The Ontogeny of Information is a critical intervention into the ongoing and perpetually troubling nature-nurture debates surrounding human development. Originally published in 1985, this was a foundational text in what is now the substantial field of developmental systems theory. In this revised edition...

Darwin is credited with discovering evolution through natural selection, but Alfred Russel Wallace saw the same process at work in nature and elaborated the same theory. Dispelling misperceptions of Wallace as a secondary figure, James Costa reveals the two naturalists as equals in advancing one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time.