《生活在极限之内:生态学、经济学和人口禁忌》作者提出了著名的“公地的悲剧”论断：“以公共利益为代价的个人获利”使村庄的公地牧场被过度放牧，因为每个牧人都想放养更多的牲口，过度放牧的结果由所有牧人承担，而增加牲口的利益则为个体牧人所有。这一“公地的悲剧”适用于全球的生态问题，“长期以来施行的污染一个地方然后迁往他处的做法已经行不通了”，人类的存在已经遍及地球，无处可逃。因此，我们应该毫不犹豫地控制人口数量。

也许可以说，组成人类基因组的23对染色体的图谱绘制是新世纪最重大的科学发现，它提出的问题与它解答了的问题同样多。这些问题将深刻地影响我们对疾病、寿命和自由意志的思考方式。这些问题将影响你的后半生。这个让人难以置信的突破会有什么后果？《基因组：人类自传》在这方面提供了超群的洞察力。通过在每一对染色体上选择一个新近发现的基因并讲述其故事，马特·里德利叙述了我们这个物种及祖先从生命出现之初到未来医学边缘的历程。他探讨了由于基因组的图谱绘制而出现的科学、哲学等问题，这将帮助你理解这个科学里程碑对你、对你的孩子、对人类意味着什么。

In this candid and witty autobiography, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon looks at his distinguished and varied career, continually asking himself whether (and how) what he learned as a scientist helps to explain other aspects of his life.A brilliant polymath in an age of increasing specialization, Simon is one of those rare scholars whose work defines fields of inquiry. Crossing disciplinary lines in half a dozen fields, Simon's story encompasses an explosion in the information sciences, the transformation of psychology by the information-processing paradigm, and the use of computer simulation for modeling the behavior of highly complex systems.Simon's theory of bounded rationality led to a Nobel Prize in economics, and his work on building machines that think—based on the notion that human intelligence is the rule-governed manipulation of symbols—laid conceptual foundations for the new cognitive science. Subsequently, contrasting metaphors of the maze (Simon's view) and of the mind (neural nets) have dominated the artificial intelligence debate.There is also a warm account of his successful marriage and of an unconsummated love affair, letters to his children, columns, a short story, and political and personal intrigue in academe.