Review

"Showcases the biologist's special talents for extrapolating global theories from arcane and detailed research... Enlightening and thought-provoking." -- Library Journal

Review

"A fascinating collection from one of the most influential thinkers of our time."--Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate

"A wonderful sample of the writings of one of our most distinguished evolutionists and a great champion of biodiversity. Wilson is also one of the broadest thinkers on the intellectual stage today. This is an especially important book for a time when science in the United States is under attack by forces seeking to reverse the enlightenment. "--Paul R. Ehrlich, author of Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect

"Edward Wilson is among the great scientists, thinkers, and authors of my lifetime. In this book he gathers and places in context his own key writings from 1949 to the present. The result is both a moving book, and a treasure for those interested in science and history"--Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

Nature Revealed : Selected Writings, 1949-2006, by Edward O. Wilson

Why do women stabilize our societies? Why can we enjoy and understand Shakespeare? Why are fruitflies uniform? Why do omnivorous eating habits aid our survival? Why is Mona Lisa’s smile beautiful? – Is there any answer to these questions? This book shows that the statement: "weak links stabilize complex systems" holds the answers to all of the surprising questions above. The author (recipient of several distinguished science communication prizes) uses weak (low affinity, low probability) interactions as a thread to introduce a vast variety of networks from proteins to ecosystems. Many people, from Nobel Laureates to high-school students have helped to make the book understandable to all interested readers. This unique book and the ideas it develops will have a significant impact on many, seemingly diverse, fields of study.

Weak Links : Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks

To be useful, scientific research needs to be explained clearly to others--to colleagues, to administrators, to foundations and governmental bodies, and to the public. This thoroughly revised edition of the classic How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper gives beginning scientists and experienced researchers alike practical advice on writing about their work and publishing what they write. The core of the book consists of a "how-to" guide to writing and publishing research articles for scientific journals, explaining every step of the process, from choosing a suitable journal for your work to presenting the results and citing references. In addition to the information on writing for scientific journals, this book provides additional advice for the scientist of the 21st century: BL What ethical issues are important in scientific publishing? BL What should a scientist know about rights and permissions? BL How does a scientist write a grant proposal, or prepare progress reports for administrators? BL What should a scientist know to work well with the media, or to write for a general audience? All of this practical information makes How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper the essential guide that scientists need for succeeding in the competitive environment of today.

How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper

Cobb County textbook stickers aside, evolutionary natural selection offers a pretty straightforward explanation for the forward march of species through history; a mutation that better equips a given organism to survive is passed along to its heirs, becoming more common as successive generations flourish. The actual process by which mutations happen, however, was far more mysterious until scientists turned to the study of evolutionary development (known by the somewhat unfortunate moniker "Evo Devo"). One such scientist is Carroll, a genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who guides us along the broad contours of development ("the process through which a single-celled egg gives rise to a complex, multibillion-celled animal") and the ways in which its study sheds light on the underlying mechanisms of evolution. He explains in concrete terms how small changes in a species's genetic code of a given species can lead to dramatic differences in physiology is the "missing piece" of evolutionary theory, Carroll argues. The book is as much a salvo in the continuing battles between creationists and evolutionists as it is a popularization of science, and Carroll combines clear writing with the deep knowledge gained from a lifetime of genetics research, first laying out the principles of evolutionary development and then showing us how they can explain both the progression of species in the fossil record and outliers like a six-fingered baseball pitcher.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

Power Laws, Scale-free Networks and Genome Biology deals with crucial aspects of the theoretical foundations of systems biology, namely power law distributions and scale-free networks which have emerged as the hallmarks of biological organization in the post-genomic era. The chapters in the book not only describe the interesting mathematical properties of biological networks but moves beyond phenomenology, toward models of evolution capable of explaining the emergence of these features. The collection of chapters, contributed by both physicists and biologists, strives to address the problems in this field in a rigorous but not excessively mathematical manner and to represent different viewpoints, which is crucial in this emerging discipline. Each chapter includes, in addition to technical descriptions of properties of biological networks and evolutionary models, a more general and accessible introduction to the respective problems. Most chapters emphasize the potential of theoretical systems biology for discovery of new biological phenomena.

