Product Description: A groundbreaking interpretation of evolution as the work of Nature’s intelligence • Refutes the orthodox view of evolution as a mindless process driven by chance • Explains why context is more important than mutation in evolutionary innovation • Shows how, by recognizing Nature’s innovative and creative powers, we can overcome our social and environmental challenges with a new green science of evolution Darwin’s theory of evolution is undoubtedly one of the most important scientific ideas of the modern age, explaining the existence of both life and consciousness without recourse to divine intervention...read more

Product Description: Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject? With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexküll embarks on a remarkable exploration of the unique social and physical environments that individual animal species, as well as individuals within species, build and inhabit...read more

Product Description: WINNER OF THE BOOKBINDER'S GUILD OF NEW YORK 2009 AWARD FOR BEST NONFICTION HARDCOVER! On DEATH . . . What is shared by spawning Pacific salmon, towering trees, and suicidal bacteria? In his lucid and concise exploration of how and why things die, Tyler Volk explains the intriguing ways creatures-including ourselves-use death to actually enhance life...read more

Product Description: In a thought-provoking, humorous, and engaging style, Dorion Sagan combines philosophy, science, and an understanding of illusion to probe the deep questions of existence.Operating on the precept that the universe is far weirder than we might imagine, Sagan-- son of acclaimed scientists Carl Sagan and Lynn Margulis--uses his knowledge of philosophy, science, sleight-of-hand magic, and the fantastical writings of Philip K...read more

Product Description: Scientists, theologians, and philosophers have all sought to answer the questions of why we are here and where we are going. Finding this natural basis of life has proved elusive, but in the eloquent and creative Into the Cool, Eric D...read more

Theorizes that the acquisition of new genomes by symbiotic merger is a more important source of speciation than random mutation, citing flaws in modern synthesis while presenting arguments for the actual sources of inherited variation that give rise to new species. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

Lynn Margulis, one of the most provocative scientific thinkers of our time, and her son, the writer Dorion Sagan, here present a selection from their many essays published in the last decade and a half. Margulis's scientific contributions are legendary. Her proposal that eukaryotic cells (the cells of all multicellular animals and plants) are made up of symbiotic unions of more primitive cells was at first widely derided but is now mainstream science. She has described the previously unrecognized role microbial life plays in the maintenance of all life on earth. And she is, with James Lovelock, one of the founders of Gaia theory. In these essays, perhaps better than in any of her other books, one can see how these apparently unrelated interests combine into a single, coherent scientific world-view about the natural tendency of living systems to form complex interactive communities. This is Margulis and Sagan's fourth book.

Product Description: A breathtaking account of the "unnatural" history of consciousness and human intelligence Taking its cue from The Dragons of Eden, Carl Sagan's 1977 classic and New York Times bestseller, Up from Dragons traces the development of human intelligence back to its animal roots in an attempt to account for the vast differences between our species and all those that came before us...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: How did life begin? How is it changing? How do we understand our place in the world in relation to other living beings? The Nature of Life: Readings in Biology encourages inquiry-based discussion of scientific writings that attempt to answer universal questions about the nature of life...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: "Comedic, sardonically acute insight...opens with a quote you won't find on any billboard." Melissa Harrison

Product Description: Half a century ago, before the discovery of DNA, the Austrian physicist and philosopher Erwin Schrödinger inspired a generation of scientists by rephrasing the fascinating philosophical question: What is life? Using their expansive understanding of recent science to wonderful effect, acclaimed authors Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan revisit this timeless question in a fast-moving, wide-ranging narrative that combines rigorous science with philosophy, history, and poetry...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

A look at the sexual impulse that is at the root of our very biological existence includes scientific discussions on the origins of gender, sexual strategies of life forms from mitochondria to humans, and the language of sexuality. 15,000 first printing. (view table of contents)

Product Description: BACK IN PRINT WITH A REVISED PREFACEMicrocosmos brings together the remarkable discoveries of microbiology of the past two decades and the pioneering research of Dr. Margulis to create a vivid new picture of the world that is crucial to our understanding of the future of the planet...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Explores the world of microorganisms by way of drawings and photographs, providing a framework for viewing life in the microcosm

Explores the complex factors and long line of 'ancestors' that have contributed to human sexuality and human sexual behavior

Describes the earth as a living biological identity and discusses the extent to which biospheres will be produced on earth rather than in space

Product Description: A fascinating and detailed examination of the evolution-and occasional devolution-of sexuality in microorganisms and more complex forms of life. Margulis and Sagan trace sex from its inauspicious beginnings in bacteria threatened by ultraviolet radiation to its intimate relation with the origin of mitotic division of nucleated cells...read more

Describes the earth biosphere as a closed ecological system and tells how humans are developing small-scale biospheres to allow them to live in space