These original contributions by symbiosis biologists and evolutionary theorists address the adequacy of the prevailing neo-Darwinian concept of evolution in the light of growing evidence that hereditary symbiosis, supplemented by the gradual accumulation of heritable mutation, results in the origin of new species and morphological novelty. A departure from mainstream biology, the idea of symbiosis—as in the genetic and metabolic interactions of the bacterial communities that became the earliest eukaryotes and eventually evolved into plants and animals—has attracted the attention of a growing number of scientists. These original contributions by symbiosis biologists and evolutionary theorists address the adequacy of the prevailing neo-Darwinian concept of evolution in the light of growing evidence that hereditary symbiosis, supplemented by the gradual accumulation of heritable mutation, results in the origin of new species and morphological novelty. They include reports of current research on the evolutionary consequences of symbiosis, the protracted physical association between organisms of different species. Among the issues considered are individuality and evolution, microbial symbioses, animal­bacterial symbioses, and the importance of symbiosis in cell evolution, ecology, and morphogenesis. Lynn Margulis, Distinguished Professor of Botany at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is the modern originator of the symbiotic theory of cell evolution. Once considered heresy, her ideas are now part of the microbiological revolution. Contributors Peter Atsatt, Richard C. Back, David Bermudes, Paola Bonfante-Fasolo, René Fester, Lynda J. Goff, Anne-Marie Grenier, Ricardo Guerrero, Robert H. Haynes, Rosmarie Honegger, Gregory Hinkle, Kwang W. Jeon, Bryce Kendrick, Richard Law, David Lewis, Lynn Margulis, John Maynard Smith, Margaret J. McFall-Ngai, Paul Nardon, Kenneth H. Nealson, Kris Pirozynski, Peter W. Price, Mary Beth Saffo, Jan Sapp, Silvano Scannerini, Werner Schwemmler, Sorin Sonea, Toomas H. Tiivel, Robert K. Trench, Russell Vetter

The significance of human individuality is such that each human functions as a unique "molecular" unit of the mass of humanity. Understanding the natural basis for the uniqueness of the individual has long been an objective. The possibilities have been analyzed by Julian Huxley, by A. E. Needham, by Roger Williams, and by others. With his books Biochemical Individuality and Free and Unequal, Roger Williams has done as much as anyone to focus atten tion on this complex of questions. Although scheduled to partici pate in this program, Roger Williams* was unable to attend due to illness. He asked, however, that a quotation be included in the proceedings. This quotation from Chraka is presented early in this book. While metabolic bases for individuality have received a con siderable investigation and discussion by Williams and others, the case for underlying determinants and derivative consequences have not been examined as fully. The specificities that abound in our living world can be traced to the manner in which molecules fit with each other. While numerous studies having other objectives can be cited in support of molecularly based specificities, a few of the leaders in the development of the understanding of physical aspects of biological information present here some of their latest inferences. Several of the participants discuss some of the conse quences at higher levels. Examination of the fascinating cases of reunited identical twins are seen as providing a capstone to the hierarchical treatment.

Humanity is a part of Nature, yet every thinking person at one time or another asks herself or himself, "How did we get here? What makes me different from the rest of Nature?" In The Course of Nature an artist and a scientist ask those questions with full respect for all contexts, both scientific and not. Amy Pollack's figures stand on their own as elegant summaries of one or another aspect of Nature and our place in it. Robert Pollack's one-page essays for each illustration lay out the underlying scientific issues along with the overarching moral context for these issues. Together the authors have created a door into Nature for the non-scientist, and a door into the separate question of what is right, for both the scientist and the rest of us.

Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated--an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

First published in 1999. This is Volume XVI of twenty-one of a series on Cognitive Psychology. Written in 1926, considered from a philosophic viewpoint, this is an English translation of Professor Rignano's work, Biological Memory," which gives an exhaustive analysis of the differences which distinguish living from non-living substance and his attempts to account for these differences as the manifold effects of a single quality.

In The Last Temptation of Max Gold, it's god who visits Earth. Over the course of 4 days and 4 nights, god challenges and tempts Max Gold's resoluteness. With the aid of a few cases of Corona and a carton of cigarettes, Max Gold supports and defends the logic imparted to him from Satan. Upon realizing his futility, god vanishes and humanity's salvation finally becomes a possibility.