Power Laws, Scale-Free Networks and Genome Biology

Review
Will Wilson, Duke University : A great book. Self-organization in Complex Ecosystems brings a whole new set of tools from statistical physics into the realm of studying ecological systems. Most, if not all, of these tools have been floating around the ecological literature for quite some time, in great part due to these authors themselves, but this book is the best overview yet. It will soon become the foundation for many courses and a major resource sitting on ecologists' bookshelves.
Robert M. May, University of Oxford : This book is an outstandingly good summary of where we currently stand in the field of ecology. It draws together, in a clear and synoptic way, a large variety of new ideas and supporting them where possible and appropriate by data.

Book Description

Can physics be an appropriate framework for the understanding of ecological science? Most ecologists would probably agree that there is little relation between the complexity of natural ecosystems and the simplicity of any example derived from Newtonian physics. Though ecologists have long been interested in concepts originally developed by statistical physicists and later applied to explain everything from why stock markets crash to why rivers develop particular branching patterns, applying such concepts to ecosystems has remained a challenge.

Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems is the first book to clearly synthesize what we have learned about the usefulness of tools from statistical physics in ecology. Ricard Sol� and Jordi Bascompte provide a comprehensive introduction to complex systems theory, and ask: do universal laws shape the structure of ecosystems, at least at some scales? They offer the most compelling array of theoretical evidence to date of the potential of nonlinear ecological interactions to generate nonrandom, self-organized patterns at all levels.

Tackling classic ecological questions--from population dynamics to biodiversity to macroevolution--the book's novel presentation of theories and data shows the power of statistical physics and complexity in ecology. Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems will be a staple resource for years to come for ecologists interested in complex systems theory as well as mathematicians and physicists interested in ecology.

Self-Organization in Complex Ecosystems

Physics affects the way we live and, ultimately, how life itself functions. This fully rewritten new edition of a classic text investigates key frontiers in modern physics. Exploring our universe, from the particles within atoms to the stars making up galaxies, it reveals the vital role invisible mechanisms play in the world around us, and explains new techniques, from nano-engineering and brain research to the latest advances in high-speed data networks and custom-built materials. Written by leading international experts, each of the nineteen chapters will fascinate scientists in all disciplines, as well as anyone wanting to know more about the world of physics.

The New Physics : For the Twenty-First Century

We have no idea whether thoroughbred horses love to race.

I have been a racing fan for years, and my point is not that horse racing is cruel or morally ambiguous.

I think the sense of obligation runs at a deeper, even subliminal level. We are responsible for racehorses because we in a very real sense created them.

Every thoroughbred is descended from one of three stallions. 95 percent of the thoroughbreds alive today are descendants of Eclipse, bred by a son of King George II and born during a solar eclipse in 1764.

Our Creation, Our Concern

Researchers have revealed that the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees exchanged genes — they had sex — a million or so years more recently than we had thought.

A less salacious but more salubrious use for this data is to observe, in rich detail, how organisms are made and how they evolve.

We can examine evolution with a sophistication and subtlety that, even 10 years ago, we could only dream of.

Affairs to Remember

What favored the evolution of such distinctive brainpower in humans or, more precisely, in our hominid ancestors? One approach to answering this question is to examine the factors that might have shaped other creatures that show high intelligence and to see whether the same forces might have operated in our forebears. Several birds and nonhuman mammals, for instance, are much better problem solvers than others: elephants, dolphins, parrots, crows. But research into our close relatives, the great apes, is surely likely to be illuminating.

Scholars have proposed many explanations for the evolution of intelligence in primates, the lineage to which humans and apes belong (along with monkeys, lemurs and lorises). Over the past 13 years, though, my group's studies of orangutans have unexpectedly turned up a new explanation that we think goes quite far in answering the question.

Scientific American: Why Are Some Animals So Smart?