Product Description: An introduction to the history of genetics and the rethinking of evolutionism.

Product Description: History and Philosophy of Biology summarizes the major philosophical ideas that have attended the development of science in general and of biology in particular. The book then explores how the techniques and the concepts of the physical sciences have impacted biology...read more

Product Description: The remarkable but neglected story of Aristotle’s founding role in the scientific study of nature   Both a travelogue and a study of the origins of science, The Lagoon shows how an ancient thinker still has much to teach us today...read more

Product Description: A brilliant study of Aristotle as biologist The philosophical classics of Aristotle loom large over the history of Western thought, but the subject he most loved was biology. He wrote vast volumes about animals. He described them, classified them, told us where and how they live and how they develop in the womb or in the egg...read more

Product Description: Outsider Scientists describes the transformative role played by “outsiders” in the growth of the modern life sciences. Biology, which occupies a special place between the exact and human sciences, has historically attracted many thinkers whose primary training was in other fields: mathematics, physics, chemistry, linguistics, philosophy, history, anthropology, engineering, and even literature...read more

Product Description: Following on from the success of his two previous books, Remarkable Mathematicians and Remarkable Physicists, Ioan James now profiles 38 remarkable biologists from the last 400 years. The emphasis is on their varied life-stories, not on the details of their achievements, but when read in sequence their biographies, which are organised chronologically, convey in human terms something of the way in which biology has developed over the years...read more

Product Description: "Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved," Darwin famously concluded The Origin of Species, and for confirmation we look to...the guinea pig? How this curious creature and others as humble (and as fast-breeding) have helped unlock the mystery of inheritance is the unlikely story Jim Endersby tells in this book...read more

This book is the first devoted to modern biology’s innovators and iconoclasts: men and women who challenged prevailing notions in their fields. Some of these scientists were Nobel Prize winners, some were considered cranks or gadflies, some were in fact wrong. The stories of these stubborn dissenters are individually fascinating. Taken together, they provide unparalleled insights into the role of dissent and controversy in science and especially the growth of biological thought over the past century. Each of the book’s nineteen specially commissioned chapters offers a detailed portrait of the intellectual rebellion of a particular scientist working in a major area of biology--genetics, evolution, embryology, ecology, biochemistry, neurobiology, and virology as well as others. An introduction by the volume’s editors and an epilogue by R. C. Lewontin draw connections among the case studies and illuminate the nonconforming scientist’s crucial function of disturbing the comfort of those in the majority. By focusing on the dynamics and impact of dissent rather than on “winners” who are credited with scientific advances, the book presents a refreshingly original perspective on the history of the life sciences. Scientists featured in this volume:Alfred Russel Wallace Hans DrieschWilhelm JohannsenRaymond Arthur DartC. D. DarlingtonRichard GoldschmidtBarbara McClintockOswald T. AveryRoger SperryLeon CroizatVero Copner Wynne-EdwardsPeter MitchellHoward TeminMotoo KimuraWilliam D. HamiltonCarl WoeseStephen Jay GouldThelma RowellDaniel S. Simberloff

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Product Description: This very successful textbook is distinguished by a superior writing style that draws upon common student experiences to introduce economic concepts, making economic theory more accessible and interesting. "Case Studies" and numerous examples take advantage of students' intuitive knowledge of economics, building upon real-life situations...read more

Product Description: For the past twenty-five years John Moore has taught biology instructors how to teach biology--by emphasizing the questions people have asked about life through the ages and the ways natural philosophers and scientists have sought the answers...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This masterwork of intellectual history has been widely acclaimed since its publication in 1963. Though its main focus is on the question of animal generation, it is broadly conceived and situates the life sciences within the larger context of French Enlightenment thought and the history of institutions...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: . 1996 clean bright copy

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Dov Ospovat's book, originally published in 1981, has become generally accepted as one of the most influential books about Darwin published in recent years. Ospovat examines the period of 1838-1859, two decades preceding the publication of On the Origin of Species, in detail and shows that Darwin's views changed quite radically from initially believing that animals and plants were perfectly adapted to their environments, and that evolution only occurred when the environment changed, to believing that living things were not perfectly adapted, were in constant competition with each other, and hence were continually evolving. By placing Darwin within the other biological developments of the day, he is able to show that he was not the scientific recluse of popular myth. He also shows that there was a theological basis for much of Darwin's original 1838-1844 theory, and his later principle of divergence was influenced by his belief in evolutionary progress. (view table of contents)

Major biological discoveries since the early-seventeenth century are related to changing views on man's place in the universe and the nature of life (view table of contents)