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This book would not have been written without the encouragement and help of our friends, families, students and colleagues. We are grateful to all of them. Part of the book was written while E. J. was a visitor at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, University of California, and we would like to thank David and Marvalee Wake and their colleagues for the good working environment they provided, and Martha Breed and the WW group for their company and the wonderful nature trips. We also want to thank everyone working at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University for their help and support. Our debt to the students in the Cohn Institute and the participants in the “Networks in Evolution” seminar at the European Forum Alpbach 2002 is a big one. Their comments and criticisms made us clarify many of our ideas and arguments, abandon some of them, and think deeply about how we should present the material in this book. We hope that they will enjoy the final product. We have benefited from information and advice from many people, but our special thanks must go to those who have read and commented on various drafts of the book. Eytan Avital, Daniel Dor, Fanny Doljanski , Yehuda Elkana, Yehudit Elkana, Evelyn Fox Keller, James Griesemer, Revital Katznelson, Jawed Iqbal, Lia Nirgad, Christine Queitsch, Richard Strohman, Iddo Tavory, and Alan Templeton each read sections or chapters, and pointed out some of the errors and ambiguities in what we had written. Our long-suffering friends Lia Ettinger, Simona Ginsburg, and Joy Hoffman read drafts of the whole book, and their comments, criticism, and many valuable suggestions have made it a far better book than it would otherwise have been. Tom Stone, Philip Laughlin and their colleagues at the MIT Press were helpful and encouraging throughout, and we thank them for their guidance and excellent editorial work. Acknowledgments xii Acknowledgments We also want to thank Rami of the Ha’Shloshah restaurant in Jerusalem. His hamousta soup sustained us through many long days, and many problems were resolved at his tables. Finally we need to acknowledge the contribution of Beauty-the-cat, who sat on every page of the manuscript, thereby delaying its completion by several weeks. As an ex-feral cat, she was a constant reminder of the power of learning, active niche construction, and the coevolution of humans and cats. ...

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