"Gal pagos is a glorious book. It is high romance, exact science, fascinating history, wild adventure."--NationThe Gal pagos Islands are famed for their remarkable wildlife, including land and marine iguanas, land tortoises, four-eyed fish, and flightless cormorants and albatross. In 1835, Charles Darwin observed variations among the islands' species that inspired him to formulate the theory of natural selection. Eighty-eight years later, in 1923, a scientific expedition sponsored by the New York Zoological Society followed in Darwin's wake. Led by renowned biologist and explorer William Beebe... View More...
When Michael J. Behe's first book, Darwin's Black Box, was published in 1996, it launched the intelligent design movement. Critics howled, yet hundreds of thousands of readers and a growing number of scientists were intrigued by Behe's claim that Darwinism could not explain the complex machinery of the cell. Now, in his long-awaited follow-up, Behe presents far more than a challenge to Darrwinism: He presents the evidence of the genetics revolution the first direct evidence of nature's mutational pathways to radically redefine the debate about Darwinism. How much of life does Darwin's theory... View More...
The Physics of Life explores the roots of the big question by examining the deepest urges and properties of living things, both animate and inanimate: how to live longer, with food, warmth, power, movement and free access to other people and surroundings. Bejan explores controversial and relevant issues such as sustainability, water and food supply, fuel, and economy, to critique the state in which the world understands positions of power and freedom. Breaking down concepts such as desire and power, sports health and culture, the state of economy, water and energy, politics and distribution, B... View More...
An award-winning biologist takes us on the dramatic expeditions that unearthed the history of life on our planet. Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vague and vastly off the mark, and much of the knowledge of our own species' history was a set of fantastic myths and fairy tales. In the tradition of The Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Sean Carroll leads a rousing voyage that recounts the most important discoveries in two centuries of natural history: from Darwin's trip around the world to Charles Walcott's discovery of p... View More...
An award-winning biologist takes us on the dramatic expeditions that unearthed the history of life on our planet. Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vague and vastly off the mark, and much of the knowledge of our own species' history was a set of fantastic myths and fairy tales. In the tradition of The Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Sean Carroll leads a rousing voyage that recounts the most important discoveries in two centuries of natural history: from Darwin's trip around the world to Charles Walcott's discovery of p... View More...
DNA, the genetic blueprint of all creatures, is a stunningly rich and detailed record of evolution. Every change or new trait, from the gaudy colors of tropical birds to our color vision with which we admire them, is due to changes in DNA that leave a record and can be traced. Just as importantly, the DNA evidence has revealed several profound surprises about how evolution actually works. View More...
With more than half the population of the US not believing that humans are descended from apes, and to prepare the way for the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species throughout 2009, Wooden Books proudly presents the smallest, most up to date little book on evolution ever assembled. Covering the story of Darwin's great idea, science writer Gerard Cheshire explores the evolutionary path of neo-Darwinism itself and shows how Lamarckian ideas still have a role to play in evolutionary theory.With a rich array of rarely published period prints from the Je... View More...
Coyne's knowledge of evolutionary biology is prodigious, his deployment of it as masterful as his touch is light. -Richard Dawkins In the current debate about creationism and intelligent design, there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned-the evidence. Yet the proof of evolution by natural selection is vast, varied, and magnificent. In this succinct and accessible summary of the facts supporting the theory of natural selection, Jerry A. Coyne dispels common misunderstandings and fears about evolution and clearly confirms the scientific truth that supports this amazing pr... View More...
Darwin's work of 1872 still provides the point of departure for research in the theory of emotion and expression. Although he lacked the modern research tool of cybernetics, his basic methods have not been improved upon: the study of infants, of the insane, of paintings and sculpture, of some of the commoner animals; the use of photographs of expression submitted to different judges; and the comparative study of expression among different peoples. This new edition will be warmly welcomed by those behavioral scientists who have recently shown an intense interest in the scientific study of expre... View More...
Designed for use in a broad range of courses in the humanities, Darwin's theory is laid out in a concise general Introduction and followed up in short chapter introductions. Each chapter concludes with an excerpt from Darwin's correspondence, commenting on the work in question, and its significance, impact, and reception. Two short appendixes are included--the first three chapters from Malthus, On Population, which gave Darwin the idea for natural selection and the paper by Wallace that motivated Darwin to abandon the Big Species Book and write Origin of Species.
Deserves to be as widely read as were the originals when they were first published.--Biological Journal of the Linneas Society. Includes five chapters from The Origin of Speices, complete and unabridged; significant extracts from the works that precede and develop the theory of evolution: The Voyage of the Beagle, The Descent of Man, and The Variations of Animals and Plants; scientific papers, travel writings, letters, and a family memorial; plus a chronology and biography. View More...
Introduction by Edward J. Larson Perhaps the most readable and accessible of the great works of scientific inquiry, The Origin of Species sold out its first printing on the very day it was published in 1859. Theologians quickly labeled Charles Darwin the most dangerous man in England and, as the Saturday Review noted, the uproar over the book quickly "passed beyond the bounds of the study and lecture-room into the drawing-room and the public street." Based largely on Darwin's experience as a naturalist while on a five-year voyage aboard H. M. S. Beagle, The Origin of Species set fort... View More...
Presents contemporary beliefs about Divine Providence and the beginnings of life on earth. Written for the general public of the 1850s, this title provides an account of the scientific theory that lies at the root of our attitude to the universe. View More...
Charles Darwin's account of the momentous voyage which set in motion the current of intellectual events leading to The Origin of Species When HMS Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime. His journal, here reprinted in a shortened form, shows a naturalist making patient observations concerning geology, natural history, people, places and events. Volcanoes in the Galapagos, the Gossamer spider of Patagonia and the Australasian coral reefs - all are to be found in these extraordinary writings. The insights made... View More...
In his study of infants and children (including observations of his own baby's smiles and pouts), of the insane, of painting and sculpture, of cats and dogs and monkeys, and of the ways that people in different cultures express their feelings, Darwin's insights have not been surpassed by modern science. This definitive edition of Darwin's masterpiece contains a substantial new Introduction and Afterword by Paul Ekman. Ekman also provides commentaries that use the latest scientific knowledge to elaborate, support, and occasionally challenge Darwin's study. For this edition, Ekman has returned t... View More...
Few lives of great men offer so much interest--and so many mysteries--as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of nineteenth-century science, whose ideas are still inspiring discoveries and controversies more than a hundred years after his death. Yet only now, with the publication of Voyaging, the first of two volumes that will constitute the definitive biography, do we have a truly vivid and comprehensive picture of Darwin as man and as scientist. Drawing upon much new material, supported by an unmatched acquaintance with both the intellectual setting and the voluminous sources, Ja... View More...
Few lives of great men offer so much interest--and so many mysteries--as the life of Charles Darwin, the greatest figure of nineteenth-century science, whose ideas are still inspiring discoveries and controversies more than a hundred years after his death. Yet only now, with the publication of Voyaging, the first of two volumes that will constitute the definitive biography, do we have a truly vivid and comprehensive picture of Darwin as man and as scientist. Drawing upon much new material, supported by an unmatched acquaintance with both the intellectual setting and the voluminous sources, Ja... View More...
