The power of Darwin’s theory of natural selection is beyond doubt, it explains how useful adaptations are preserved over generations. But evolution's biggest mystery eluded Darwin: how those adaptations arise in the first place. Can random mutations over a 3.8 billion years be solely responsible for wings, eyeballs, knees, photosynthesis, and the rest of nature’s creative marvels? And by calling these mutations ‘random’, are we not just admitting our own ignorance? What if we could now unc...

Life innovates constantly, producing perfectly adapted species – but there’s a catch.A TIMES AND TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF 2023'Hopeful and fascinating.' THE TIMESMany animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive, constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish spectacularly. Once we start to look, these ‘sleeping beauties’ crop up eve...

This book is the first to comprehensively cover research methods for building occupant behavior. As this is of growing importance for building design and for building performance optimization, the book aims to provide a sound scientific basis for experimental studies in this field. It introduces the reader to fundamental questions about the topic and unfolds the different fields related to occupant actions and comfort. This is followed by more general questions about developing an appropri...

Do you know the feeling when you're practically glued to your screen and your brain is screaming "One more episode!" even though it's 3 a. m.?Are you someone who can't start their day without a cup of coffee or end it without a glass of wine?Have you ever noticed that you go shopping whenever you feel sad or lonely – not when you actually need new things?Many addictions appear innocent at first. What's so bad about spending a few hours scrolling Facebook and reading...

The history of life is a nearly four billion year old story of transformative change. This change ranges from dramatic macroscopic innovations such as the evolution of wings or eyes, to a myriad of molecular changes that form the basis of macroscopic innovations. We are familiar with many examples of innovations (qualitatively new phenotypes that provide a critical benefit) but have no systematic understanding of the principles that allow organisms to innovate. This book proposes several s...

Images of the body in ancient Near Eastern civilizations are radically different from body images today, which in turn creates significant consequences for our understanding of the biblical notion of God's human shape and the frequent and widespread misconceptions therein. Andreas Wagner illuminates such frequent and widespread misconceptions, and reveals the sometimes distant pictorial world of ancient body images. He contrasts these with contemporary models and makes the matter of the Ol...

“Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. Nature’s many innovations—some uncannily perfect—call for natural principles that accelerate life’s ability to innovate.”Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains how useful adaptations are preserved over time. But the biggest mystery about evolution eluded him. As genetics pioneer Hugo de Vries put it, “natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the ar...

How the principles of biological innovation can help us overcome creative challenges in art, business, and scienceIn Life Finds a Way, biologist Andreas Wagner reveals the deep symmetry between innovation in biological evolution and human cultural creativity. Rarely is either a linear climb to perfection--instead, "progress" is typically marked by a sequence of peaks, plateaus, and pitfalls. For instance, in Picasso's forty-some iterations of Guernica

How can new insights into evolution help us solve problems in life, art, business and science?‘A wonderful, mind-expanding book. Prepare to be surprised, enlightened and awed.’ Alice Roberts, author of AncestorsIn Darwin’s survival of the fittest, each step must be uphill as life progresses towards an evolutionary peak. There is no turning back. So what happens when life needs to cross a valley in the wilds of an a...

The history of life is a nearly four billion year old story of transformative change. This change ranges from dramatic macroscopic innovations such as the evolution of wings or eyes, to a myriad of molecular changes that form the basis of macroscopic innovations. We are familiar with many examples of innovations (qualitatively new phenotypes that provide a critical benefit) but have no systematic understanding of the principles that allow organisms to innovate. This book proposes several s...

Life innovates constantly, producing perfectly adapted species—but there's a catch.Many animals and plants eke out seemingly unremarkable lives. Passive, constrained, modest, threatened. Then, in a blink of evolutionary time, they flourish spectacularly. Once we start to look, these 'sleeping beauties' crop up everywhere. But why?Looking at the book of life, from apex predators to keystone crops, and informed by his own cutting-edge experiments, renowned sc...

“Natural selection can preserve innovations, but it cannot create them. Nature’s many innovations—some uncannily perfect—call for natural principles that accelerate life’s ability to innovate, its innovability.”Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains how useful adaptations are preserved over time. But the biggest mystery about evolution eluded him. As genetics pioneer Hugo de Vries put it, “natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the a...