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Spatio-Temporal Pattern Formation: With Examples from Physics, Chemistry, and Materials Science (Partially Ordered Systems)
Daniel Walgraef
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0387948570 |
Book Description
This book provides an interdisciplinary presentation of the current knowledge of pattern formation in complex system, with sufficiently many details, tools, and concrete examples to be useful for the graduate student or scientist entering this area of research.
Amazon.com
David Bodanis, author of The Secret House and The Secret Garden, applies his wit and curiosity to another invisible realm: the insides of our bodies. Bodanis wraps his thought-provoking investigation of the natural world in the story of a family's typical day. We follow the baby's explorations of the house, go out with the family to the mall, and experience the daughter's first kiss. Of course, your mind still might be reeling from breakfast and the orange juice--"a liquid which contains embalming fluid, varnish solvent, vinegar, and nail polish remover ... and a certain amount of real orange juice, too."
All that microscopic reality--the benign bacteria feasting on our faces, the widening of the pupils as Baby's gaze meets Mom's or Dad's ("the tiny muscles controlling the pupils in the dad's eyes suddenly tug wider. Males who don't have children rarely show this universal sign of interest.")--triggers a host of facts, both fascinating and appalling; that aforementioned parental gaze segues into an explanation of the ingredients of baby food ("boiled and skimmed pigs' feet extract is often used, though in a pinch the scooped inner pith of discarded fruit can be added, too. Chalk is often added next"). And that's the least of it...
Bodanis's scrutiny is fortified with more than two dozen color photographs from the Science Photo Library that show the world we live in but, thankfully, never see. It's amusing, disturbing, and cheerful in the face of "Ugh!" and "Ah!"--the perfect book to trigger lively conversations. One thing's for certain: you'll never again complain that your ordinary day is just too ordinary.
Book Description
An extraordinary look at the ordinary world
Ever wonder what makes the icing on your danish so white? (Hint: the same thing that makes the paint on your walls so white.) Pondering the mysterious force of romantic attraction? (Often, we are drawn to those similar to us in looks, opinions, and even number of siblings.) Do you sometimes feel as if your home is too crowded? (You will be shocked at the number of microscopic houseguests who share our dwellings.)
Following a typical family on a typical weekend day, The Secret Family examines what is happening inside family members as they eat, talk, get dressed, walk, and drive to the local mall -- as well as how they interact with the dust mites, bacteria, tapeworms and innumerous other microbes with whom they share their lives. Full of brilliant, state-of-the-art photography, astonishing facts, and real-life science, this book exposes the worlds and histories behind our everyday routines and surroundings. David Bodanis is our lively tour guide on this adventure and ensures that the familiar will never look quite the same again.
Customer Reviews:
Incredible journey into things we don't see.......2003-02-01
This is one of those books, which is highly informative, entertaining and has "repeat" value. I read this book twice in succession and even though i rented it from the library, i feel so compelled by the information in it that i am purchasing a copy for my bookshelf . I know, i will refer to it often to reaffirm to myself ,nothing is ordinary as it seems.
For eg: Postage stamps, those tiny square pieces which we lick , stick and forget. I quote how this book unravels it " Postage stamps are an intricate layered sandiwch of chemicals. The glue is a true masterpiece of the chemist's art. Think of a problem. Not only does the glue have to be sticky enough to hold onto a envelope, but it has not to be so sticky that it grabs permanently on your tongue. It has to do this with onlythe amount of salive we're happy to dribble off and then it has to stick to the envelope firmly, but still you give you a moment or two to readjust its position. Finally, even once the chemists have worked out something that's tongue attractive and humidity resistant and briefly free-sliding, they still have have to throw it out if it tastes bad. Or offends anybody's religion. Ir is too expensive. Or is too high in calories."
This is just a sample. The books jumps and hops in a free wheeling away across many varied aspects of our lives, commenting and shedding light on them. For eg, Chicken breast is found white in the fast food centers, stuffed in salads or other food menu. WHy? Normally food tends to be green or reddish or brown, but very rarely white. This is because of the sedentary lifestyle of the modern-day chicken. The flight muscles in the breast don't get used much, so there's no reason for oxygen sotring red blood cells to be soaked darkly through them. AS a result, the breast comes out white.
One thing you will definitely remember after reading this book is that you are never alone. Tuck yourself in the cleanest of bedsheets? Even then, there will be around 40000 pillow mites (ghastly miniature Rhino look alikes) crawling over the pillow.
Right now, on our faces are armies of demodex mites. Harmless creatures feasting on our skin, unvisible to us.
The pictures in the book are incredible. Read and enjoy!
cheers!
A very interesting read..........2001-07-13
I cannot elaborate much further than the other reviews already have. Simply stated, this book makes you think about everyday things in a different way. I am glad I purchased and read it. Yes, the photographs are amazing.
Fabulously frightening.......1998-04-05
This book provides a fascinating look into what goes on in our homes daily. The descriptions of what we eat, where we sleep, and how our bodies protect us from (too much) harm are incredible. Bodanis has researched nearly every aspect of family life, and explains to us what it all means. My only complaint about this book is that it doesn't have enough photographs. Those that it does have are splendid, however.
mind blowing!.......1997-12-30
It's not often you read a book that opens your mind to entire new worlds. Reading this made me feel like an explorer who has just discovered a world hidden in plain sight. Every page made me think "WOW"! This is a mind-expanding book.
