By: John Priest,
on 10/9/2016
From the publication of the Origin, Darwin enthusiasts have been building a kind of secular religion based on its ideas, particularly on the dark world without ultimate meaning implied by the central mechanism of natural selection.
The post Darwinism as religion: what literature tells us about evolution appeared first on OUPblog.
By: JulieF,
on 8/16/2016
Powell’s City of Books occupies 1.6 acres of retail floor space in downtown Portland, Oregon and is one of my favorite places in the world. My first time there, I searched out the chemistry shelves–and was slightly disappointed. I counted two cases of chemistry books sandwiched between biology and physics, which had eight cases each.
The post R.J.P. Williams and the advantages of thinking like a chemist appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Hannah Charters,
on 4/28/2016
Dinosaurs, literally meaning 'terrible lizards', were first recognized by science, and named by Sir Richard Owen (who preferred the translation ‘fearfully great’), in the 1840's. In the intervening 170 years our knowledge of dinosaurs, including whether they all really died out 65 million years ago, has changed dramatically. Take a crash course on the history of the dinosaurs with our infographic.
The post A timeline of the dinosaurs [infographic] appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Kathleen Sargeant,
on 11/28/2015
Does culture really have a life of its own? Are cultural trends, fashions, ideas, and norms like organisms, evolving and weaving our minds and bodies into an ecological web? You hear a pop song a few times and suddenly find yourself humming the tune. You unthinkingly adopt the vocabulary and turns of phrase of your circle of friends.
The post The life of culture appeared first on OUPblog.
By: JulieF,
on 8/14/2015
Many of us involved in teaching botany feel a sense of urgency in our profession. Botany departments, botany majors, and botany curricula have gradually disappeared from most colleges and universities in the US,
The post Studying botany in college appeared first on OUPblog.
By: JulieF,
on 8/12/2015
The agents of natural selection cause evolutionary changes in population gene pools. They include a plethora of familiar abiotic and biotic factors that affect growth, development, and reproduction in all living things.
The post The hidden side of natural selection appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Sara Pinotti,
on 8/8/2015
My first experience of an academic conference as a biology books editor at Oxford University Press was of sitting in a ballroom in Ottawa in July 2012 listening to 3000 evolutionary biologists chanting ‘I’m a African’ while a rapper danced in front of a projection of Charles Darwin
The post Looking forward to ESEB 2015 appeared first on OUPblog.
