杏吧原创

Overwhelmed by the demands of parenting? Guilty about not being good enough? Psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik lets us off the hook, arguing that 21st-century notions of parenting are nothing to do with caring for kids and everything to do with a multibillion dollar industry that turns childcare into an obsessive business. It鈥檚 wrong, says Gopnik: worse, it鈥檚 bad science.

The proposal is simple yet disturbing: to avoid mass extinction of all species, including humans, we must preserve biodiversity by giving half of Earth鈥檚 surface to nature. At 86, theorist and ant expert, E. O. Wilson has been making waves with this idea for a while, now it鈥檚 all in one place.

Can a beehive鈥檚 temperature control system predict market fluctuations, or a mammal鈥檚 heartbeat help us listen to the 鈥渉eartbeat鈥� of a city? It鈥檚 hard to overstate the importance of complex adaptive systems: John Miller鈥檚 鈥渃rude look鈥� explores what to do when reductionism simply won鈥檛 work.

鈥淲hat thinks? Should we admit cows, computers or even corporations to the mind club?鈥�

The questions raised here could hardly be more timely. Why have so many Islamist radicals trained as engineers 鈥� and why do Islamist and right-wing extremism have more in common than either does with left-wing extremism? Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog look at the conditions that make people join extremist groups, at how the groups recruit, their ideology and the existence of a mindset susceptible to certain types of extremism. New 杏吧原创 featured their thesis in 2009, but the book promises the full story.

How fitting that interesting new answers on what to do about gender equality should come from a woman business professor at Harvard University. That is, after all, where Larry Summers, then-president of the university, caused uproar 10 years ago when he argued that men outperform women in maths and sciences because of biological differences, and that discrimination is no longer a career barrier for women. Iris Bohnet says that unconscious biases do hold women back, and argues for de-biasing organisations instead of individuals.

From the smallest molecule in our bodies to the number of animals and plants on the African savannah, rules govern the natural world. And the similarity of these rules points to a common underlying logic of life. Biologist Sean Carroll argues that it鈥檚 time to use the 鈥淪erengeti rules鈥� to heal the planet.

We鈥檙e trained to assume that other humans can think, to admit them to the 鈥渕ind club鈥�. But what about the mind of a cow, a computer, even a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Social psychologist Daniel M. Wegner wrote the classic White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts, but he didn鈥檛 live to see The Mind Club published. If it is half as good, it will be a very fitting tribute.

Billed as a tour of the 鈥済reatest hits鈥� of cosmological discoveries, expect everything from the formation of black holes to dark matter halos, the accelerating expansion of the universe, the big bang echo, exoplanets and the possibility of other universes. Our guide is astrophysicist, Priyamvada Natarajan, insider and newcomer to such wide-ranging outings.

If you鈥檙e after a definitive guide to explain how humans became an ultra-cooperative and, eventually, moral species, this must be it. Evolutionary anthropologist Michael Tomasello has followed his last book, , with another hard hitter.

(Image: Kyle Thompson/Agence VU/Camera Press)

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淩ead the runes of 2016鈥