Funny, entertaining, informative - a great read - buy it.......1997-09-28
The Secret Family by David Bodanis is a popular science book with a difference - it is funny and entertaining, as well as being informative. He has a talent for exposing hidden worlds in the most mundane of everyday activities: the food we eat, our shopping routines, family relationships and the way our bodies work. Plus he has the most amazing colour photographs of soap bubbles, scouring pads, eggshells, sweat droplets, CDs, and salt etc, magnified so much that they expose a different and beautiful world.
He takes an ordinary family - parents, teenage daughter, ten year old son, baby and a dog - and traces them through a lazy Saturday breakfast and visit to the mall. After reading this you will never look at your supermarket orange juice or danish pastry with quite the same relish. You will eye your friends and family suspiciously as they carry huge populations of microscpic mites (demodex) on their eyelashes regardless of how clean they are and when two people kiss, the mites intermingle and new populations are born! Bodanis scatters his narrative with interesting curiosities - how the yellow sticky notes were invented, the origins of the doberman, the arbitrary address system for mail in parts of Japan, and how supermarkets use synthetic smells, colour and music to get us to walk slowly, buy more, and eat faster.
I'm a fan of Bodanis, and recommend his earlier books too (The Secret House and The Secret Garden). So if you want to give yourself a treat, read this book, and then buy one for a friend.
Amazon.com
In 1994, the French government squashed a deal between its world-renowned CEPH genetics laboratory and an American biotech company, citing the loss of French DNA. If, like most scientifically minded people, you see this as an egregious example of bureaucratic buffoonery at best, or thinly disguised nationalistic racism at worst, anthropologist Paul Rabinow has another point of view well worth considering. Looking broadly at the political, social, and scientific forces combining to shape policy decisions, he shows a complex web of interconnected elements, each with its own inertia, making the government's final decision nearly inevitable.
Rabinow had the unique good fortune to be in France studying CEPH at the time of the decision, so his report contains personal details and insights that never made it into news reports. His own keen observations, grounded in postmodern social theory, are still accessible to those of us who never read Foucault. Incorporating the history of the American and French HIV scandals, France's new, more nationalistic attitudes toward research, and the remnants of colonial attitudes, French DNA explores the neutral territory between science and governance, showing the careful reader that even the strangest results can spring from perfectly sensible decisions, given enough complexity. Rabinow has done a great service to all of us seeking to understand the course of modern science. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
In 1993, an American biotechnology company and a French genetics lab developed a collaborative research plan to search for diabetes genes. But just as the project was to begin, the French government called it to a halt, barring the laboratory from sharing something never previously thought of as a commodity unto itself: French DNA.
Customer Reviews:
A good book.......2002-01-07
I found the idea of an anthropologist having the opportunity to observe operations in a French biotech institution as things unfolded very enticing. At times I wished that I had a better background in philosophy since Rabinow makes frequent references to certain philosophers in a few chapters which I found challenging to read. Nevertheless, the event that Rabinow covers is an interesting one, and he gives a very good picture of how the French view bioscience, the human body, and the commercialization of biotech products. In particular I enjoyed his descriptions and insights on the interactions of the people involved in the event and how it fit in the overall context of French society.
A good book.......2002-01-07
I found the idea of an anthropologist having the opportunity to observe operations in a French biotech institution as things unfolded very enticing. At times I wished that I had a better background in philosophy since Rabinow makes frequent references to certain philosophers in a few chapters which I found a bit challenging to read. Nevertheless, the event that Rabinow covers is an interesting one, and he gives a very good picture of how the French view bioscience, the human body, and the commercialization of biotech products. In particular I enjoyed his descriptions and insights on the interactions of the people involved in the event and how they fit in the overall context of French society.
A must-read for everyone who questions what biotech means.......1999-09-13
I really loved Rabinow's MAKING PCR, about the process of developing this major biotech tool (and probably a more accurate look at Kary Mullis than he gives in his own autobiography). FRENCH DNA is a terrific book in a different way. Rabinow tells an exciting and sobering story, virtually a who-done-it, and along the way he raises important questions about what genetic material really is, who owns it, what it means to have international research collaborations, and what biotechnology means to individuals and nations. A fascinating book.
Book Description
The debate about what to teach as science in our schools has reached boiling point, both inside and outside the classroom. From Young Earth to Intelligent Design creationism, the intrusion of political and religious ideals is damaging the integrity of our public education system. Doubting Darwin? puts the dispute into its scientific and historical context, illuminating the intellectual debate that is shaping educational policy.In his thought-provoking book, noted biologist and philosopher Sahotra Sarkar exposes the frauds and fallacies of Intelligent Design Theory and its claim to be "good science. " An expert exploration of key arguments, Doubting Darwin? adamantly rejects Intelligent Design 's claim to legitimacy, showing clearly how and why it is an unsuitable alternative to evolutionary biology in the classroom. This book examines the concrete arguments and positions of the Intelligent Design Movement, analyzes the use of computer science and information theory by the creationists, and discusses the relation between Darwin and modern evolutionary theory. Doubting Darwin? is an accessible and engaging read for anyone looking to gain a genuinely informed perspective on this heated debate.
