I am a theoretical physicist and a practicing Christian. I was raised in a very loving but nonreligious household, and I didn’t seriously consider the possibility of God’s existence until I was a college student, when my twin brother came to faith and started to talk with me about it. In my subsequent journey to faith and the years thereafter, I read a number of books that changed my perspective on religion and convinced me that I could believe in God without compromising on my scientific view of the world. Chasing Proof, Finding Faith is the story of the journey I took, and the strange new world of faith I found on the other side.
I read this book when I was a grad student in physics at Harvard and a recent convert to Christianity.
The book was instrumental in shaping the way that I thought about the relationship between science and faith. In it, Plantinga lays out a compelling argument that despite their superficial concord, atheism, and science are actually in conflict with one another, and despite their superficial conflict, theism and science actually share a deep harmony with one another.
This book is a long-awaited major statement by a pre-eminent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, on one of our biggest debates - the compatibility of science and religion. The last twenty years has seen a cottage industry of books on this divide, but with little consensus emerging. Plantinga, as a top philosopher but also a proponent of the rationality of religious belief, has a unique contribution to make. His theme in this short book is that the conflict between science and theistic religion is actually superficial, and that at a deeper level they are in concord.
I’m an evolutionary biologist and a Wenner-Gren Fellow at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University, Sweden. My research focuses on the biology of genetic conflicts and what they can tell us about the evolution of conflict and cooperation more generally. I develop population genetic theory and perform comparative analyses to ask how and why such conflicts occur and how they fit into models of social evolution. I also work on the foundations of the so-called gene’s-eye view of evolution, also known as selfish gene theory. I studied at Edinburgh and Toronto and was a postdoc at Cornell and Harvard.
I did my PhD in biology, but one of the books that affected my thinking the most was written by a philosopher: Samir Okasha’s Evolution and the Levels of Selection. I came to biology not through a love of natural history, but through a fascination with the logic of evolution by natural selection. The debate over the gene’s-eye fitted perfectly into this and it led me into the huge literature in the philosophy of biology that deals with the so-called levels of selection debate – does natural selection act on genes, individuals, or groups? Okasha’s book is a great demonstration of how philosophy can help science.
Does natural selection act primarily on individual organisms, on groups, on genes, or on whole species? Samir Okasha provides a comprehensive analysis of the debate in evolutionary biology over the levels of selection, focusing on conceptual, philosophical and foundational questions. A systematic framework is developed for thinking about natural selection acting at multiple levels of the biological hierarchy; the framework is then used to help resolve outstanding issues. Considerable attention is paid to the concept of causality as it relates to the levels of selection, in particular the idea that natural selection at one hierarchical level can have effects that…
Sometimes, a book comes along that simply surprises you, which is exactly what happened
when I read The Parrot in the Mirror.
We (humans) don’t look much like birds,
but this book’s evolutionary and behavioral argument is that we are much more
similar to birds than you might possibly imagine. I was astonished and also
convinced – but you really need to read this book to find out why!
How similar are your choices, behaviours, and lifestyle to those of a parrot?
We humans are not like other mammals. We look like them, but we don't act like them. In fact, many of our defining human traits: our longevity, intelligence, monogamy and childrearing, and learning and language, all deep parts of what it means to be human, are far more similar to birds than to our fellow mammals. These similarities originate not from shared ancestors but from parallel histories. Our evolutionary stories have pushed humans and birds to the same solutions. In this book, Antone Martinho-Truswell explores these similarities…
I’m an educator at heart and have been teaching in high schools for over thirty years now. I get a kick out of helping young people see the world anew and think about ideas in ways that at first seem strange and challenging to them, both in the classroom and through my novels. Of course, to be any good at that, I have to be inquisitive and open myself, and there’s nothing like the topic of consciousness to make you feel feeble-minded and ill-informed. It’s such a wondrous topic because it sits at the precise meeting point of so many of our scientific, cultural, artistic, religious, and philosophical traditions.
The issues of free will and consciousness are, to my limited mind, inextricably linked. And so, while Dennett somewhat overpromised and underdelivered with his well-known Consciousness Explained (tremendously hard not to underdeliver with a title like that) here I think he’s much more on the money. I think of all the books that I’ve read which address, either directly or tangentially, the issue of how the mind works, this is the one that gave me the clearest new insight into how we might think about, well, thinking. Dennett is a fine thinker and an excellent communicator but he tends to lose nuance when he goes combative. This is one of his gentler books, and all the better for it.
Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments-drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy-that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally. In Freedom Evolves, Dennett seeks to place ethics on the foundation it…
Don’t let terms like “neuroscience” and “psychology” scare you away.
This text is a must-have for any writer curious about why people still love basic storytelling despite our technological advances. Storr makes learning fun through the use of myths, archetypes, and man’s ambition as well as the works of Jane Austen and pop culture favorites like Breaking Bad—perfectly curated examples to help us make our stories more compelling.
'If you want to write a novel or a script, read this book' Sunday Times
'The best book on the craft of storytelling I've ever read' Matt Haig
'Rarely has a book engrossed me more, and forced me to question everything I've ever read, seen or written. A masterpiece' Adam Rutherford
Who would we be without stories?
