Lives on Earth

genes

  • “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

  • Dawkins: Not One of Our Ancestors Was a Failure

    Richard Dawkins’s theme is upbeat: All organisms that have ever lived—every animal and plant, all bacteria and all fungi, every creeping thing, and all readers of this book—can look back at their ancestors and make the following proud claim: Not… Continue reading

  • Steven Pinker on Emotions and Genes

    Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works might well be subtitled “And the emotions too.” This terrific book offers a barrage of insights and connections about humans and evolution that can feel intoxicating. It stirs up the nature-nurture controversy with a… Continue reading

  • Emergent Phenomena: More Than the Sum of the Parts

    I’ve been seeing the word emergence more and more in the last few years. But apart from the obvious sense that something arises, the meaning of the term—and what the excitement is all about—haven’t  been clear to me. So a… Continue reading

  • Suicide and Evolution

    Where does suicide fit in the course of human evolution? Has natural selection been, so to speak, against suicide, or accepting of it, or indifferent to it? We might hope that evolution is gradually finding suicide to be disadvantageous and… Continue reading

  • Steven Pinker on Disgust, Sex, and Happiness

    Hearts and brains. Mind and body. We are quite sure that our thoughts take place in our heads. But what about our emotions? Sometimes we locate them in our hearts, sometimes vaguely in our bodies. But Stephen Pinker in his… Continue reading