San Antonio College Library

In a Tear at the Edge of Creation, the award-winning physicist Marcelo Gleiser argues that the quest for a Theory of Everything is fundamentally misguided: imbalance, asymmetry, and imperfection - not order - are the engines of creation. Gleiser walks us through the basic and cutting-edge science that fueled his own transformation from unifier to doubter: a fascinating scientific quest that leads him - and us - to a new understanding of what it is...

James Lovelock details the development and evolution of his Gaia hypothesis and through the use of computer graphics and animation explains the Daisyworld climatic prototype.

"Franklin M. Harold's On Life reveals what science can tell us about the living world. All creatures, from bacteria and redwoods to garden snails and humans, belong to a single biochemical family. We all operate by the same principles and are all made up of cells, either one or many. We flaunt capacities that far exceed those of inanimate matter, yet we stand squarely within the material world. So what is life, anyway? How do living things function,...

Taking nothing for granted, this volume brings together great thinkers from across disciplines who discuss whether or not the physiochemical properties of water are biocentrically 'fine-tuned' for the existence and evolution of life.

We explore the ingredients needed for an intelligent civilisation to evolve in the universe - the need for a benign star, for a habitable planet, for life to spontaneously arise on such a planet and the time required for intelligent life to evolve and build a civilisation. Experts weigh the evidence and attempt to provide an answer to the puzzle of our apparent solitude.

We explore our origins, place and destiny in the universe. We all start our lives thinking that we are at the centre of the universe, surrounded by our family and the world as it spins around us. But the urge to explore is strong. Our innate human curiosity has led us from feeling that we are at the centre of everything, to our modern understanding of our true place in space and time - that we are living 13.8 billion years from the beginning of the...

Beginning in Ethiopia, we discover how the universe played a key role in our ascent from apeman to spaceman by driving the expansion of our brains. But big brains alone did not get us to space. To reveal what did, we head out of Africa to the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, for the next part of our story - the birth of civilisation - and then on to Kazakhstan, where we witness the return of astronauts from space and explain what took us from civilisation...

"Written in accessible language and complemented by a glossary for easy reference, this book investigates one of the most fundamental and divisive problems in biology: the origin of cells. Assuming only a basic knowledge of cell biology, Franklin M. Harold examines such pivotal subjects as the relationship between cells and genes; the central role of bioenergetics in the origin of life; the status of the universal tree of life with its three stems...

In their laboratories, complexity scientists have been experimenting with complex chemicals that display some of the characteristics of life, and have created electronic computer-virus-like life-forms that are born, die, reproduce, mutate, and evolve. Through these artificial worlds they have actually been able to monitor evolution as it happens, since it takes place at a much more rapid pace within a computer - where new species can evolve in as...