As If By Design

Edward A. Wasserman is Professor of Psychology at the University of Iowa, USA, and has held visiting appointments in England, Russia, Japan, and France. He has published widely and received several prestigious awards in the areas of learning, memory, and cognition in people and animals.

'This is a delightful embrace of evolutionary thinking; one trial, one error, and one human achievement at a time.' Gregory J. Madden, co-author of An Introduction to Behavior Analysis, and Editor-in-Chief of the APA Handbook of Behavior Analysis

• Section I. Introduction; Section II. The Vignettes; Part I. Sports; 1. Dick Fosbury's High Jump was No Flop!; 2. Shedding Fresh Light on the History of the Butterfly Stroke; 3. The Monkey Crouch: Jockeying for Position; 4. Riding Acey-Deucy; 5. The High Five: One Singular Sensation; Part II. Medicine; 6. The Apgar Score: 'Millions Have Been Saved'; 7. The Ponseti Method: Effective Treatment for Clubfoot Only 2,400 Years in the Making; 8. The Heimlich Maneuver; 9. Eating to Live: The Lifesaving Contribution of Stanley Dudrick; 10. What's in a (Drug) Name?; 11. Self-Medication by People and Animals; 12. Personalized Medicine: The End of Trial-and-Error Treatment?; Part III. Hygiene; 13. Florence Nightingale: Advancing Hygiene through Data Visualization; 14. Taking Mental Floss to Dental Floss; 15. A Very Close Shave; Part IV. Arts, Entertainment, and Culture; 16. Ansel Adams: Art for Art's Sake?; 17. Basil Twist: 'Genius' Puppeteer; 18. Moonwalking: And More Mundane Modes of Moving; 19. Play on Words; 20. Cuatro Festivals Españoles; 21. Tchaikovsky: Puzzles of the Pathétique; 22. The Evolution of the Violin: Survival of the Fittest or the Fondest Fiddle?; Part V. Is This Heaven? No, It's Iowa!; 23. The Rise and the Demise of the Iowa Caucus; 24. Iowa's Blackout Plates: Artistic License Hits the Road; 25. If I Write It, They Will Build It; Section III. Putting It Together; 26. Context, Consequence, and Coincidence; 27. Are We Just Making It Up as We Go Along?