Lives on Earth

3.8 Billion Years

  • Summertime Blues

    Mid July, and summer turns hotter and drier. Most plants slow their growth and soon leaves will turn a slightly duller green. But the peak season begins for the thin stalks of bright, light-blue flowers that grow close along the… Continue reading

  • The Brain Speaks Out

    Good Morning. I’m pleased to see so many members here today. I’ll be speaking about the basic functions of my department, Head Quarters. It’s my belief that many current descriptions of the so-called “mind”—expressions such a “self-aware,” “highly intelligent,” “imaginative”—point to… Continue reading

  • Humboldt’s Vision of Nature

    Our ecological imagination—our sense of nature as a global, interconnected and sacred whole—has roots in many sources. A relatively unfamiliar one is the work of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), a manic, prolific explorer and naturalist of the German Romantic era. Humboldt’s… Continue reading

  • On The Cosmic Calendar, A Date To Remember

    Back in 1977, the cosmologist Carl Sagan wrote a book called The Dragons of Eden. Sagan described the long evolution that preceded humans and argued for the likelihood of other intelligence evolving elsewhere in the cosmos during all that time.… Continue reading

  • “We Are All Mutants”

    In The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (2016), Richard Dawkins writes: The word ‘mutation’ conjures up images of grotesquely distorted creatures, perhaps generated by unscrupulous experimenters, or springing up as a consequence of some radioactive catastrophe. The truth… Continue reading

  • Genes Are Like Sentences, Genomes Are Like Books

    It’s a little embarrassing to admit but sometimes I lose track of just how the common terms in genetics all fit together. I learned them late in life and never used them to make a living, and now I pay… Continue reading

  • Life Before Fossils?

    Seeing may not always mean believing, but when it comes to creatures from millions of years ago, we know it helps. Even a skeptic would have difficulty doubting the reality of dinosaurs after seeing the bones in museums and the… Continue reading