reproduction
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Stem Cells: How To Build a Body
Until recently I didn’t know much about stem cells except that they produce other kinds of cells and that the medical research on them was controversial. But in the context of the history of life, it turns out, their importance… Continue reading
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It’s Diversity All the Way Down
“The most impressive aspect of the living world is its diversity. No two individuals in sexually reproducing populations are the same, nor are any two populations, species, or higher taxa [categories of organisms]. Wherever one looks in nature, one finds… Continue reading
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Our Actual “Eve”
She lived about 150,000 years ago in southern Africa. These days she is known as Mitochondrial Eve. The “Eve” part is a little misleading since unlike the Biblical Eve, Mitochondrial Eve wasn’t the first or only woman alive at the… Continue reading
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400 Million Years of Ferns
Ferns are all leaf, all the time—no celebrated flower, no seduction of the insect. At the tips of green sprouts, curled fiddleheads unroll while leaflets widen behind them like the wakes behind boats. My store-bought Boston fern, tended for years… Continue reading
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Feeling Old? Envy the Lobster
Death may be difficult to accept, but it is a clear state of affairs: when an organism no longer lives, it has died. Aging, however—wrinkling, weakening, deteriorating and the rest of the assault—seems less self-explanatory. Why does it take place?… Continue reading
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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
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The Brain’s Offspring
A theme of this blog has been that the purpose of life—our sense of a direction, or our craving for one—is rooted in our biological drive to survive and thrive. I’ve felt confident in that belief, but I’ve also been… Continue reading
Lives on Earth 