There is much talk these days about artificial intelligence, and whether advanced computer systems could ever really ‘think’. Might they, after we have birthed them, go on to replicate and take over the world? This is not idle speculation, or the draft plot for a science fiction novel. Stephen Hawking is only one of many […]
The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence by Margaret Boden Read More »
I’m assuming you don’t spend a lot of time picking out unwanted insects from your best friend’s fur. Yet the function of that activity in apes is exactly what Robin Dunbar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar) believes language does for us. Apes and monkeys, humanity’s closest kin, differ from other animals in the intensity of their social relationships. All their
Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar Read More »
There is a delightful scene in the film Pretty Woman (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100405/?ref_=nv_sr_1) with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Roberts plays a hooker who has been hired by Gere as an escort to accompany him to a business meeting dinner. She is beautifully presented in cocktail dress but lacks table manner etiquette. On been presented with escargots she is
The familiar call of the common cuckoo, “cuck-oo,” has been a harbinger of spring ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the call is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: how does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in
From the tens of thousands of books and papers on human evolution, where should one start? I would recommend Robin Dunbar’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar) 2014 introduction Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction. The past 12,000 years represent the only time in the sweep of human history when there has been only one human species. How did we alone survive?
There is a comparatively new discipline in biology which is ‘Behavioural Ecology’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioural_ecology). It seeks to provide theoretical frameworks to answer questions about animal behaviour especially in relation to ecological context. It has proven to be a highly fruitful and fascinating area of study. The book examines how animals struggle to survive and reproduce. It shows how they exploit
Behavioural Ecology Read More »
In this spellbinding blend of memoir, science journalism and literary criticism, Eula Biss (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eula_Biss and http://eulabiss.net/) unpacks what the fear of vaccines tells us about larger anxieties involving purity, contamination and interdependency. Deeply researched and anchored in Biss’s own experiences as a new mother, this ferociously intelligent book is itself an inoculation against bad science and superstition,
Elizabeth Kolbert (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Kolbert and http://elizabethkolbert.com/) reports from the front lines of the violent collision between human civilization and our planet’s ecosystem — from the Great Barrier Reef to her own backyard — in this, her third, book. Traveling to some of the world’s remotest corners, she examines how man-made climate change threatens to eliminate 20 to 50
The Sixth Extinction Read More »
Let’s face it. A great deal of science writing is impenetrable to the non professional. Not only is modern science so deep, broad and complex, it is full of its own jargon. Richard Dawkins has put together an anthology of some of the finest science writing of recent times. It proves that science can be
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing Read More »
