Oren Harman

Metamorphosis has always been one of biology''s greatest wonders and toughest riddles. To emerge a butterfly, a caterpillar dissolves inside its chrysalis and builds a brand new brain, wings and legs. Why all this destruction and remodelling? Why all this wasted energy and time?Oren Harman beautifully unfurls the untold story of metamorphosis across two millennia, asking why it has obsessed and inspired us so profoundly. Along the way we meet poets, artists, philosophers, and a cast of scientists as colourful as the animals themselves: whether Aristotle determining cucumbers had souls, Sigmund Freud searching in vain for eel testicles, or a Japanese zoologist singing karaoke to a baby jellyfish.Taking us on an exhilarating journey through the creatures that metamorphose - a staggering three-quarters of all animal species - from starfish reproducing in reverse in ocean depths, to poison dart frogs on steaming rainforest canopies, to human adolescents struggling to control themselves, Metamorphosis is a new classic of natural history: a book that, by explaining a mystery of nature, causes us to relearn ourselves.

'Daring, learned and humane ... A revelatory restoration of wonder' Stephen Greenblatt. We no longer think, like the ancient Chinese did, that the world was hatched from an egg, or, like the Maori, that it came from the tearing-apart of a love embrace. The Greeks told of a tempestuous Hera and a cunning Zeus, but we now use genes and natural selection to explain fear and desire, and physics to demystify the workings of the universe. Science is an astounding achievement, but are we really any wiser than the ancients? Has science revealed the secrets of fate and immortality? Has it provided protection from jealousy or love? There are those who believe that science has replaced faith, but must it also be a death knell for mythology? Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies. Here are the Earth and the Moon presenting a cosmological view of motherhood, a panicking Mitochondrion introducing sex and death to the world, the loneliness of consciousness emerging from the memory of an octopus, and the birth of language in evolution summoning humankind's struggle with truth. Science may not solve our existential puzzles, but like the age-old legends, its magical discoveries can help us continue the never-ending search.

'Daring, learned and humane ... A revelatory restoration of wonder' Stephen Greenblatt. We no longer think, like the ancient Chinese did, that the world was hatched from an egg, or, like the Maori, that it came from the tearing-apart of a love embrace. The Greeks told of a tempestuous Hera and a cunning Zeus, but we now use genes and natural selection to explain fear and desire, and physics to demystify the workings of the universe. Science is an astounding achievement, but are we really any wiser than the ancients? Has science revealed the secrets of fate and immortality? Has it provided protection from jealousy or love? There are those who believe that science has replaced faith, but must it also be a death knell for mythology? Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies. Here are the Earth and the Moon presenting a cosmological view of motherhood, a panicking Mitochondrion introducing sex and death to the world, the loneliness of consciousness emerging from the memory of an octopus, and the birth of language in evolution summoning humankind's struggle with truth. Science may not solve our existential puzzles, but like the age-old legends, its magical discoveries can help us continue the never-ending search.