Customer Reviews:
Clearing out the garbage.......2007-07-16
It is easy to dismiss the farrago of nonsense that passes for the theory of intelligent design as so obviously silly that it is not worth wasting any time analysing it. A weaker version of this position is to recognize that Michael Behe does have some scientific qualifications, so one ought to make the effort to analyse his arguments, but not to waste time on other creationists, most notably William Dembski, who have no relevant qualifications at all. However, even the weaker course plays into the hands of those who claim that there is a vast conspiracy of orthodox scientists to deny alternative views a fair hearing, and Sahotra Sarkar has done science a great service by examining the main claims of intelligent design in careful detail.
Dembski's explanatory filter, for example, is supposed to supply a logical frame for choosing between regularity, chance and design, but, as Sarkar explains, the rules for applying the filter are set up in such a way that rejecting design as the explanation is never offered as a possibility. Essentially anything that allows rejection of regularity and chance leads inexorably to design. Worse than that, design itself is not adequately defined: we all know, of course, that it is a coded way of saying creation by God, but we are not supposed to say that.
Sarkar provides numerous examples to dispose of the conspiracy theory, showing that serious challenges to the current orthodoxy have always been addressed seriously, without any suggestion that unwelcome proposals should just be ignored. Charles Darwin himself -- ignorant of Mendelian genetics, which could have provided him with an escape route -- treated Fleeming Jenkin's objections to natural selection with all seriousness. Later on the idea that genetics made natural selection irrelevant was thoroughly argued out in the early part of the 20th century, leading eventually to the "new synthesis". In our own time there was no attempt to suppress Motoo Kimura's neutralist theory, or the theory of punctuated equilibrium of Niles Eldredge and Stephen J. Gould.
The "no free lunch" theorems have generated great excitement in the creationist camp in recent years, because they supposedly show that no algorithm is better than any other for solving optimization problems, and so natural selection cannot be better than random search. However, as Sarkar points out, decades of experience have shown computer scientists that some algorithms are consistently better than others for particular sorts of problem; the theorems refer to the set of all possible optimization problems, not to any particular class of such problems; and anyway evolution as understood by biologists is not a problem of optimization in a static environment.
Sarkar then examines Behe's claim that biochemistry offers various examples of "irreducible complexity", assemblies of components that can only work when all the parts are present. These examples are quite diverse, including blood clotting in vertebrates, flagellar motion in bacteria, and the citric acid cycle in the metabolism of a vast array of organisms. All of these, however, can be found working in some organisms even though some of the supposedly essential components are missing. According to Behe, for example, the bacterial flagellum requires a minimum of three parts, a motor, a rotor and a paddle, but unfortunately for this argument archaeal flagella work just fine with only two of these.
So it goes on. Sarkar always resists the temptation to dismiss a creationist argument as obvious nonsense, but takes the trouble to analyse it and point out where the logical or factual errors lie.
Unintelligent Designers watch out !.......2007-06-12
In this arena of Evolutionary Theory vs 'Intelligent' Design, there is often found a lot of 'shouting' and trading of insults, i.e., playing the man instead of the ball.
And there are also found clearly identifiable false propositions, and unsubstantiated claims.
SARKAR has eminent qualifications in Biology, Environmentalism, Philosophy, and Philosophy of Science.
He is no 'amateur ranter', as can often crop up in this topic.
Alas, he cannot resist sliding in the debating knife when he finds a weakness in his opponents argument(s).
It may have been better if he just demolished the argument(s) - as he does so profoundly and universally - and let the dialog speak for itself.
He is not the first to identify the egregious and weaseling lies offered by William DEMBSKI's publications, but he makes these falsities more transparent for the lay reader, in a topic that necessarily becomes quite technical.
Whatever axioms a reader might bring to this modern debate, this book and author are a "must read" before jumping in to the arena for combat.
Book Description
Human Nature After Darwin is an original investigation of the implications of Darwinism for our understanding of ourselves and our situation. It casts new light on current Darwinian controversies, and in doing so provides an introduction to philosophical reasoning and a range of philosophical problems. Janet Radcliffe Richards claims that many current battles about Darwinism, in particular about evolutionary psychology and religion, are based on mistaken assumptions about the implications of the rival views. Her analysis of these implications provides a much-needed guide to the fundamentals of Darwinism and the so-called Darwin-wars, as well as providing a set of philosophical techniques relevant to wide areas of moral and political debate. It also raises philosophical problems of knowledge and certainly, free will and responsibility, altruism, the status of ethics, and the relevance of Darwinism to questions of ethics, politics and religion. The lucid presentation makes the book an ideal introduction to both philosophy and Darwinism, as well as a substantive contribution to topics of intense current controversy. It will be of interest to students of philosophy, science and the social sciences, and critical thinking.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent introduction.......2005-08-02
This book is an excellent introduction to current Darwinian thinking about human nature. As the book discusses the implications of accepting Darwinism it does not put forward an awovedly materialist view backed by arguments, but the author's stance on this issue is nevertheless unequivocal.
The style is admirably clear, and the general claim that in most cases, the often supposed differences between non-Darwinian and Darwinian lines of thinking are only apparent ones is convincing.
