Philosophy Biology

This book restores the name of Felix Le Dantec—a scientist, philosopher, and heretic of his age—to the living current of thought. At the dawn of the twentieth century, he dared to proclaim that life is not a riddle imposed by spirit upon matter, but that matter itself is spirit—learning, feeling, and recognizing itself through the processes of biology. He saw the organism not as a mechanism steered by circumstance, but as a meaning-making machine: life as an act of self-comprehension, matter awakening to its own awareness.

Morange covers everything from the first cell theory to the origins of the concept of ecosystems, and offers perspectives on areas that are often neglected by historians of biology, such as ecology, ethology, and plant biology. He highlights the contributions of technology, the important role of hypothesis and experimentation, and the cultural contexts in which some of the most breathtaking discoveries in biology were made. Unrivaled in scope and written by a world-renowned historian of science, A History of Biology is an ideal introduction for students and experts alike.

A seven-part mindfulness practice on the health benefits of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), rooted in Western science and Buddhist mindfulness, from the creator of the program developed at the Dalai Lama’s Compassion Center at Emory University. Former Tibetan Buddhist monk and...

Biology 101: A History of Life is the story of how humans discovered life from the outside in. Poking, slicing, sketching, sequencing, and arguing our way toward understanding what it means to be alive. From Aristotle’s animal lists to Darwin’s dangerous idea. From Mendel’s peas to the human genome. From hand-ground glass to CRISPR gene editing. This is not a textbook. It’s a history of discovery. The brilliant, chaotic, often accidental process that turned biology from folklore into code.