archive

Of our species

Moritz Hetzer and Didier Sornette (ETH Zurich): A Theory of Evolution, Fairness, and Altruistic Punishment. The Human Genome Project, then and now: An early advocate of the sequencing of the human genome reflects on his own predictions from 1986. An interview with Aubrey de Grey on how to live forever. Is the brain good at what it does? A review essay. Darwinian philosophy unleashed: A review of Darwin, God, and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew by Steve Stewart-Williams. Why do we care about our ancestors? The rise of genetic testing has made genealogy more popular than ever — and transformed our concept of identity. Aki Nikolaidis on cognitive enhancement: Which path will we take? Culture in humans and apes has the same evolutionary roots, researchers show. Life extension offers a desirable alternative to a short life, but what is it that we actually want to extend? After his work on telomeres, which won a Nobel Prize in 2009, Jack W. Szostak took up a new challenge: understanding the origins of life. A review of The Origin of Our Species by Chris Stringer. What would humanity be like without aging? A review of The Postmortal by Drew Magary. Human evolution, no easy fix: Nature seems to have activated a time bomb, and our complexity is only a short-term fix. Paleoanthropologist Tim White on the origins of homo sapiens and what a 4.4 million-year-old skeleton he found in Africa tells us about our common past. A look at 6 mind-blowing ways genetic engineering might save your life.