However, there are some passages which I disagree with.
1. The distinction between the formal validity of conditionals and the existence of a causal or explanatory relation between the antecedent and the consequent is blurred. Radcliffe writes:
"finding out the truth of the conditional is not a matter of finding out whether the antecedent is true... or whether the the consequent is true. Even if you proved conclusively that either of those was true or false, you would still have no evidence at all for the truth of the conditional... In fact, even if you proved both antecedent and consequent true, or both false, or the consequent true and the antecedent false, that would still have no bearing on the truth of the conditional. In all these cases, the conditional could be either true or false...
This is because a conditional is a statement which is not about the truth of any individual proposition, but a particular connection between the two."(p. 92)
For someone trained in formal logic this should seem puzzling. Formally, the truth table of the conditional does determine when it is false, namely when the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. It may be debated whether this extensional truth table really captures the meaning of natural language conditional statements (many say it gives absurd results in some important cases), but it cannot be denied that it goes some way to achieve that. To consider conditionals as expressing a connection between the two contained propositions is to treat them intensionally, i. e. in a way in which their truth does not depend on their constituent propositions. This distinction is an important one, and it should have been indicated clearly in the text.
2. The discussion of the Divine Command view of ethics is simplistic in one respect. Radcliffe says if you think that the problem of Evil needs to be answered, you cannot consistently accept the Divine Command View, as it considers goodness as dependent on the will of God, moreover, it says that whatever God willed must be good. Thus if God willed that suffering be present in the world, this must be a good thing, too.
I think this line of argument would reduce the DC view to absurdity, and Radcliffe unjustly mocks it by saying "[if the DCV were true]we could just say 'War is a good thing after all'."
Of course, one could obviously point out in defence of the DCV that you need not forego it in order to see a real problem in the existence of Evil. One could deny that God willed the suffering (maybe other people did, or Satan in the case of natural disasters) and hold on to the DCV, and/or work out a theodicy in which all sufferings are eventually justified by some greater good, so one can keep the DCV consistently again.
3. There is another argument in the chapter that I disagree with and which I consider the weakest one of the book. It is about the inconsistency of moral relativism. R. says that relativism in its familiar formulations is incoherent, because "it specifies that no principle should be given precedence over others, but in doing so it gives itself precedence; it says that you should not impose your principles on others, but in doing so attempts to impose itself on the holders of other views, and displace theirs."
I have two objections:
a) relativism as a practical guide may be incoherent, but people often act incoherently, as witnessed by the problem of the weakness of will. In itself, there is nothing problematic with that: if all values are subjective, then perhaps there is no other possible way for us to think and act.
b) In addition to the pratical level, there is the meta-level of justification where moral relativism may well win the day. This issue is independent of whether relativism as a practical view is incoherent or not. Furthermore, I find R.'s claim that we can conduct a 'secular moral enquiry' to discover moral truth by using our reason entirely unconvincing. The proposed means, intuitive reasoning, can only work provided there is something objective to be ascertained. However, R. does not in the least argue that there must be objective moral truths: it is one thing to claim that the existence of objective moral standards does not presuppose the existence of God (I agree on this point), and another to substantiate the claim that there are objective moral standards in the first place. Of course, we could see this argument as one working out an implication of Darwinism (i. e. as arguing for the possibilty of a Darwinist ethics) and not as one for such a substantive claim. But in the light of everthing else R. says about morality, especially in the last chapter where she claims that there ARE some real differences between accepting the Darwininan and the non-Darwinian view (plus materialism), (notably concerning survival of death and the prearranged moral order of the universe), what she had said about objective moral truth beforehand does seem very curious. She concludes the first-mentioned chapter by saying 'there is no reason to think that if materialism is true we must be unable to reason morally'. Well, that may be so, but provided that moral reasoning is done by reflective persons, it may easily lead to its own demise, too, or at least we cannot exclude this possibility a priori.
In my view, if you accept the Darwininan view, the only available choice is moral nihilism, or perhaps a version of an "error theory" of morality.
Despite the above critical remarks, in my overall assessment this is a superb book which everyone interested in evolutionary thinking should read. I hope I have not misrepresented the author's arguments in my criticism of them. I would appreciate if you shared your comments with me.
extremely disappointed in Janet Radcliffe Richards.......2004-05-14
I am a huge fan of Radcliffe Richards book "The Skeptical Feminist" which is an excellent presentation of logical arguments for feminism.
So I was extremely disappointed that Radcliffe Richards has joined the forces of Darwinian reductionism and evolutionary psychology. She claims she is simply presenting non-partisan logical arguments for Darwinian theories for our sober consideration, but her own biases come through fairly often - and she thanks a leading proponent of evolutionary psychology, Helena Cronin, in the front of the book.
Cronin wrote a paper "The Evolved Family" (available online) and in this paper she argues (based not on empirical evidence but rather on 'Darwinian logic') that since women as a group have evolved to value men almost exclusively for their income; and to prefer to spend time with their children to spending time at work, there should be a two-tiered system of employment - one for men and one for women - an official mommy track:
"Rather than taking male standards as the universal measure, or expecting both sexes to adopt androgynous working 'roles', the government should design family-friendly employment practices that reflect the different preferences of women and men."
