Elizabeth Hennessy— On a sunny day in October 1835, a twenty-six-year-old Charles Darwin hiked from the parched coast of Santiago Island in the Galápagos archipelago to the island’s green, damp highlands. After a long walk, he sat in the shade and watched the island’s giant tortoises as they ambled along
Mike Unwin— You needn’t be a birder to recognize an owl. The round face and large, forward-facing eyes immediately distinguish it from any other bird. And it is arguably this face—with its superficially human expressions—that explains why owls have maintained such a hold on our imaginations. It has led us to personify the
Scott Solomon— In today’s world, it’s easy to imagine that the evolutionary forces that gave rise to our species are no longer at work. Nature may be “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson observed, but the callous forces of nature seem hardly to affect us when we live in
When you see dug-up primate bones at a natural history museum or in the science classroom, it can be difficult to fully grasp the notion that they belonged to beings that lived and breathed millennia ago. Even more difficult is to visualize what now extinct or evolved animals actually looked
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Imagine working at an excavation site on a mission to unearth pieces of our prehistoric past. And suddenly you discover a skull underneath mounds of dirt, the remains of a distant ancestor who has remained hidden for millennia. Such a discovery was celebrated in Georgia earlier this month
Follow @yaleSCIbooks In The Value of Species, Edward L. McCord both celebrates the immense breadth of life forms found on earth—from the rainforests and oceans to the prairies and deserts—and defends its value in the face of ever-more-urgent environment threats to biodiversity. Drawing on concepts from philosophy, law, and ethics
A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life indicates that the number of people claiming no religious affiliation is on the rise. In response, Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary theorist and critic of religion, has stated he is “optimistic” about this trend. For Dawkins and cohorts
Follow @yaleSCIbooks The Dwight H. Terry Lectures are an annual two-week lecture series that presents leading scholars in religion, science, and philosophy who reflect on how religion can embrace advances in scientific fields of inquiry and remain applicable in our everyday lives. Yale University Press publishes a print accompaniment to
Follow @yaleSCIbooks Christopher Lane, Professor of English at Northwestern University and author of The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty writes on the misperception that Christianity and Darwinism are and have always been incompatible. His new book traces the thought of the Victorian age through scientific,
Julie Taymor’s out on Broadway, yellow sac spiders are in at auto dealers. Recently, Henry Fountain at the New York Times explained why scientists are having such a hard time replicating spider silk, the stuff behind Spider-Man’s superpowers and Mazda executives’ fears that the small arachnid stowaway could cause its