Philosophy Biology

When Karin enters a high-ranked university to start her PhD she is brimming with hope and positively overflowing with grit determination to prove she is worthy. After all, she knows that only the extraordinarily learned and the astonishingly intelligent ever hold chairs and professorships. She knows researchers are idealists yearning to enrich the stock of human knowledge. She knows university is the apotheosis of civilised culture... She knows very little.

Not too long ago, there was no coming back from death. But now, with revolutionary medical advances, death has become just another serious complication. As a young medical student, Dr. David Casarett was inspired by the story of a two-year-old girl named Michelle Funk. Michelle fell into a creek and was underwater for over an hour. When she was found she wasn't breathing, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. That drowning should have been fatal. But after three hours of persistent work, a team of doctors and nurses was able to bring her back.

When the woman he loved was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer, science writer George Johnson embarked on a journey to learn everything he could about the disease and the people who dedicate their lives to understanding and combating it. What he discovered is a revolution under way - an explosion of new ideas about what cancer really is and where it comes from. In a provocative and intellectually vibrant exploration, he takes us on an adventure through the history and recent advances of cancer research that will challenge everything you thought you knew about the disease.

Survival of the Beautiful is a revolutionary new examination of the interplay of beauty, art, and culture in evolution. Taking inspiration from Darwin's observation that animals have a natural aesthetic sense, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg probes why animals, humans included, have innate appreciation for beauty - and why nature is, indeed, beautiful.

Few of us know much about the biology of sex determination, but what could be more interesting than to discover how we are shaped into males and females? In this book, Elof Carlson tells the incredible story of the difficult quest to understand how the body forms girls and boys. Carlson's history takes us from antiquity to the present day to detail how each component of human reproduction and sexuality was identified and studied....

Here is a scientific look at zombies - and the ultimate guide to how the other half lives (or not). How fast and far would a zombie infection spread? What would a nutritionist say about an all-brain diet? Why are the undead so pissed off? Here are the answers to all of your essential zombie questions (you know you've asked them), with a lively, science-based exploration of every aspect of the undead.

The latest and most bitterly contested battle in the culture war is the controversy over Darwin and intelligent design. But much of what you've heard about it is wrong. Jonathan Wells, a battle-hardened veteran with doctorates in biology and theology, sets the record straight.

Important and provocative, The Undead examines why even with the tools of advanced technology, what we think of as life and death, consciousness and nonconsciousness, is not exactly clear - and how this problem has been further complicated by the business of organ harvesting.

Siroccos, Santa Anas, chinooks, monsoons...the wind has as many names as moods. Few other forces have so universally shaped the lands and waters of the earth, the plants and animals, the patterns of exploration, settlement, and civilization. Few other phenomena have exerted such a profound influence on the history and psyche of humankind. Wind touches all of us every day of our lives, yet remarkably little has been written about it except as a component of the weather.

Who are you? It’s the most fundamental of human questions. Are you the type of person who tilts at windmills, or the one who prefers to view them from the comfort of an air-conditioned motorcoach? Our personalities are endlessly fascinating—not just to ourselves but also to our spouses, our parents, our children, our co-workers, our neighbors. As a highly social species, humans have to navigate among an astonishing variety of personalities.

We inherit mechanisms for survival from our primeval past - none so obviously as those involved in reproduction. The hormone testosterone underlies the organization of activation of masculinity: It changes the body and brain to make a male. It is involved not only in sexuality but in driving aggression, competitiveness, risk-taking - all elements that were needed for successful survival and reproduction in the past. But these ancient systems are carried forward into a modern world.

It seems likely that scientists will someday discover how life can emerge on habitable planets like the early Earth and Mars. In Origin of Life: What Everyone Needs to Know, David W. Deamer has written a comprehensive guide to the origin of life that is organized in three sections.

On the Origin of Species revolutionized our understanding of the natural world. Now young listeners can discover Charles Darwin's groundbreaking theory of evolution for themselves in this stunning picture-book adaptation that uses stylish illustrations and simple text to introduce how species form, develop, and change over time.