Science   The Red Queen-Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature Matt Ridley   It is said of second law of thermodynamics that if any new theory in physics falls foul of this law it is bound to be doomed. In biological sciences a similar stature can be granted to Darwin’s theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. In modern biology all facts of life have to be explained in the light of this theory. It is now accepted that human anatomy and physiology are products of this evolution. But human nature was thought to be in a different league. It was argued to be a product of human culture. It was believed that animal behaviour could not have any parallel in human nature. Former was a product of inherited instincts while later was learnt. This view prevailed among biologist throughout the first half of twentieth century. Edward Wilson’s ‘Sociobiology’ challenged this opinion and the last four to five decades have witnessed a meteoric growth in Evolutionary Psychology, wherein...

                                                                                                                                                            Science   Seven Clues to the Origin of Life: A Scientific Detective Story A.G. Cairns-Smith               Darwin, in the final paragraph of his iconic book 'On the Origin of Species' composed a few lines of ethereal beauty. In a book that is not, otherwise acclaimed for its lyrical quality and sublime prose, these words never fail to move me profoundly even after I h...

Science   The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution Richard Dawkins                   Richard Dawkins is perhaps the most articulate and fierce proponent of the theory of Evolution today. He has authored many books on various facets of evolution, but had not collected and discussed the extant evidence for evolution in one place. In this book he has done this. He has mounted a terrific, unassailable and mammoth counterattack on the opponents of Evolution, the so-called believers in the theory of Intelligent Design, the Creationists. He calls them ‘history-deniers’, the 40-percenters. He explains citing believable allegories how deniers of evolution deny history. And the name, 40-percenters, because forty percent Americans deny that humans evolved from animals and believe that we were created by God in last 10,000 years. He presents incontrovertible evidence, one after another, in a...

Science   The Inflationary Universe-The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins Alan H Guth   There is a bewitching charm in contemplating the origin of universe. I’ve read innumerable books on the subject but the spell the first book cast only gets denser with every new book. Mere size of the universe numbs the senses. Our world, our dreams, our past, our future are all pinioned to earth which is merely a moderate sized planet in a planetary system revolving around one insignificant star, the Sun, which is one among hundred billion such stars in the galaxy Milky Way, in a universe comprising hundred billion other similar galaxies. Now, hundred billion is a huge number. If someone stacked hundred billion sheets of paper, the pile would reach a staggering six thousand miles in space. I can think of only one subject which is as absorbing, sublime and humbling; the origin of complex life forms on earth.   Alan Guth, a theoretical physicist was in the vanguard ...

Science/Biology/Biography   The Forgetting- Understanding Alzheimer’s: A Biography of a Disease David Shenk   Being alive is to continuously experience the world as it impinges on our senses. These experiences leave an imprint on our minds in the form of memories. From these memories we weave a universe that we carry within us till we die. Memory is central to our existence. It tells us who we are and how we are progressing in time. There cannot be meaningful thought in its absence. Neither can there be sustained emotions. If a person is deprived of memory, he ceases to be a human in the most fundamental sense. He loses the sense of self and of the world which surrounds him.   Our brain is snugly enclosed in a bony vault. It does not experience the world directly. Our senses feed it information in form of neural activity. This activates various synaptic transmissions among billions of neurons in brain. It is through these electro-chemical signals that brain ...

                                                                                                                                                     Science Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics Richard H. Thaler Two young Israeli psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1974 published an article titled ‘Judgement Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases’ in the Science journal. This article unleashed a ceaseless upheaval in the world of economics that gradually led to the birth of Behavioural Economics. Richard Thaler, an academician, was shaken irrecoverably when he read this article....

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                                Science The Blind Watchmaker Richard Dawkins Life in its various forms represents the most sophisticated and the most elegant creation in universe. Intricacy of anatomy and physiology of each and every part of the body of an organism is mind boggling. Most organic creatures have evolved incredibly intri...

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                    Science A Brief History of Time From the Big Bang to Black Holes             I first read this book a few years back. This was my first book on cosmology and if I remember correctly, I hadn’t read any other book on popular science till then. To me Big Bang was just a very loud and huge explosion. How the heck did this create th...

