How humanity brought about the climate crisis by departing from its evolutionary trajectory 15,000 years ago—and how we can use evolutionary principles to save ourselves from the worst outcomes. Despite efforts to sustain civilization, humanity faces existential threats from overpopulation, globalized trade and travel, urbanization, and global climate change. In A Darwinian Survival Guide, Daniel Brooks and Salvatore Agosta offer a novel—and hopeful—perspective on how to meet these tremendous challenges by changing the discourse from sustainability to survival. Darwinian evolution, the world’s only theory of survival, is the means by which the biosphere has persisted and renewed itself following past environmental perturbations, and it has never failed, they explain. Even in the aftermath of mass extinctions, enough survivors remain with the potential to produce a new diversified biosphere. Drawing on their expertise as field biologists, Brooks and Agosta trace the evolutionary path from the early days of humans through the Late Pleistocene and the beginning of the Anthropocene all the way to the Great Acceleration of technological humanity around 1950, demonstrating how our creative capacities have allowed humanity to survive. However, constant conflict without resolution has made the Anthropocene not only unsustainable, but unsurvivable. Guided by the four laws of biotics, the authors explain how humanity should interact with the rest of the biosphere and with each other in accordance with Darwinian principles. They reveal a middle ground between apocalypse and utopia, with two options: alter our behavior now at great expense and extend civilization or fail to act and rebuild in accordance with those same principles. If we take the latter, then our immediate goal ought to focus on preserving as many of humanity’s positive achievements—from high technology to high art—as possible to shorten the time needed to rebuild.

How humanity brought about the climate crisis by departing from its evolutionary trajectory 15,000 years ago—and how we can use evolutionary principles to save ourselves from the worst outcomes. Despite efforts to sustain civilization, humanity faces existential threats from overpopulation, globalized trade and travel, urbanization, and global climate change. In A Darwinian Survival Guide, Daniel Brooks and Salvatore Agosta offer a novel—and hopeful—perspective on how to meet these tremendous challenges by changing the discourse from sustainability to survival. Darwinian evolution, the world’s only theory of survival, is the means by which the biosphere has persisted and renewed itself following past environmental perturbations, and it has never failed, they explain. Even in the aftermath of mass extinctions, enough survivors remain with the potential to produce a new diversified biosphere. Drawing on their expertise as field biologists, Brooks and Agosta trace the evolutionary path from the early days of humans through the Late Pleistocene and the beginning of the Anthropocene all the way to the Great Acceleration of technological humanity around 1950, demonstrating how our creative capacities have allowed humanity to survive. However, constant conflict without resolution has made the Anthropocene not only unsustainable, but unsurvivable. Guided by the four laws of biotics, the authors explain how humanity should interact with the rest of the biosphere and with each other in accordance with Darwinian principles. They reveal a middle ground between apocalypse and utopia, with two options: alter our behavior now at great expense and extend civilization or fail to act and rebuild in accordance with those same principles. If we take the latter, then our immediate goal ought to focus on preserving as many of humanity’s positive achievements—from high technology to high art—as possible to shorten the time needed to rebuild.

'The peacock's tail makes me sick!' said Charles Darwin. That's because the theory of evolution as adaptation can't explain why nature is so beautiful. It took the concept of sexual selection for Darwin to explain that, a process that has more to do with aesthetic taste than adaptive fitness. Survival of the Beautiful is a revolutionary new examination of the interplay of beauty, art, and culture in evolution. Taking inspiration from Darwin's observation that animals have a natural aesthetic sense, philosopher and musician David Rothenberg probes why animals, humans included, have an innate appreciation for beauty - and why nature is, indeed, beautiful.

In tracing the history of Darwin’s accomplishment and the trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed by the master’s German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many other topics—including the character of Darwin’s chief principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel Wallace over man’s big brain, the role of language in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his views had in common with Haeckel’s, and the general problem of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler’s atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its boldest.

Ensure that your WAN can handle the latest technologies with this must-have strategy guide If a Wide Area Network (WAN) isn't set up properly, it won't be able to meet the needs of the applications being used in the Local Area Network (LAN). And with the emergence of new technologies such as VPNs, multi-service networks, and the mobility of corporate users, the costs involved with running a WAN have changed dramatically. Written by an expert on WAN design, this book provides a comprehensive strategy for choosing the best technologies available for your WAN. It includes analysis of business requirements for WANs, end-user and service provider requirements, and the capabilities and tradeoffs of the available technologies. The book also covers the realities and limitations of QoS, security, multi-service networks, virtual networks, VPNs, multi-homing, roaming, and mobility.

