Scientific American 2009 January

Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology
Some evolutionary psychologists have made widely popularized claims about how the human mind evolved, but other scholars argue that the grand claims lack solid evidence
By David J. Buller

Testing Natural Selection with Genetics
Biologists working with the most sophisticated genetic tools are demonstrating that natural selection plays a greater role in the evolution of genes than even most evolutionists had thought
By H. Allen Orr

Diversity Revealed: From Atoms to Traits
Charles Darwin saw that random variations in organisms provide fodder for evolution. Modern scientists are revealing how that diversity arises from changes to DNA and can add up to complex creatures or even cultures
By David M. Kingsley

The Evolutionary Origins of Hiccups and Hernias
How biological hand-me-downs inherited from fish and tadpoles evolved into human maladies
By Neil H. Shubin

The Future of Man–How Will Evolution Change Humans?
Contrary to popular belief, humans continue to evolve. Our bodies and brains are not the same as our ancestors' were—or as our descendants' will be
By Peter Ward


The Human Pedigree: A Timeline of Hominid Evolution
Some 180 years after unearthing the first human fossil, paleontologists have amassed a formidable record of our forebears
By Kate Wong

The Science of Spore–The "Evolution" of Gaming
A computer game illustrates the difference between building your own simulated creature and real-life natural selection
By Ed Regis

The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom
Creationists who want religious ideas taught as scientific fact in public schools continue to adapt to courtroom defeats by hiding their true aims under ever changing guises
By Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott

Putting Evolution to Use in the Everyday World
Understanding of evolution is fostering powerful technologies for health care, law enforcement, ecology, and all manner of optimization and design problems
By David P. Mindell

Darwin's Living Legacy–Evolutionary Theory 150 Years Later
A Victorian amateur undertook a lifetime pursuit of slow, meticulous observation and thought about the natural world, producing a theory 150 years ago that still drives the contemporary scientific agenda
By Gary Stix