She does not differentiate between mothers and childless women when discussing feminine preferences, so you can't tell if the Cronin plan calls for all women to be pushed into the mommy track, or just all fertile women or just women with children. And she doesn't bother to suggest a system in which a woman might plead for a special dispensation to join the male work force - perhaps the Queen could grant titles of 'honorary male.'
And it's striking how Radcliffe Richards chides those opposed to Darwinian reductionism for emotion-ridden criticisms of her side, when Cronin never mentions feminists without expressing biting contempt.
I can't believe Radcliffe Richards would countenance this radical right-wing social philosopher. Perhaps she became more conservative over the years. Feminism has lost a valuable friend.
Socrates on evolutionary ethics.......2002-05-25
If you have any interest in the ethical or political implications of evolutionary theory, read this book.
If you ever wished you could spend a week with Socrates, discussing a topic of contemporary interest, read this book.
If you have ever, are now, or intend in the future to write or talk about about evolutionary ethics, and you have not read this book, please quit wasting my time!
Overlooked.......2002-01-15
The publishers seem to have misunderstood (or at any rate, underrated) this superb book, which would profit from exposure to a wider audience. It's as if someone in a suit smelled a whiff of the lamp around here and exiled it to the ghetto of academic writing. This is a pity, but it is perhaps in part understandable. The nominal topic is "evolution," but the real subject is the activity of clear thinking. More directly -- no one excels Janet Radcliffe Richards in demonstrating how to use the tools of philosophy in the analysis or understanding of every day problems. There is an audience for this sort of thing. The publisher seems not to have found it and both auther and audience (saying nothing of the publisher) are the losers.
Average customer rating:
- The Journey of Genetics
- Very interesting thesis, very readable
- The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
- Clear explication of a still uncertain theory
- We all wonder where we come from . . .
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The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey
Spencer Wells
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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ASIN: 069111532X |
Amazon.com
Spencer Wells traces human evolution back to our very first ancestor in The Journey of Man. Along the way, he sums up the explosive effect of new techniques in genetics on the field of evolutionary biology and all available evidence from the fossil record. Wells's seemingly sexist title is purposeful: he argues that the Y chromosome gives us a unique opportunity to follow our migratory heritage back to a sort of Adam, just as earlier work in mitochondrial DNA allowed the identification of Eve, mother of all Homo sapiens. While his descriptions of the advances made by such luminary scientists as Richard Lewontin and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza can be dry, Wells comes through with sparkling metaphors when it counts, as when he compares genetic drift to a bouillabaisse recipe handed down through a village's generations. Though finding our primal male is an exciting prospect, the real revolution Wells describes is racial. Or rather, nonracial, as he reiterates the scientific truth that our notions of what makes us different from each other are purely cultural, not based in biology. The case for an "out of Africa" scenario of human migration is solid in this book, though Wells makes it clear when he is hypothesizing anything controversial. Readers interested in a fairly technical, but not overwhelming, summary of the remarkable conclusions of 21st-century human evolutionary biology will find The Journey of Man a perfect primer. --Therese Littleton
Book Description
Around 60,000 years ago, a man--identical to us in all important respects--lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How did this real-life Adam wind up father of us all? What happened to the descendants of other men who lived at the same time? And why, if modern humans share a single prehistoric ancestor, do we come in so many sizes, shapes, and races?
Showing how the secrets about our ancestors are hidden in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the cutting-edge science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. We now know not only where our ancestors lived but who they fought, loved, and influenced.
Informed by this new science, The Journey of Man is replete with astonishing information. Wells tells us that we can trace our origins back to a single Adam and Eve, but that Eve came first by some 80,000 years. We hear how the male Y-chromosome has been used to trace the spread of humanity from Africa into Eurasia, why differing racial types emerged when mountain ranges split population groups, and that the San Bushmen of the Kalahari have some of the oldest genetic markers in the world. We learn, finally with absolute certainty, that Neanderthals are not our ancestors and that the entire genetic diversity of Native Americans can be accounted for by just ten individuals.
It is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind--as well as an accessible look at the analysis of human genetics that is giving us definitive answers to questions we have asked for centuries, questions now more compelling than ever.
Customer Reviews:
The Journey of Genetics.......2007-09-11
The Journey of Man, recently recommended by a friend in Dallas, is a story of state-of-the-art genetic research to trace the geographic history of homo sapiens based on, as I understand it, polymorphisms or mutations in human DNA. The idea is that by identifying these and analyzing their frequency of occurance in various areas of the world, the sequence in which they occurred can be deduced and, thus, the associated physical path by which we populated the world can be identified. The conclusion is that homo sapiens began about 50,000 years ago in north-eastern Africa, then spread to Australia, etc. The thought process nicely ties in related data from archaeology, anthropology, and other sciences to support and/or refute the genetic results. A very good book, aimed at laymen and easy to read, although not particularly well-edited and sometimes over-uses analogies to the point that you wish he'd just go ahead and say it.
Very interesting thesis, very readable.......2007-01-11
The book presents, based on genetic, archeological, climatological evidence, a possible (or probable?) route for the dispersion of men through our planet, from its birth in Africa. The evidence is clearly presented, in an organized and very understandable way. It makes a very interesting reading on a subject that is as appealing as it is controversial.