                                                                                                                                            Science/Faith Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible Jerry A. Coyne For long I harboured a view that science is good at answering ‘what and how’ questions on life and universe, while the most vital ‘why’ questions belong to the realm of religion. In last decade I read some books on the nature and origin of universe. Many of these were written by thinkers and scientists who have been in the forefront of this quest. This reading informs me, with as conclusive evidence as human...

Science Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? Paul Davies Since time immemorial man has repeatedly asked these questions; why was this universe created, what is the role of man in it? Progress of science and human reason (and philosophy) gave us finer and more convincing explanations to these basic questions but one question always remained in the end; why this particular explanation? Every theory; Big Bang, Inflationary Universe, Multiverse, or Intelligent Design, leads to this infinite regression of why this particular theory and who chose and why he chose this particular theory to create universe? How did He come into existence? Einstein in his last days was frenetically looking for the ultimate Grand Unified Theory (GUT) which would unite all the forces in the universe and provide a simple explanation for its existence. But success eluded him and more than sixty years after his death physicists are still looking for this holy grail of science. Str...

Memoir/Science Double Helix- A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA James D. Watson Discovery of the structure of DNA molecule has been hailed as one of the foremost scientific feat of twentieth century. DNA is the molecule of life. Thus, when Francis Crick ‘winged in to the Eagle (a bar at Cambridge) to tell everyone within hearing distance that we had found the secret of life’, he was in fact mouthing the plain truth, though making Watson ‘slightly queasy’. This short book is an account of events which led to this ingenious and monumental discovery, written by one of the lead players in this quest, James D. Watson. Watson was then merely twenty-four years old. He has written these memoirs as he then saw the world, the events, and personalities involved, i.e., through the eyes of a young scientist who is in a hurry to make his mark in the world of science and earn a Noble Prize. Narration is exceedingly frank and unpretentious. There is no allus...

Science The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins We have found the secret of life- blurted Francis Crick in a bar soon after he and Watson first discovered that they had correctly deciphered the structure of DNA. That Genes are the storehouse of all information which is required to produce and then nurture the body that contains them, be it a single celled bacterium, a hundred feet oak tree or the most complex machine, the human being with a mind that contemplates on its own origin, is a fact known to most. And from this it seems logical to infer that genes fulfil a vital function of the body lodging them. In his first book The Selfish Gene , Richard Dawkins sets out to dispel this erroneous belief. Genes are not for bodies, but bodies are for Genes. This is the central theme of the book. The Selfish Gene theory of nature is Richard Dawkins’ theory of Genecentric world. He argues that Darwinian evolution does not work at the level of species or groups of living beings, but at the ...

                                                                                                                                                   Science The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of Universe Steven Weinberg Urge to ruminate over the origin of universe and life is dateless and ubiquitous. Once the body is well clothed, fed, secure and sufficiently sexed, nothing else satisfies mind as well as the pursuance of this eternal quest. All religions, cultures and schools of philosophy have speculated on these seemingly insuperable queries from time immemorial. But the most thrilling and bew...

****/*****                                                                                                                                  Science How Mind Works Steven Pinker             Human mind, as distinct from brain but ineluctably linked to it (like digestion with gut, respiration with lungs), defines and distinguishes our species. We not only reproduce, eat, defecate but think of past and fret over future. We speculate on imaginary situations and how these could have affected our past and might change our future. We think of beauty, we enjoy and create art and literature, we deeply value mor...

***/*****                                                                                                                                       Science Factfulness: Ten reasons why we are wrong about the world and why things are better than you think Hans Rosling Human mind evolved to proffer certain advantage to its owner, so that the latter could survive better in its environment and consequently leave behind more copies of its genes. Knowledge of imminent dangers lurking just around the corner, choice about nutritious food, ways to procure a healthy mate and nurture a large brood of children; these skills helped in out-breeding other species....

**1/2/*****                                                                                                                                                      Science Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice To All Creation-The Definitive Guide To The Evolutionary Biol...

*** 1/2 /*****                                                                                                    Science From Eternity to here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time Sean Carroll Time has baffled philosophers, scientists, and the masses since the dawn of thought. It is impossible to imagine a world without time and it is equally difficult to accept time just as another dimension of our universe. Our existence and even the infinite universe with its billions of stars seems ...