H. Allen Orr | The New York Review of Books

DNA: A Metaphor?

July 14, 2016 issue

‘Life’s Greatest Secret’

A new book tells the story of one of the most transformative periods in the history of science

Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

by Matthew Cobb

June 9, 2016 issue

Letter

Colin McGinn

DNA: A Metaphor?

July 14, 2016 issue

Scientists Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley studying a water-baby in a flask; illustration designed by Linley Sambourne and engraved by Joseph Swain, from Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby, 1885

The Biology of Being Good to Others

Altruism may seem a good thing—unless you happen to be an evolutionary biologist

Does Altruism Exist?: Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others

by David Sloan Wilson

March 19, 2015 issue

Bushman children playing games on sand dunes in the border area between Botswana and South Africa, 1947. The photograph appeared in the Museum of Modern Art’s ‘Family of Man’ exhibition, organized by Edward Steichen in 1955.

‘The Genetic Basis of Race’

A new book on genes and race starts with science then ventures into speculation

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History

by Nicholas Wade

June 5, 2014 issue

‘A Sun of the Nineteenth Century’; cartoon from Puck magazine showing Charles Darwin as a shining sun, chasing the clouds of religion and superstition from the sky, 1882

Awaiting a New Darwin

Thomas Nagel’s ‘Mind and Cosmos’

Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False

by Thomas Nagel

February 7, 2013 issue

Fooled by Science

David Brooks’s ‘Social Animal’

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement

by David Brooks

August 18, 2011 issue

Sam Harris, right, with the evangelical pastor Rick Warren at a group discussion on religion and faith at Warren’s Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, California, March 2007

The Science of Right and Wrong

On Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

by Sam Harris

May 12, 2011 issue

The scientist George Price, who did ‘fundamental work’ in evolutionary biology

Is Goodness in Your Genes?

The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness

by Oren Harman

October 14, 2010 issue

Rembrandt: Belshazzar’s Feast, circa 1636–1638, showing the moment when a divine hand appeared before the Babylonian King Belshazzar and wrote on the wall a phrase interpreted by Daniel to mean: ‘God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; your kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians.’ Belshazzar was slain that night.

Can Science Explain Religion?

The Evolution of God

by Robert Wright

January 14, 2010 issue

Ronald Colman as a doctor torn between conflicting goals in medicine and scientific research in the 1931 film Arrowsmith, adapted from Sinclair Lewis’s 1925 novel. According to Steven Shapin in The Scientific Life, ‘Generations of American scientists traced their conceptions of scientific research and their vocation for science to their youthful reading of Arrowsmith.’

Which Scientist Can You Trust?

The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation

by Steven Shapin

March 26, 2009 issue

The Genetic Adventurer

A Life Decoded: My Genome: My Life

by J. Craig Venter

March 20, 2008 issue

A Religion for Darwinians?

Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith

by Philip Kitcher

August 16, 2007 issue

‘The God Delusion’

March 1, 2007 issue

A Mission to Convert

The God Delusion

by Richard Dawkins

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief

by Lewis Wolpert

Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist

by Joan Roughgarden

January 11, 2007 issue

Letter

Daniel C. Dennett

‘The God Delusion’

March 1, 2007 issue

Talking Genes

Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors

by Nicholas Wade

September 21, 2006 issue

Vive la Différence!

Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men

by Bryan Sykes

Y: The Descent of Men

by Steve Jones

The X in Sex: How the X Chromosome Controls Our Lives

By David Bainbridge

May 12, 2005 issue

Miracles & the Scientist

May 13, 2004 issue

A Passion for Evolution

A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love

by Richard Dawkins

February 26, 2004 issue

What’s Not in Your Genes

Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human

by Matt Ridley

August 14, 2003 issue

‘The Blank Slate’: An Exchange

May 1, 2003 issue