The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey.......2006-11-10
If you have ever questioned where Adam and Eve started and how planet earth was populated this is a must read. Doctor Wells located the oldest Africans he could find,took blood samples, then using his DNA knowledge, produced DNA markers. He continued this process around the world and by examining the DNA markers he could determine the path of primitive people and where they started. He produced a readable technical book that leaves the lay person with a clear understanding of where we started and where and when the first Adam and Eve left the trees and stood up on two feet.
Clear explication of a still uncertain theory.......2006-10-31
Not much more than 50,000 years ago, something happened in East Africa that set humans on the move, and by about 10,000 years ago they had occupied almost every place on Earth, though it took another 9,000 years or so to get to the really good spots like Maui.
At least, that is how geneticist Spencer Wells interprets the evidence. The very short time span requires severe revision of the archaeological evidence.
Fully modern human bones have been found in Israel that are dated to about 100,000 years ago. Although equally modern fossils don't show up in Europe for another 60,000 years or so, the assumption has been that man's move out of Africa began at least 100,000 years ago.
Using changes in the molecular structure of the Y-chromosome, Wells and other geneticists believe that something -- he calls it the First Big Bang -- happened to a human, who lived somewhere in or near Ethiopia, around 50,000-60,000 years ago. That something did not show up in our skeletons but did mark the final evolutionary step to our current level of ability.
It could have been behavioral, although Wells is inclined to think it was some form of structural change in the brain that was closely tied to the beginning of language.
The new capabilities then made it possible to survive in novel habitats, and worsening climatic conditions in East Africa made it desirable to find some.
Genetics tells us we are all very closely related -- there is hardly any variation in our genes as between "races," a doubtful concept in human taxonomy anyway.
Variation piles up over time, particularly in long stretches of DNA that are, so far as anybody has been able to determine, inactive.
When a small band of people move, they take with them only a tiny fraction of the total variation of their larger group. Therefore, the more variation today within a local group, the longer it has been intact.
There is more variation on the Y-chromosomes of the men in an African village than among all the men in the rest of the world. Therefore, humans originated in Africa.
Geneticists believe they can not only measure but time these changes, although the timing is dependent on various assumptions that are uncertain to a degree. The goal of researchers like Wells is to interpret the gene sequences to fit other, paleontological or climatological, data without torturing the evidence too much.
The Y-chromosome determines male sex and therefore passes down from father to son. There is a strictly female record of descent in our cells, too, the mitochondrial DNA; but there is much less of it, so changes on the Y give much more precision in measuring mutations.
In "The Journey of Man," geneticists deduce that around 50,000 years ago, Africans started migrating, sticking to the coastal areas they already knew how to exploit. Within 10,000 years, they were in Australia.
We humans spread quickly but not equally quickly in every direction. In some areas, humans had to wait tens of thousands of years for the slow processes of climate to open up desert and mountain barriers that were too hard to cross.
Thus, Europe was settled very late, despite its closeness to Africa.
The same evidence says modern humans replaced Neanderthal humans; we did not descend from them.
The Y evidence also tends to shoot down evidence -- already equivocal -- that put humans in the New World more than about 12,000 years ago.
And it demonstrates, Wells says, some unexpected relationships. For example, northern Han Chinese are more closely related to their northern neighbors than they are to southern Han Chinese, despite the closer connection of their language dialects.
These various lines of evidence should allow us to retrace our ancestral steps, says Wells, but "many indigenous peoples are now refusing to participate in scientific studies."
He regrets this, not only professionally, but because the Third Big Bang -- the transportation revolution that is mixing up populations more than ever before -- will within a couple of generations obliterate the kind of genetic sleuthing that made "The Journey of Man" possible.
The Second Big Bang was agriculture, and that, he says, led humans to Hawaii. Hunter-gatherers had to go where the food was; Polynesian navigators could choose where to sail.
Wells' explication of what researchers like Wells think they know is first rate. I remain somewhat skeptical about the accuracy of the so-called molecular genetic clocks. Therefore, 3 stars. if the doubts about the 'clock' are resolved in the favor of Wells et al., then the rating would bump up to 4.
We all wonder where we come from . . ........2006-09-01
. . . and Spencer Wells provides many of the answers. Those of you who have seen his National Geographic special, also entitled _The Journey of Man_, will recognize the outline of this book, an exploration of what our genes (and those of people around the world) tell us about where and when our species got started, and how and when people occupied just about every part of the world. The book is able to go into far more detail, presenting clearly and convincingly our relatively recent African origins and the timing and likely routes of the migrations that brought modern humans to Australia, Europe and Asia, and, more recently, to the Americas and Polynesia. Along the way you'll learn why our genes clearly show that the Neandertals were cousins, but not ancestors, and that today's geographic "races" are far too closely related to have evolved from ancient to modern human form independently. The book is graced by pages of striking photos of people from around the globe, which add greatly to the fascinating scientific story that Wells tells. If you're at all interested in human origins, this is a must read. Robert Adler, author of _Science Firsts_ and _Medical Firsts_.