Stories mould who we are, from our character to our cultural identity. They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions, and shape our politics and beliefs. We use them to construct our relationships, to keep order in our…
I grew up in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York and spent many weekends hiking, camping, and fishing with my parents. Identifying and understanding the plants and animals around me was always interesting, and this love of nature has stayed with me as an adult. I now live near Lake Michigan and am an avid hiker, birdwatcher, and an Indiana Master Naturalist. I take endless inspiration from the natural world in my illustration work and believe that co-existing with, respecting, and preserving the natural world is central not just to the integrity of our planet, but to our very humanity.
This book is probably my favorite among natural history reading I’ve come across. A chance encounter at the library, I ended up buying a copy for myself as well as gifting it to several friends. Barnes weaves together short vignettes about science, observation, and personal encounters with nature organized from the tiniest life forms to some of the largest. Biologist JBS Haldane once said, “The universe is not only stranger than we imagine; it is stranger than we can imagine.” This book proves it with memorable anecdotes and a wonderful sense of kinship and compassion for life both like us and completely unlike us.
Life on Planet Earth is not weirder than we imagine. It's weirder than we are capable of imagining. Ten Million Aliens opens your eyes to the real marvels of the planet we live on.
I’ve long been fascinated by how life unfolds from a single fertilized egg cell containing just one set of DNA, whether it’s a human, mouse, frog, worm, or anything else. While studying for my PhD in the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, which combines brings together researchers working on development and cancer, and spending twelve years in science communication at Cancer Research UK, the world’s largest cancer research charity, I came to see cancer and development as two sides of the same coin: one process unfolding healthy life as egg becomes embryo, and the other ultimately bringing disease and death as a single cell grows into a deadly tumor.
On the surface, this fascinating story about the evolutionary journeys of diverse animal species ranging from lizards to porcupines to field mice may seem a strange choice to include in a list of books about cancer, but in fact, it holds many important lessons about how evolution works and how likely we are to get the same outcomes if we ran the tape of time again. In turn, this is vital information underpinning our new understanding of cancer as an evolutionary process within the body, which can potentially be steered through the application of clever treatment strategies to bring about long-term control or even cures.
A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works
Earth’s natural history is full of fascinating instances of convergence: phenomena like eyes and wings and tree-climbing lizards that have evolved independently, multiple times. But evolutionary biologists also point out many examples of contingency, cases where the tiniest change—a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze—caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force really play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes? And what does that say about life…
I am a biologist specialized in animal behavior and evolution. I write science nonfictions about behavior, evolution, and human nature for the general, intelligent audience. An avid reader myself, I “consume” at least a hundred books a year (mostly nonfictions but occasionally fictions when I have some leisure time) with a wide range of topics including science, nature, technology, psychology, economics, social justice, philosophy, and history. My favorite science books are those with new ideas and insights, an impeccable scientific rigor, and a strong, accessible, and concise writing style.
Cheating takes place in all organisms at all levels.
This book takes readers to cheating at the cell level, particularly cancer cells. It demonstrates to readers how cancer cells take the path of going rogue, refusing to die as they are preprogramed.
In light of this, fighting cancer is essentially fighting cells that defy their fate by cheating. This introduces a fresh strategy for tackling cancer.
A fundamental and groundbreaking reassessment of how we view and manage cancer
When we think of the forces driving cancer, we don't necessarily think of evolution. But evolution and cancer are closely linked because the historical processes that created life also created cancer. The Cheating Cell delves into this extraordinary relationship, and shows that by understanding cancer's evolutionary origins, researchers can come up with more effective, revolutionary treatments.
Athena Aktipis goes back billions of years to explore when unicellular forms became multicellular organisms. Within these bodies of cooperating cells, cheating ones arose, overusing resources and replicating out of control, giving…
I have been engaged as a teacher of religion and ecology since the first Earth Day 50 years ago. That has entailed writing some prize-winning books,Earth Community, Earth Ethics(1996) and Earth-honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key(2013). Now I want to pass along distilled learnings to my grandchildren as they face a planet in tumult. The form—love letters—and the audience—future generations as represented by my grandkids—moves me to focus on effective communication of a highly personal sort to young people on matters vital to their lives. It’s a nice bookend near the end of my own life.
My own work, even in retirement, entails teaching and writing on changes in planetary systems that impact us dramatically (e.g., climate change). To engage students it is most helpful to have a highly engaging account of Earth’s own dramatic history over its 4.6. billion years. This book provides that in non-technical, jargon-free language that anyone of high school and college age, as well as older, easily understands.
"[A]n exuberant romp through evolution, like a modern-day Willy Wonka of genetic space. Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function.” —Adrian Woolfson,The Washington Post
In the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story.
In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were…
I am, like so many other young people (yes, I still think of myself as young!), fascinated with dinosaurs and prehistory, and have been for as long as I can remember. What I really find interesting and engaging is the combination of the fact that they do not exist anymore and therefore are otherworldly with the fact that they are real and actually of this world!
What I really love about this book is that 1) it is written by experts in the field, including a PhD evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, 2) it has an excellent balance of illustrations and text, and 3) it places dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures in context as it tells the story of how they evolved through time.
"Evolving Planet" is based on the new permanent exhibition of the same name at the Field Museum (opened in spring 2006). The book takes readers on an inspiring journey through 4 billion years of life on Earth, from single-celled organisms to towering dinosaurs to woolly mammoths to humans. Unique fossils, photographs, illustrations and maps help bring the story to life. It includes a pronunciation guide, glossary and index.
