I am always struck by the fact that human awareness of our place in nature, like so much of modern science, began with the Industrial Revolution.

For much of history it was possible to believe that the great diversity of life on Earth was a fixed creation, that the living world had never changed. But when the first stirrings of industry demanded that fuel be dug from the earth and hillsides be leveled for roads and railways, the Earths true past was dug up in abundance.

The scientific argument advanced for intelligent design at the Dover trial, those arguments collapsed, scientifically and intellectually

The piano's world encompasses glass-nerved virtuos and stomping barrel-housers in fedoras; it is a world of pasture and storm, of perfumed smoke, of liquid mathematics.

Evolution isn't just a take-it-or-leave-it story about where we came from. It's an epic at the centre of life itself. It tells us we are part of nature in every respect.

We believe the ice sheet was not around all the time. It was only around during cool snaps of the climate

Once upon a time, growing up male gave little boys a sense of certainty about the natural order of things. We had short hair, wore pants, and played baseball. Girls had long hair, wore skirts, and, no matter how hard they tried, always threw a baseball just like a girl.