The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
Richard Dawkins (Author)
(415)

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"The best general account of evolution I have read in recent years."--E. O. Wilson. With a new introduction.

Twenty years after its original publication, The Blind Watchmaker, framed with a new introduction by the author, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin’s brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte. Natural selection—the unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially nonrandom process Darwin discovered—is the blind watchmaker in nature.

• Rank: #24883 in Books
• Published on: 1996-09-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.31" h x 1.22" w x 7.20" l, .84 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
Thor Hanson (Author)
(47)

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Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told.

In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?

Engineers call feathers the most efficient insulating material ever discovered, and they are at the root of biology's most enduring debate. They silence the flight of owls and keep penguins dry below the ice. They have decorated queens, jesters, and priests. And they have inked documents from the Constitution to the novels of Jane Austen.

Feathers is a captivating and beautiful exploration of this most enchanting object.

• Rank: #154627 in Books
• Published on: 2012-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.50" h x 5.51" w x .91" l, .76 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach, 8th Edition

Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach, 8th Edition
John Alcock (Author)
(20)

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This new edition of Animal Behavior maintains the organizational structure of previous editions, but has been completely rewritten with coverage of much recent work in animal behaviour, resulting in a thoroughly up-to-date text. Notable is the inclusion, for the first time, of discussion questions embedded in the text itself, rather than appended to the end of each chapter. This format is designed to encourage students to reflect on the material they have just digested while also making it easier for instructors to promote a problem-solving approach to the subject. Like previous editions, the book shows how evolutionary biologists analyze all aspects of behaviour. It is distinguished by its balanced treatment of both the underlying mechanisms and evolutionary causes of behaviour, and stresses the utility of evolutionary theory in unifying the different behavioural disciplines.

• Rank: #20971 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 10.91" h x 9.13" w x 1.06" l, 1.10 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 564 pages

Darwin on Trial

Darwin on Trial
Phillip E. Johnson (Author)
(179)

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Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson looks at the scientific evidence for and against Darwinistic evolution. 5 cassettes.

• Rank: #529658 in Books
• Published on: 1991-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 195 pages

Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History

Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History
Stephen Jay Gould (Author)
(14)

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Gould's seventh collection of essays covers a wide range of subjects in natural history, literature, and popular culture--from the wisdom of Charles Darwin to that of the Old Testament Psalms, from the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park to the dinosaurs of the latest scientific theories, from the thwarted humanity of the Frankenstein monster to the inhuman fallacies of eugenics and other pseudoscience. With black and white illustrations.

"Here is a new collection of Gould's unexpected connections between evolution and all manner of subjects, literature high among them. Gathered from his monthly column in Natural History magazine, these articles should delight, surprise, and inform his vast readership, as have his six prior volumes of essays. Somehow the light bulb pops on every month as his deadline approaches, some glowing fact pulled out of memory--often a line from Shakespeare or Tennyson--that illumines a                    generality Gould wishes to discuss. "Nature, red in tooth and claw" (Lord Alfred's line) induces dilations on the extent science can inform moral matters (not much, Gould believes); a remembrance of the infamous Wansee protocol prompts Gould's denunciation of the genocidal looting of evolutionary theory and, by extension, its vulnerability to ignoramuses in general. These two examples of the Gouldian essay method, fortunately, don't foreshadow a gloomy parade of topics: Gould can as easily alight at the fun house where mass culture absorbs ideas about evolution through movies of monsters run amok from Frankenstein to Jurassic Park. In other essays, he plunges directly into matters of evolutionary interpretation but customarily employs a literary twist: who else but Gould could link Edgar Allan Poe with his own area of professional eminence, the paleontology of snails? A discovery awaits in every essay--in every haystack--which solidifies Gould as one of the most eloquent science popularizers writing today."
--Booklist

• Rank: #576613 in Books
• Published on: 1996-12-17
• Released on: 1996-12-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

The Extraordinary Story of Life on Earth

The Extraordinary Story of Life on Earth
Piero Angela (Author)

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How can we know about the lives of our ancestors who lived 30,000, or 300,000, or 3 million years ago? In The Extraordinary Story of Human Origins, Piero and Alberto Angela address the many difficulties and challenges that scientists face in assembling the record of human evolution.
To piece together the intriguing puzzle of human origins it is necessary to study all clues that are made available by multidisciplinary research, including paleontology, biochemistry, geology, genetics, physics, and climatology. Like so many Sherlock Holmeses, researchers seek all possible clues and analyze them meticuously in hopes of being able to reconstruct the past. These pieces are few and fragmentary, ranging from the footprints left in volcanic ash 3.7 million years ago by hominids who walked exactly as we do, to a "Y" pattern on molars and mitchondrial DNA. But they all provide information on the diet, diseases, hunting techniques, and art of Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, the Neanderthal, and the first Homo sapiens sapiens.
Written in an accessible but authoritative style, this study includes many lively reconstructions of the everyday life of our earliest ancestors based on the most reliable data. The Extraordinary Story of Human Origins makes available to a wide audience a unique look inside the exciting world of research into the the beginnings of human life on earth.

• Rank: #2888088 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-01
• Released on: 1996-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.21" h x 6.22" w x 1.30" l, 1.82 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 395 pages

The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind

The Sixth Extinction: Patterns of Life and the Future of Humankind
Richard E. Leakey (Author), Roger Lewin (Contributor)
(23)

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Richard Leakey, One Of The World's  Foremost Experts On Man's Evolutionary Past, Now Turns  His Eye To The Future And Doesn't Like What He  Sees.

To the philosophical the  earth is eternal, while the human race -- presumptive  keeper of the world's history -- is a mere speck  in the rich stream of life. It is known that  nothing upon Earth is forever; geography, climate, and  plant and animal life are all subject to radical  change. On five occasions in the past, catastrophic  natural events have caused mass extinctions on  Earth. But today humans stand alone, in dubious  distinction, among Earth's species: Homo  Sapiens possesses the ability to destroy  entire species at will, to trigger the sixth  extinction in the history of life. In The Sixth  Extinction, Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin  consider how the grand sprawl of human life is  inexorably wreaking havoc around the world. The  authors of Origins and  Origins Reconsidered, unimpeachable  authorities on the human fossil record, turn their  attention to the most uncharted anthropological territory  of all: the future, and man's role in defining it.  According to Leakey and Lewin, man and his  surrounding species are end products of history and  chance. Now, however, humans have the unique  opportunity to recognize their influence on the global  ecosystem, and consciously steer the outcome in order  to avoid triggering an unimaginable upheaval.


From the Hardcover edition.

• Rank: #10377 in Books
• Published on: 1996-10-01
• Released on: 1996-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.11" h x 4.88" w x .59" l, .47 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages