This question, so often asked by us in times of crisis and despair, or love and joy, expresses and indeed defines our sense of humanity. The question How should we live? is one that many ask in a crisis, jolted out of normal patterns of life. But that question is not always a simple request[…]
Is there a subjectivist alternative? One that starts with evolution? Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Thus, William Shakespeare in Macbeth. As the French novelist[…]
Newly found fossils point to a link between a rise in atmospheric oxygen and the first emergence of complex life on Earth. In a suspension of disbelief, the countless readers who have picked up J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books have readily accepted that Ents, the ancient treelike creatures of the fictional Fangorn forest, walk, talk[…]
Study has led to a much deeper understanding of what we mean when we speak of “life”. By Matt Brauer In my one post I mentioned in passing the feature article appearing in November’s issue of PLoS biology. In that paper, Richard Robinson describes some of the difficulties faced by researchers into the Origin of Life. The origin of replicating[…]