Cascoly - Amazon Books: Evolution & Biology

Cascoly - Amazon Books

Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors -Nicholas Wade. This is an excellent recap of the last half century of research into human origins. Easily the best book on evolution for the non-scientist since �Beak of the Finch�. �Before the Dawn� will be familiar to anyone who reads the NY Times Tuesday Science section � many of the discussions in the book started as articles Wade has written over many years there. Now he synthesizes those pieces and shows how a new consensus is developing and how once heretical theories like Greenberg�s on language are being supported by new research in genetics and molecular biology. As others have mentioned, some of his suggestions need more support, but in a time when scientific ignorance is getting worse, this is a great book to recommend for anyone.

Evolution of Cooperation Robert Axelrod If living things evolve through competition, how can cooperation ever emerge? Despite the abundant evidence of cooperation all around us, there existed no purely naturalistic answer to this question until 1979, when Robert Axelrod famously ran a computer tournament featuring a standard game-theory exercise called The Prisoner's Dilemma. To everyone's surprise, the program that won the tournament, named Tit for Tat, was not only the simplest but the most "cooperative" entrant. This unexpected victory proved that cooperation--one might even say altruism--is mathematically possible and therefore needs no hidden hand or divine agent to create and sustain it.

From Publishers Weekly

The intersection of genetics, evolutionary science and molecular biology has produced remarkable findings in recent years. Jumping genes--pieces of DNA that move about the chromosomes--have been found to play an influential role. Parasites that actually live inside DNA can trigger mutations. Many biologists, among them UCLA professor Wills, believe that the process of evolution has grown easier over the eons because certain gene patterns turn some species into ever-more-agile adapters to environmental changes. How butterflies mimic look-alike cousins, the mix of marsupial and placental mammals in Australia and South America and the reign of the therapsids during the 50-million-year stretch before the dinosaurs are some of the intriguing phenomena Wills discusses in this lively primer of modern evolutionary theory. He uses apt analogies and examples but avoids oversimplification. Illustrations.

Other recommended books on evolution:

The Structure of Evolutionary Theory Stephen Jay Gould

Can Science Explain Religion?

The Blank Slate Steven Pinker

Darwin's Dangerous Idea Dan Dennett

Noah's Flood

Richard Dawkins