City cycling made simple North America's cities have long been the domain of the car, but thanks to the undeniable benefits of active transport, bicycles have an increasing presence in the urban landscape. Yet our cities weren't designed for bicycles, making for intimidating, and sometimes dangerous, environments for cyclists. The Urban Cycling Survival Guide is an accessible, straight-forward pocket guide that helps cyclists new to the urban environment negotiate all the challenges, obstacles, and rules - spoken and unspoken Ñ that come with sharing the roads. From picking the bike that's right for you to smart riding strategies, tips for drivers, and bike maintenance, Cycle Toronto founding executive director Yvonne Bambrick is your trusted guide. With illustrations to help clarify even the trickiest bike situation, The Urban Cycling Survival Guide is an indispensible, attractive set of training wheels that can make anyone a confident, joyful city rider.

The science behind creating portfolios that adapt to market changes “After ten years of poor stock market returns and yet great bond and gold returns, there is a real thirst for an all-weather portfolio in a high-risk period. Dick Stoken builds that diversified portfolio and also introduces some timing methods to improve returns and lower risks. This is a very timely and useful book.” —Ned Davis, Senior Investment Strategist, Ned Davis Research, Inc. “Dick Stoken’s Survival of the Fittest for Investors is a masterful and unique dissection of what makes the market tick. It represents an indispensable and brand-new approach for the serious investor. A must on every investor’s reading list.” —Leo Melamed, Chairman Emeritus, CME Group “I selected Stoken’s Strategic Investment Timing as the Best Investment Book of the Year in the 1985 Stock Trader’s Almanac; Survival of the Fittest for Investors will be a leading contender for Best Investment Book of the Year in the upcoming 2013 edition.” —Yale Hirsch, founder, Stock Trader’s Almanac About the Book: Just as the animal kingdom is composed of many species, today’s financial systems are composed of a multitude of independent participants, all over the globe, all influencing the whole. Survival of the Fittest for Investors breaks down the science behind the behavior of these market participants to present a definitive system for building profitable portfolios based on the concept of natural selection. This advanced guide to the cutting-edge science of complex adaptive systems in financial markets tells you where to find and how to track the evolutionary instability underlying these markets. It shows how, with heightened insight and a powerful algorithm, you can survive and thrive in volatile markets by following the simple principles of evolution. Award-winning and critically acclaimed author Dick Stoken punches holes in the outdated, Newtonian cause-and-effect paradigm and helps you see financial markets from a Darwinian perspective, where they function as complex systems that have the ability to adapt. By using his state-of-the-art algorithm, Stoken demonstrates how you can use agent-based modeling to assess the actual way markets behave in order to maximize the upside of your asset allocation. Stoken shows that variation is the key to profitability by using three real-world portfolios, each balancing four major asset classes going back thirty-nine years. Each portfolio clearly demonstrates how to reap consistently impressive profits with lower-than-market risk—regardless of your investment style. Whether you take conservative, traditional, or leveraged positions, this book helps you create portfolios of equities, debt, gold, and real estate that have proven to beat the S&P 500 by up to 22.5 percent! After opening your eyes to the science of complex adaptive systems and the vitality of punctuated equilibrium, Survival of the Fittest for Investors helps you implement the know-how into nuts-and-bolts results by equipping you with such practical tools as: A 1-year/6-month algorithm for accurately simulating evolutionary fluctuations in markets A cutting-edge allocation strategy that takes advantage of our natural “herding” instinct Tips for recognizing and enduring “bubbles” Without Survival of the Fittest for Investors, the evolution of investing may leave your wealth behind.

In 1859 Darwin described a deceptively simple mechanism that he called "natural selection," a combination of variation, inheritance, and reproductive success. He argued that this mechanism was the key to explaining the most puzzling features of the natural world, and science and philosophy were changed forever as a result. The exact nature of the Darwinian process has been controversial ever since, however. Godfrey-Smith draws on new developments in biology, philosophy of science, and other fields to give a new analysis and extension of Darwin's idea. The central concept used is that of a "Darwinian population," a collection of things with the capacity to undergo change by natural selection. From this starting point, new analyses of the role of genes in evolution, the application of Darwinian ideas to cultural change, and "evolutionary transitions" that produce complex organisms and societies are developed. Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection will be essential reading for anyone interested in evolutionary theory

Darwin is an emperor who has no clothes— but it takes a brave man to say so. Jonathan Wells, a microbiologist with two Ph.D.s (from Berkeley and Yale), is that brave man. Most textbooks on evolution are written by Darwinists with an ideological ax to grind. Brave dissidents—qualified scientists—who try to teach or write about intelligent design are silenced and sent to the academic gulag. But fear not: Jonathan Wells is a liberator. He unmasks the truth about Darwinism— why it is wrong and what the real evidence is. He also supplies a revealing list of "Books You’re Not Supposed to Read" (as far as the Darwinists are concerned) and puts at your fingertips all the evidence you need to challenge the most closed-minded Darwinist.

In this work, Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially the view that human life is sacred. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary 'fitness' (especially intelligence and health) to the highest arbiter of morality. Darwinism played a key role in the rise not only of eugenics, but also euthanasia, infanticide, abortion and racial extermination. This was especially important in Germany, since Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles, not on nihilism.