Bøger i Princeton Science Library serien

More than fifty illustrations highlight a provocative study tracing the origins of culture as man now knows it back to the early biological evolution of animals.

How do scientists look at chance, or randomness, and chaos in physical systems? This book answers this question for a general audience.

Some 250 million years ago, the Earth suffered the greatest biological crisis in its history. Extinction is a paleontological mystery story that provides a fascinating overview of the evidence for and against a whole host of hypotheses concerning this cataclysmic event that unfolded at the end of the Permian--and set the stage for the development of life as we know it today.

Are the problems we define and pursue freely chosen according to our conscious interests? Or does the historical process itself determine which phenomena merit examination at any one time? This title discusses these issues in the far-ranging philosophical terms, while illustrating them with specific examples.