Lives on Earth

language

  • 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

  • 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

  • “There’s No Natural Selection For Happiness”

    “Like evolution, history disregards the happiness of individual organisms” (243) writes Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harari takes us through early human history to note its indifference to personal well-being and its drive toward population growth—two… Continue reading

  • How Language Encourages Belief in an Afterlife

    People believe in life after death for many reasons. A contributing factor, one that goes unnoticed, are certain characteristics of nouns and verbs in English and other languages. Essentially, the way nouns and verbs work help make it easy for… Continue reading

  • A World Without Blue

    I was surprised to learn recently (thanks, iain carstairs) that Homer, despite his descriptions of the sky and the “wine-dark sea,” never once used the word blue in the Iliad or Odyssey, composed nearly 3000 years ago. Why? Ancient Greek… Continue reading

  • “Life is….”

    Is life fragile? Or is it tough, persistent?  And in such phrases, what do we mean by the word life ? People like to offer each other such phrases as “life is fragile” and “life is fleeting,” often after watching news… Continue reading

    “Life is….”