Solomon, the legend goes, had a magic ring which enabled him to speak to the animals in their own language. Konrad Lorenz was gifted with a similar power of understanding the animal world. He was that rare beast, a brilliant scientist who could write (and indeed draw) beautifully. He did more than ...

How, why and when did man meet dog and cat? How much are they in fact guided by instinct, and what sort of intelligence have they? What is the nature of their affection or attachment to the human race? Professor Lorenz says that some dogs are descended from wolves and some from jackals, with ...

"The microbes have the last word." Louis Pasteur

In the beginning, there was a lockdown: humans settled down, and animals joined them. It was convenient. But deadly. As our ancestors could not explain why death occurred, they looked to the gods for answers. This is ...

Stop looking at the trees and see the forest!

Discover hidden patterns in nature and society and what this will tell you about global crisis management: In an interconnected world, we need to think in a networked way and to examine complex phenomena, such as pandemics, ...

True stories: reading pleasure for animal lovers

A marmot that has free access to an Alpine shepherd's family cabin and makes itself comfortable during the summers on a feather pillow on the couch. A horse that gives his rider a lesson in self-confidence. The ugly northern ...

Renaissance man, scientist, citizen of the world, first environmental activist, international publicist His articles and essays were distributed around the world in an extraordinary manner: over 1,000 texts in fourteen languages in 30 scholarly disciplines in 250 media platforms ...

In his book, Roenneberg points out a whole range of different aspects of sleep, ranging from day-to-day life to the evolution of sleep. But the book doesn't merely focus on sleep in itself, it encompasses the biological clock and the time of day when we sleep best and when we can't and ...

Albert Einstein turned classical physics on its head with his search for a new theory of gravitation. Since the days of Newton it had been generally assumed that time always travelled at the same speed, but Einstein changed all that and the consequences of his research are still of prime ...

"I'll be your bodyguard in exchange for sweets." This is how the arrangement between ant and greenfly could be described. The ant protects the greenfly from ladybirds and is rewarded with homemade syrup-a mutually beneficial pact: a symbiosis. Nature has endless ...

From continental drift to telephone - brilliant inventors frequently faced a tough initial struggle against their colleagues' scepticism. Pioneers of new ideas in science and technology traditionally encountered major frustrations in pitching their ideas and standing up for them ...

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1,10)

If you're not satisfied with these few words as an account of the creation of the earth, but want to know more about cartography, the ...

Contents:

A history of astronomy - Instruments and research methods - Spherical and gravitational astronomy - The planetary system - Comets, meteors and interplanetary matter - The Milky Way - The stars: their origins, formation and life-cycle - Extragalactic space - Cosmology - An ...