Humans are brimming with unique traits that do not fit the animal mold, according to the Jehovah's Witnesses.

How much do we share with the birds of the air and the beasts of the field? Article by John Wilson at Christianity Today.

Comprehensive information on the first draft of the human genome from Nature.

Abstract and electronic delivery of Nigel Nicholson's paper in the Harvard Business Review.

Spencer is so grandiose that it is hard to summarize his ideas, yet he was one of the most influential thinkers in nineteenth-century Britain, and his ideas were an inspiration around the world. His version of evolution was utterly generalised in all the ways Darwin tried to be circumspect. The organic analogies which Spencer developed are the foundation-stones for the widespread idea of functionalism across the biomedical and human sciences, extending to architecture, systems theory, cybernetics and information theory. The essay was reprinted in a collection from the journal: G. Marsden, ed., Victorian Values. Longman, 1990.

As two of the world's great Darwinists prepare to debate whether science is killing the soul, Tim Radford asks if natural selection is the key to life, the universe, and everything.

Daniel Dennett responds to his critics.

The British Medical Journal publishes a special edition "putting genetics into perspective".

Like every other organism, humans are shaped by both nature and nurture. But unlike any other organism, we are defined by our ability to transcend both. Article by Kenan Malik.

Marc Tessier-Lavigne and William C. Skarnes unveil a technique that "enables scientists to identify new genes and to determine which genes are responsible for defects in brain wiring that are observed during development".

This is a profound essay on the role of religion from an evolutionary perspective. Pascal Boyer, the author, is one of the rising stars in evolutionary theory in the social sciences.

A single gene influences the social behaviour of worms.

A paper by Michael Byron.

A paper contributed to a conference on 'The Social Impact of Modern Biology'. It appeared in Science Studies 1: 177-296, 1971.

Online paper by Daniel Dennett.

This article is largely historical, but the issues remain timely.

DNA is revealing that taming animals was not a simple process.

Chris Horrie provides a critique of the discipline in this BBC News article.

This essay appeared on David Kohn, ed., 'The Darwinian Heritage'. Princeton and Nova Pacifica, 1985, pp. 609-638.

The founding conference of the British Society for the Social Responsibility in Science in November 1970, was on the theme, 'The Social Impact of Modern Biology'. The conference was attended by a number of eminent scientists, e.g., Nobel Laureates James Watson, Jaques Monod, Maurice Wilkins; David Bohm, Jacob Bronowski, R.G. Edwards (of Steptoe and Edwards, the pioneers of 'test-tube babies'), as well as some radicals, Hilary and Steven Rose, John Beckwith. It was, perhaps, the last moment when radicals and posh scientists were relatively united. The talk was published in The Listener, 17 August 1972, pp. 202-5 and in Science as Culture no. 9: 110-24, 1990.

This is the text of a television documentary in the series 'Late Great Victorians', BBC1, 1988. It was also published in Science as Culture no. 5: 71-86, 1989.

This is a talk on the grand view of the human sciences, presented to CHEIRON, the European Society for the History of the Behavioural Sciences and reprinted in its Newsletter, Spring 1988, pp. 7-12.

This was first presented to the Piaget Seminar, University of Geneva, about 1986 and published in Science as Culture (no. 16) 3: 375-403, 1993. It draws out the philosophical implications of 'Darwin's Metaphor' (Cambridge, 1985), in particular, the role of metaphorical and teleological language in Darwin.