Showing titles in Evolution & Genetics

From star-nosed moles that have super-sensing snouts to electric eels that paralyze their prey, animals possess unique and extraordinary abilities. In Great Adaptations, Kenneth Catania presents an entertaining and engaging look at some of nature's most remarkable creatures. Telling the story of his biological detective work, Catania sheds light on the mysteries behind the behaviors of tentacled snakes, tiny shrews, zombie-making wasps, and more. 

Darwin's theory of evolution is accepted by most educated Americans as simple fact. This easy acceptance, however, hides from us the many ways in which evolution - as an idea - shapes our thinking about many things. What if this idea is wrong? What if "evolution" is just a word that covers up scientific ignorance of how the wonders of the world could have been created? Law professor Phillip Johnson looks at the evidence for Darwinistic evolution the way a lawyer would - with a cold dispassionate eye.

This pathbreaking book explores how life can begin, taking us from cosmic clouds of stardust, to volcanoes on Earth, to the modern chemistry laboratory. Seeking to understand life's connection to the stars, David Deamer introduces astrobiology, a new scientific discipline that studies the origin and evolution of life on Earth and relates it to the birth and death of stars, planet formation, interfaces between minerals, water, and atmosphere, and the physics and chemistry of carbon compounds.

Evolution--or the broader topic of origins--has enormous relevance to how we understand the Christian faith and how we interpret Scripture. Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design presents the current "state of the conversation" about origins among evangelicals representing...

How did life begin? It is perhaps the most important question science has ever asked. Over the centuries, the search for an answer has been entwined with some of science's most revolutionary advances, including van Leeuwenhoek's microscope, Darwin's theory of evolution, and Crick and Watson's unveiling of DNA.

Are the ways we look at menopause all wrong? Historian Susan Mattern says yes, and The Slow Moon Climbs reveals just how wrong we have been. Taking listeners from the rainforests of Paraguay to the streets of Tokyo, Mattern draws on historical, scientific, and cultural research to reveal how our perceptions of menopause developed from prehistory to today. For most of human history, people had no word for menopause and did not view it as a medical condition. Rather, in traditional foraging and agrarian societies, it was a transition to another important life stage.

Over five million years ago, a group of primates discovered tools. Perhaps it was a large rock, ideal for cracking nuts, or a stick to extract honey from a beehive. Regardless, the future of our planet was changed forever. Slowly, the primate evolved, abandoning the trees for solid ground and four legs for two–and the tools changed with it. Stones were sharpened, then attached to sticks, before stone gave way to bronze, iron, steel.

In From Darwin to Derrida, evolutionary biologist David Haig explains how a physical world of matter in motion gave rise to a living world of purpose and meaning. Natural selection, a process without purpose, gives rise to purposeful beings who find meaning in the world. The key to this, Haig proposes, is the origin of mutable “texts”―genes―that preserve a record of what has worked in the world. These texts become the specifications for the intricate mechanisms of living beings.

We are on the cusp of a major transformation in healthcare—yet few people know it. At top hospitals and a few innovative health-tech startups, scientists are working closely with patients to dramatically extend their "healthspan"—the number of healthy years before disease sets in. In The Age of Scientific Wellness, two visionary leaders of this revolution in health take us on a thrilling journey to this new frontier of medicine.

More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology.

‘What is it like to be a bat?’, the philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked concerning consciousness. For biologist Martin Stevens, the question forms the starting point of an exploration of animal senses. In this enthralling account, we learn not only of the wonder of animal senses, but how they work and how scientists go about investigating them. And, throughout, we consider how these senses came to be.

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,”...

Consciousness is the most fascinating but tantalizingly difficult topic in biology. Although many people now believe that mammals, birds, and possibly all vertebrates are conscious, there are also claims that many other animals such as crabs and insects may be conscious too. Such claims, if true...

Over a century after Darwin published the Origin of Species, Darwinian theory is in a "vibrantly healthy state," writes Stephen Jay Gould, its most engaging and illuminating exponent. Exploring the "peculiar and mysterious particulars of nature," Gould introduces the listener to some of the many and wonderful manifestations of evolutionary biology.

“In this marvelously accessible book, philosopher-Christian Jim Stump provides the reader with new eyes for a journey through time, the origin of the soul, suffering, and morality, and reveals how the latest scientific findings about what it means to be human have led him to a deeper and more...

If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise in the last thirty minutes or so of the final hour. But life itself is not such a late arrival: It has existed on Earth for something like 3.7 billion years—most of our planet’s history and over a quarter of the age of the universe (as far as we can tell). What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time? In Living on Earth, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet.

In this gripping nonfiction book, "CRISPR Wars" delves into the startling realities and potential futures shaped by genetic engineering in warfare. Blending well-researched facts with a few hypothetical scenarios, the book explores how CRISPR technology could create enhanced soldiers with unparalleled physical and cognitive abilities

Sind es nur die Gene, die unser Wesen bestimmen? Welche Rolle spielen dabei Erfahrungen, Erlebnisse und das, was wir "Seele" nennen? Das Wechselspiel zwischen Erbanlagen und Lebensumständen beschäftigt die moderne Medizin bis heute. Joachim Bauer macht dieses Zusammenwirken von Geist und Genen erstmals populär verständlich - und setzt sich ein für einen bewussteren Umgang mit der menschlichen Seele.

Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Winner of the Acoustical Society of America's 2023 Science Communication Award “[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life’s sound.” —The New York Times Book Review A...

Delve deeper into the scientific terms and theories at the core of the Peabody-winning, cult favorite show. With exclusive insights from the show's cocreator, Graeme Manson, and science consultant Cosima Herter, The Science of Orphan Black takes you behind the closed doors of the Dyad Institute and inside Neolution.