Welcome to our book review site www.go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Life's Solution
The assassin's bullet misses, the Archduke's carriage moves forward, and a catastrophic war is avoided. So too with the history of life. Re-run the tape of life, as Stephen J. Gould claimed, and the outcome must be entirely different: an alien world, without humans and maybe not even intelligence. The history of life is littered with accidents: any twist or turn may lead to a completely different world. Now this view is being challenged. Simon Conway Morris explores the evidence demonstrating life's almost eerie ability to navigate to a single solution, repeatedly. Eyes, brains, tools, even culture: all are very much on the cards. So if these are all evolutionary inevitabilities, where are our counterparts across the galaxy? The tape of life can only run on a suitable planet, and it seems that such Earth-like planets may be much rarer than hoped. Inevitable humans, yes, but in a lonely Universe.
The Runes of Evolution
How did human beings acquire imaginations that can conjure up untrue possibilities? How did the Universe become self-aware? In The Runes of Evolution, Simon Conway Morris revitalizes the study of evolution from the perspective of convergence, providing us with compelling new evidence to support the mounting scientific view that the history of life is far more predictable than once thought. A leading evolutionary biologist at the University of Cambridge, Conway Morris came into international prominence for his work on the Cambrian explosion (especially fossils of the Burgess Shale) and evolutionary convergence, which is the process whereby organisms not closely related (not monophyletic), ind...
From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds
In this learned romp of science writing, Cambridge professor Simon Conway Morris cheerfully challenges six assumptions—what he calls ‘myths’—that too often pass as unquestioned truths amongst the evolutionary orthodox. His convivial tour begins with the idea that evolution is boundless in the kinds of biological systems it can produce. Not true, he says. The process is highly circumscribed and delimited. Nor is it random. This popular notion holds that evolution proceeds blindly, with no endgame. But Conway Morris suggests otherwise, pointing to evidence that the processes of evolution are “seeded with inevitabilities.” If that is so, then what about mass extinctions? Don’t the...
Back To Darwin
This book provides a distinctive, radical way beyond the quarrels between evolutionary science and Christian belief. Leading scientists, philosophers, and theologians critically discuss the metaphysical assumptions of neo-Darwinism and offer concrete ways of broadening mainstream evolutionary theory. Their open exchange, moderated by veteran process theologian John B. Cobb, presents a holistic case for evolution that both theists and nontheists can accept. Contributors: Francisco J. Ayala Ian G. Barbour Charles Birch Philip Clayton John B. Cobb Jr. John Greene David Ray Griffin A. Y. Gunter John F. Haught Lynn Margulis Reg Morrison Dorion Sagan Jeffrey Schloss Robert J. Valenza Howard J. Van Till
Emergence and Empire
Harold Innis was one of the most profound thinkers that Canada ever produced. Such was his influence on the field of communication that Marshall McLuhan once declared his own work was a mere footnote to Innis. But over the past sixty years scholars have had a hard time explaining his brilliance, in large measure because Innis's dense, elliptical writing style has hindered easy explication and interpretation. But behind the dense verbiage lies a profound philosophy of history. In Emergence and Empire, John Bonnett offers a fresh take on Innis's work by demonstrating that his purpose was to understand the impact of self-organizing, emergent change on economies and societies. Innis's interest i...
Legal Education and Legal Traditions: Selected Essays
This book deals with aspects of legal education and legal traditions. Part I includes chapters on teaching Law of the Sea, legal ethics and educating lawyers as ‘transaction cost engineers’ as well as comparison of teaching law in a refugee camp and in a Malaysian University. Part II on legal and philosophical traditions includes essays on what later philosophers would have commented on Plato’s arguments in the Crito regarding ‘absolute obligation to obey the law’ and what Socrates would have said on two conversations in the 19th century novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin regarding the morality and legality of harbouring runaway slaves. Part II concludes with two essays regarding the applic...
A to Z of Earth Scientists
Profiles more than 150 scientists from around the world who made important contributions to the study of earth science, including Don L. Anderson, Marie Luisa Crawford, Hans P. Eugster, Marshall Kay, and Manik Talwani.
The Deep Structure of Biology
The Deep Structure of Biology contains a chapter by editor Simon Conway Morris as well as: Nicola Clayton, Celia Deane-Drummond, Nathan Emery, Robert Foley, Nigel Franks, John Haught, Richard Lenski, George McGhee, Karl Niklas, Michael Ruse, Anthony Trewavas, Hal Whitehead.
