Evolution category: 1570 books

Primary sexual traits, those structures and processes directly involved in reproduction, are some of the most diverse, specialized, and bizarre in the animal kingdom. Moreover, reproductive traits are often species-specific, suggesting that they evolved very rapidly. This diversity, long the province...

Sexual reproduction is a fundamental aspect of life. It is defined by the occurrence of meiosis and the fusion of two gametes of different sexes or mating types. Sex-determination mechanisms are responsible for the sexual fate and development of sexual characteristics in an organism, be it a unicellular...

"As organisms are what evolve in the biological phase of evolution, so cultures are what evolve in its psychosocial or human phase." --Julian Huxley (1958). Dominant Species examines the most important aspect of evolution for us--cultural evolution, the natural selection of ideas....

Everything mammals ever wanted to know about the theory of evolution-but were afraid to ask This important new book by award-winning science writer Cynthia Mills clearly explains one of the most crucial, and most misunderstood, concepts of modern science-the theory of evolution. After examining Darwin,...

Kinship and Human Evolution: Making Culture, Becoming Human offers an exciting new explanation of human evolution. Based on insights from anthropology, it shows how humans became “cultured” beings capable of symbolic thought by developing kinship-based exchange relationships. Kinship was as an...

Polyploidy – whole-genome duplication (WGD) – is a fundamental driver of biodiversity with significant consequences for genome structure, organization, and evolution.  Once considered a speciation process common only in plants, polyploidy is now recognized to have played a major role in the structure,...

We tend to see history and evolution springing from separate roots, one grounded in the human world and the other in the natural world. Human beings have, however, become probably the most powerful species shaping evolution today, and human-caused evolution in other species has probably been the most...

Three Windows on Eternity is an exploratory voyage past the frontiers of our knowledge and scientific understanding. It has led the author to inspirational insights about the role of the individual human being in the current phase of the evolutionary process. The author takes the reader on a journey...

Over twenty years ago, Steven Mithen, a British archaeologist, published one of the most eloquently written books on human evolution. The Prehistory of The Mind (1996) frames the past six million years with two evocative analogies. The first is a play in four acts. The second is the evolution of church...

Evolution, Explanation, Ethics and Aesthetics: Towards a Philosophy of Biology focuses on the dominant biological topic of evolution. It deals with the prevailing philosophical themes of how to explain the adaptation of organisms, the interplay of chance and necessity, and the recurrent topics of...

The use of DNA and other biological macromolecules has revolutionized systematic studies of evolutionary history. Methods that use sequences of nucleotides and amino acids are now routinely used as data for addressing evolutionary questions that, although not new questions, have defied description...

There are a great many people who constantly wonder why we are having all this fuss about the theory of evolution. Many think it a shame that professing Christians should engage in such an unseemly quarrel as is now going on between the Fundamentalists and the Modernists. These lovers of peace are...

The theory of evolution has been around for some 150 years, and has deeply influenced people's views of the world. The theory maintains that life came about by chance, by itself, and through natural conditions. However, evolution is not supported by any scientific evidence. It is a dogma that materialist...

At a time of unprecedented expansion in the life sciences, evolution is the one theory that transcends all of biology. Any observation of a living system must ultimately be interpreted in the context of its evolution. Evolutionary change is the consequence of mutation and natural selection, which...