Customer Reviews:
superb at times, original at others........2002-02-24
Hans Jonas, previously a pupil of Heidegger, in the main departs from his mentor's work and reaches out in rather sophisticated and at times obscure writing, into the depths of the deeply thinking man's way of understanding "The Phenomenon of Life". Much like the other reviewer I agree with him concerning Jonas's deeply insightful essays on the philosophy of organism and mind, which he categorically states must be aspects of the one philosophy of life. Jonas's essays are in general quite brilliant with snippets of real insight that tower above the ordinary and yet it is written so that this occurs as part of the process of discovery which seems to be going on as he writes.
His first essay considers the development or rather alteration in the philosophy of being extending from ancient Greek times into the modern era: animism, and the remarkable instance of thinking of life as at one time the natural mode of being followed by the idea that death is the natural mode instead or that life is a preparation for it. Dualism is considered as the fundamental barrier underlying the comprehension of life although idealism leads to problems no less troubling than say materialism or mechanism.
In the second essay he looks at the fundamental aspects of philosophical Darwinism with its final application of mechanism to the biological realm which for so long eluded the mechanists. Descartes started the trend with his machine-like approach to animals. The third essay considers the meaning of metabolism using James Jeans's, God as a mathematician quote to initiate the discussion. He notes that a living being is one that is never the same from one moment to the next "perpetual self-renewal through process". As the other reviewer mentioned his fourth essay "To Move and to Feel: on the animal soul" is probably the most illuminating in the book. he considers what differs from animal to plant ie motility, perception and emotion. the ability to move using the evidence of perception leads to the idea of freedom, however how emotion is related to the above is less obvious althgough Jonas makes it so by simply stating that movement in pursuit or flight must necessarily lead to emotion because of its satisfaction or lack thereof. Plants possess immediacy in life between environment and the organism; animals are more separated than this being required to treat the environment as different from them to some degree at least.
Next he analyses the ideas of cybernetics and some differences between machines and organisms noting that machines act by feedback mechanisms whereas organism is "concerned in existing", this applies also to society where the cybernetic idea of information is empty. In the sixth essay he looks at perception through the senses sight, hearing and touch in the main and how and why they vary in importance to man. He alludes as to why and how concepts such as space and time arise through the function of the senses themselves rather than being free construction of the mind. This leads directly into the seventh essay on the difference between man and animal ie through the concept of image making rather than language or symbols. Again as the previous reviewer notes the later essays lack in depth, once he enters the realm of theology Jonas tends to outline his own beliefs rather than analysing them in depth as his earlier essays, again the relationship between Gnosticism and modern thought bears fruit in contrast to the writing on Heidegger and theology.
All together a brilliant style with difficult writing. In contrast to the usual length of time needed to read a book this took considerably longer just to comprehend. Well worth getting, superb at times, original at others.
Truth, Life and Beauty.......2001-02-22
The first seven chapters of _The Phenomenon of Life_, which present the substance and methodology of Jonas' "Philosophy of Biology," are as brilliantly lucid as they are orginal. Regarding the form, Jonas' language is, at times, obscure in its heavy academic prose but for those willing to give the time required it is nothing short of eloquent. Regarding the content, I would venture to say that no one can come away from this book without a changed perspective on everything living both in the simplest forms and in the complexities of the unique powers of mankind. The fifth chapter, etitled "To Move and to Feel-- On the Animal Soul" is about as dense with truth as one can handle. Also extraordinary are the first chapter and its first appendix--which in two paragraphs almost closes the book on the epistomological debate of Hume and Kant-- and the seventh chapter called "The Nobility of Sight." The last chapters of the book, which turn to a "Philosophy of Man" are less outstanding, although I make an exception for the one called "Gnostisism, Existentialism and Nihlism." Here Jonas speaks of a subject about which his lifelong passion shines through. Its observations are invaluable to one who seeks to understand the philosophical climate-- away from academic circles-- in the twentieth century.
Book Description
Despite wide acceptance that the attributes of living creatures have appeared through a cumulative evolutionary process guided chiefly by natural selection, many human activities have seemed analytically inaccessible from such an approach. Morality, for example, has been described by prominent evolutionary biologists as contrary to the direction of biological evolution, and moral philosophers rarely regard evolution as relevant to their discussions.
This book adopts the argument that moral questions arise out of conflicts of interest, and that moral systems are ways of using confluences of interest at lower levels of social organization to deal with conflicts of interest at higher levels. Moral systems are described as systems of indirect reciprocity: humans gain and lose socially (and reproductively) not only by direct transactions, but also by the reputations they gain from the everyday flow of social interactions.
The author develops a general theory of human interests, using senescence and effort theory from biology to help analyze the patterning of human lifetimes. He argues that the ultimate interests of humans are reproductive, and that the concept of morality has arisen within groups because of its contribution to unity, in the context, ultimately, of success in intergroup competition. He contends that morality is not easily relatable to universals, and he carries this argument into a discussion of what he calls the greatest of all moral problems, the nuclear arms race.
