Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation
Bill Nye
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 1250074223
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The New York Times best seller by
the host of Bill Nye the Science Guy,
with a brand new chapter for the paperback edition!
"Evolution is one of the most powerful and important ideas ever developed in the history of science. Every question it raises leads to new answers, new discoveries, and new smarter questions. The science of evolution is as expansive as nature itself. It is also the most meaningful creation story that humans have ever found."-Bill Nye
Sparked by a controversial debate in February 2014, Bill Nye has set off on an energetic campaign to spread awareness of evolution and the powerful way it shapes our lives. In Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, he explains why race does not really exist; evaluates the true promise and peril of genetically modified food; reveals how new species are born, in a dog kennel and in a London subway; takes a stroll through 4.5 billion years of time; and explores the new search for alien life, including aliens right here on Earth.
With infectious enthusiasm, Bill Nye shows that evolution is much more than a rebuttal to creationism; it is an essential way to understand how nature works-and to change the world. It might also help you get a date on a Saturday night.
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the more surprises we find. These discoveries keep me wondering: “Mother Nature, what else haven’t you told me?” 36 A SECOND GENESIS—OF LIFE? I was a child of the space age; I crouched in front of a black-and-white vacuum-tube television in 1969, when humans first set foot on the Moon. When I think about an alien form of life, with all that it would tell us about the process of evolution, I naturally picture something on another world. But a few researchers, including Paul Davies at Arizona
all the different kinds of life we see seems incredible, at least until you appreciate the enormous timescale of evolution. Since the late eighteenth century, scientists have used the term “deep time” to describe the magnitude of the scales involved. Understanding just how deep the deep past really is has been likened to staring into an abyss. It’s too deep to see the bottom, too deep to imagine. It can overwhelm your thoughts. But once you embrace such depths, the mechanisms of evolution begin
president thought it made sense to put an eighteenth-century politician in a minus-fourth-century Greek outfit. As part of that style of thinking, Aristotle’s ideas on the relationships of living things persisted well into the age of Hutton, Lyell, Wallace, and Darwin. Back in that fourth century BC, Aristotle postulated that there is a scala naturae, a ladder of nature. In this Latin usage, a ladder is not something you use for climbing. Instead, here, nature’s ladder is how things are arranged
be obviously real. Waste is an essential feature of signaling to a predator or a potential mate. The springbok can’t be faking it. Let’s say our springbok is in great shape. He or she can jump well right now. A lioness spies the springbok and considers quietly stalking her way in for the kill. Our springbok sees the lioness and pronks expertly; he executes a good high jump and sticks the landing (as we say in gymnastics). The lioness sees that the springbok is fit and probably can’t be run down
contrast, I’m looking out for big changes that come from good old-fashioned Darwinian natural selection. What trait would give a future human baby such an edge that she or he will grow up to produce some amazing new kid that can do something that stands out and will attract a similarly worthy partner with whom to mate? I have heard many women say that they love a guy with a good sense of humor. That one sits well with me for some reason. Will some future guy be so funny, and not so funny looking,