In This Explains Everything, John Brockman, founder and publisher of Edge.org, asked experts in numerous fields and disciplines to come up with their favorite explanations for everyday occurrences. Why do we recognize patterns? Is there such a thing as po
With the publication of the international bestseller The Selfish Gene some thirty years ago, Richard Dawkins powerfully captured a newly emerging way of understanding evolution—a gene's eye view. Dawkins went on to publish five more bestselling books, i
Nineteen brilliantly led conversations with a sterling roster of natural and social scientists, shedding new light on their ideas, discoveries—and lives. How does Jane Goodall’s relationship with her dog Rusty inform her thinking about our relationshi
At the close of the 20th century, what do we know about why we are here, on this planet, in this universe? To address this and other big questions, journalist Wim Kayzer invited a diverse cast of six of today's great scientific thinkers to discuss, debate
Why do living things and physical phenomena take the forms they do? Analyzing the mathematical and physical aspects of biological processes, this historic work, first published in 1917, has become renowned as well for the poetry of is descriptions.
"A glorious success...The science manages to be as exciting and spellbinding as the juiciest gossip" (San Franscisco Chronicle) in the story of the discovery of "Lucy"--the oldest, best-preserved skeleton of any erect-walking human ancestor ever found.Whe
When it comes to big science, very few things are conclusively known. From Quantum Mechanics to Natural Selection, what we have instead are theories - ideas explain why things happen the way they do. We don't know for certain these are correct - no one ev
Richard Leakey's personal account of his fossil hunting and landmark discoveries at Lake Turkana, his reassessment of human prehistory based on new evidence and analytic techniques, and his profound pondering of how we became "human" and what being "human
Discusses recent human fossil discoveries at Lake Turkana in Kenya & explains what has been learned about the evolution, anatomy & social behavior of prehistoric humans from these remains.AcknowledgmentsPrefacePeople of the lakeA question of survi