Search results

This work demystifies some of the most controversial issues in the life sciences today. It looks at topics ranging from Darwin to Dolly the sheep, including biological determinism, heredity and natural selection, evolutionary psychology and cloning. Biology now dominates scientific enquiry and the headlines, as geneticists claim to have accounted for yet another human trait or ailment. However, exaggerations and misunderstandings about what biology can tell us are common. This collection of essa...

Do Aliens Exist? And if they do - what would they look like? Where would they live? Would they be conscious beings? And what would happen if they found us? These are the biggest questions we've ever asked - and here, Professor Jim Al-Khalili, theoretical physicist and host of BBC Radio Four's The Life Scientific, blasts off in search of answers. Coming with him are Martin Rees, Ian Stewart, Louisa Preston, Monica Grady, Sara Seager, Paul Davies and a crack team of scientists and experts who'...

A Pulitzer Prize Finalist The medusa is a tiny jellyfish that lives on the ventral surface of a sea slug found in the Bay of Naples. Readers will find themselves caught up in the fate of the medusa and the snail as a metaphor for eternal issues of life and death as Lewis Thomas further extends the exploration of man and his world begun in The Lives of a Cell. Among the treasures in this magnificent book are essays on the human genius for making mistakes, on disease and natural death, on cloning...

Contested Ecologies: Reimagining the Nature-Culture Divide in the Global South offers an intervention in the conversations on ecology and on coloniality, and on the ways in which modern thinking, with its bifurcation of nature and culture, constitutes ‘ecology’ within a very particular politics of the cosmos. The chapters in this collection contest the framework of knowledge that has deadlocked nature and culture, tradition and modernity, scientific and indigenous and in doing so makes a case fo...

Celebrate the rise of superwomen and discover the science behind the abilities of Wonder Woman, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, Catwoman, and more! Superhero fiction has been with us for almost a century; high-octane tales crammed with concepts and contrasting themes, from superpowers and the post-human, to masked vigilantes and immortality. In that time, superwomen have evolved from comic book caricatures (created by men, for men) to stronger representations of female power. The Science of Super...

One of our most brilliant evolutionary biologists, Richard Lewontin has also been a leading critic of those - scientists and non-scientists alike - who would misuse the science to which he has contributed so much. In this book, the author the scientist, and the critic come together to provide a concise, accessible account of what his work has taught him about biology and about its relevance to human affairs. In the process, he exposes some of the common and troubling misconceptions that misdirec...

Invisible in the food we eat, the people we kiss, and inside our own bodies, viruses flourish—with the power to shape not only our health, but our social, political, and economic systems. Drawing on his expertise in microbiology, Joseph Osmundson brings readers under the microscope to understand the structure and mechanics of viruses and to examine how viruses like HIV and COVID-19 have redefined daily life. Osmundson’s buoyant prose builds on the work of the activists and thinkers at the forefr...

In this book, nine thought-leaders engage with some of the hottest moral issues in science and ethics. Based on talks originally given at the annual “Purdue Lectures in Ethics, Policy, and Science,” the chapters explore interconnections between the three areas in an engaging and accessible way. Addressing a mixed public audience, the authors go beyond dry theory to explore some of the difficult moral questions that face scientists and policy-makers every day. The introduction presents a theoreti...

Disputes over religion and science, such as the divide between teaching "intelligent design" and evolution in U.S. schools, have brought to the public eye a struggle that Anthony Aveni argues is as old as culture itself. All societies seek to understand the natural world, but their search is shaped by culturally distinct views and experiences. In "Uncommon Sense", Aveni explores the common and conflicting ways that ancient and contemporary societies have searched for the literal truth about the...

How do you connect the artsy, science-nerd mom to the art and science of parenting? Lynn Brunelle shares her field trip through pregnancy and parenting, sprinkled with a sparkle of science, in this hilarious and awe-inspiring memoir.      With great enthusiasm, Lynn shows how she shares her inner geek--the part of her that is gleefully curious and wide-eyed with wonderment--with her children. For Lynn, science is the stardust that makes common things glow. Why not pass that magic alon...

In this volume, Steven Weinberg pursues his principal passions, theoretical physics and a deeper understanding of the culture, philosophy, history, and politics of science. Each of these essays, which span 15 years, struggles in one way or another with the necessity of facing up to the discovery that the laws of nature are impersonal, with no hint of a special status for human beings. Defending the spirit of science against its cultural adversaries, these essays express a viewpoint that is reduc...

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD***A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021***A SCIENCE NEWS FAVORITE BOOK OF 2021***A SMITHSONIAN TOP TEN SCIENCE BOOK OF 2021 “Stories that both dazzle and edify… This book is not just about life, but about discovery itself.” —Siddhartha Mukherjee, New York Times Book Review We all assume we know what life is, but the more scientists learn about the living world—from protocells to brains, from zygotes to pandemic viruses—the harder...

The annual collection celebrating the finest voices in Australian science writing. From the furthest reaches of the universe to the microscopic world of our genes, science offers writers the kind of scope other subjects simply can’t match. Good writing about science can be moving, funny, exhilarating or poetic, but it will always be honest and rigorous about the research that underlies it. Now in its sixth year, The Best Australian Science Writing 2016 brings together knowledge and insightfrom...

These essays on a range of topics in the cognitive neurosciences report on the progress in the field over the twenty years of its existence and reflect the many groundbreaking scientific contributions and enduring influence of Michael Gazzaniga, "the godfather of cognitive neuroscience" -- founder of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, founding editor of the "Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience," and editor of the major reference work, " The Cognitive Neurosciences," now in its fourth edition (MIT...

Discover the truth behind ESP, paranormal powers, and psychic abilities—the perfect gift for curious minds and bold scientists alike. Some paranormal phenomena and powers of the mind are real, but mainstream science dismisses it all as fantasy. The Science of the Paranormal looks toward the overwhelming evidence that something weird and wild lies behind our everyday reality. Credible witnesses have seen paranormal activity with their own eyes. Scientists have studied it in their labs. And ever...

Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things.  Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine.  Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am,...