Australopithecine, dinosaur, and trilobite fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll (https://eps.harvard.edu/people/andrew-h-knoll) explores the deep history of life from its origins on a young planet to the […]
Life on a Young Planet Read More »
There are many animal species that co-operate. One thinks of the social insects, of an ants’ nest and a termite mound. One thinks of the meerkat ‘manor’ and a pride of lions. In fact, solitary animals are rare. But why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in such large numbers to advance projects for the
A Cooperative Species Read More »
You do not have a body. You are a functioning body. And that body is made up of billions of cells. These living cells are made up of an extraordinary collection of tiny molecular machines, which orchestrate the millions of tasks needed for life. Cells build these machines for a variety of purposes: to digest food,
The Machinery of Life Read More »
Michael Tomasello (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Tomasello) argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of psychological development that takes place within it, are based in a cluster of uniquely human cognitive capacities that emerge early in human ontogeny. These include capacities for sharing attention with other persons; for understanding that others have
The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition Read More »
Should you wish to refresh your understanding of meteorites, this guide is to be recommended. Meteorite research shows us about the origin and early history of the Solar System. Robert Hutchison considers the mechanism and timing of core formation and basaltic volcanism on asteroids, and the effects of heating water-rich bodies. Results from meteorite research are
Dutch scientist Eugene Dubois (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Dubois) is not nearly as well known as his most important scientific contribution. Dubois’s 1892 archaeological expedition found the first fossil evidence of Pithecanthropus erectus (what we know today as homo erectus, http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-erectus) or ‘Java man’. At the time of its discovery, P. erectus was viewed by many scientists as the
The Man Who Found the Missing Link by Pat Shipman Read More »
It is a terrible shame that a creative civilisation like Islam can come to be so backward and identified now in the international media with extremist violence. Islam did, in fact, contribute much to world culture and civilisation. Long before the European Enlightenment, scholars and researchers working from Samarkand in modern-day Uzbekistan to Cordoba in
Something’s happening in your brain when you sense beauty, just as something’s happening in your brain when you eat a chocolate biscuit. One would like to think there is more to looking at a masterpiece by Titian than chewing a Jaffa Cake. In Feeling Beauty, G. Gabrielle Starr (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._Gabrielle_Starr) argues that understanding the neural underpinnings of
Some 250 million years ago, the earth suffered the greatest biological crisis in its history. Around 95 percent of all living species died out – a global catastrophe far greater than the extinction of dinosaurs 185 million years later. Scientists are slowly working out how this happened and there are many competing theories. Some blame