CONTENTS Preface. Acknowledgments. 1. Biology and the Background of Moral Systems. The Evolutionary Approach. Human Interests and Their Conflicts: What Lifetimes are About. Reproduction and Senescence: Why Lifetimes are Finite. Reproduction and Cooperation: Special Cases. 2. A Biological View of Morality. Conflicts and Confluences of Interest: A Theory of Moral Systems. Morality and the Human Psyche. Life History Theory and the Ontogeny of Moral Behavior. General Conclusions. 3. Morality as Seen by Philosophers and Biologists. The Moral Philosophers. The Biologist-Philosophers. The Philosophers of Biology. Morality and Law. Morality and Democracy. The Goal of Universal Beneficence. Summary . Conclusions. 4. Applying the Biological View of Morality. Morality and Openness in the Pursuit of Truth: Science, Law, and God as the Models. Modelling Value Systems and Maintaining Indirect Reciprocity . Arms Races, Human and Otherwise. 5. Conclusions. References. Index
Customer Reviews:
A great book with an outdated model of human behavior.......2000-11-02
Where does morality come from? The traditional answer are from God, as revealed by theologians, or from Reason or Intuition, as revealed by philosophers. In fact, as Richard Alexander makes clear in this landmark book, morality comes from our evolution as a species. Individuals who developed ethical awareness and practiced moral behavior in the course of our emergence from the hoard of pre-human hominids had an evolutionary edge over those who did not. It follows that to understand morality, one must undertake a scientific and evolutionary approach. Ethics is thus something like linguistics, in that both are extremely complex human ideational forms that must be modeled, and the success of ethical theories is their capacity to explain how humans express and make moral choices.
The scientific approach to morality espoused by Alexander is a deeply refreshing alternative to the endless pious platitudes of the theologians, who believe they have a special line to the Almighty's will, and the supercilious meanderings of the philosophers who think their personal moral predilections are something more than mere personal prejudice. We owe to this book the reorientation of ethical theory from the prejudices of the privileged to the realm of the scientific. As such, Alexander's book is must reading for a student of ethics.
However, contemporary evidence shows that his major thesis is flawed. Here are some key quotes and my critique of the assertions made in the quotes.
Quote from p. 3: "ethics, morality, human conduct, and the human psyche are to be understood only if societies are seen as collections of individuals seeking their own self-interest..."
Critique: This is of course the model of human action in standard economic theory, and I have spent my whole life dealing with its inadequacies and proposing alternative models more in line with the empirical evidence on human behavior. Alexander's description of human behavior ignores such prosocial other-regarding behaviors as altruistic cooperation, altruistic punishment, and the tendency to conform to social norms independent from the possibility of being detected and punished for such behavior. We now have lots of behavioral evidence in favor of the existence of strong reciprocity (a propensity to cooperate in social dilemmas and to punish free riders without regard to personal material payoffs), as well as its ability to foster sustainable cooperation when self-interest would lead to social breakdown. See, for instance Herbert Gintis, "Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality", Journal of Theoretical Biology 206 (2000):169-179 and Ernst Fehr and Simon Gaechter, "Cooperation and Punishment", American Economic Review 90,4 (2000). See also my web site.
I also believe that empathy and shame are counterexamples to Alexander's model. Indeed, sociopaths who have neither empathy nor shame can be considered as "self-interested" in Alexander's sense in that they refrain from harming other human beings only if they calculate that the personal costs (e.g., of being caught) exceed the benefits flowing from harming others.
Quote from p. 34: "That people are in general following what they perceive to be their own interests is, I believe, the most general principle of human behavior."
If this is not tautologous (whatever people want to do is in their interest by definition), then it is false, for the same reason as in my critique of the previous quote, since people who punish violators of group norms often "perceive" their actions to be for the benefit of the group, and understand quite well that it is not in their own self-interest.
But there are other problems with Alexander's statement. (a) If I am addicted to smoking I might perceive that I am not acting in my own self interest when I smoke, and do it anyway. (b) I may "perceive" it in my own interest to help the poor, or contribute to environmental groups, or perform other prosocial acts when in fact it is not. If humans systematically misperceive their self-interest, as in this case, and if the misperception is very likely in a prosocial direction, then violations of self-interest might be central to human social cooperation, even were Alexander's statement correct (which it is not). In fact, I do not believe that humans systematically misperceive their self-interest. Rather, they choose often to act altruistically against their self-interest because they have other-regarding preferences.
Quote from p. 77: "Moral systems are systems of indirect reciprocity."
This is the first statement of Chapter 2, "A Biological View of Morality." It is not an aside, but Alexander's fundamental explanation of moral systems. By "indirect reciprocity" he means almost exactly what Robert Trivers calls "reciprocal altruism," but which in fact is just enlightened long-term self interest. It is fundamentally wrong. The evidence is that virtually all moral systems exhort forms of altruism that do not reduce to self interest, even in the long run, and large numbers of people subscribe to and to some extent follow these non-self-interested principles.
I should note that even criminals and psychopaths often exhibit non-self-regarding behavior, as when, for instance, a man takes revenge on his "enemies" and then kills himself.
Of course, a lot of human behavior is self-interested, and some non-self-interested behavior is just random noise in the behavioral system. But the types of systematic prosocial behavior promoted by strong reciprocity, shame, empathy, and identification with "insiders" is, unless I am mistaken, the key to the particular strength of human cooperation.
Profound work of theoretical biology.......1999-08-13
Richard Alexander's pioneering work of theoretical biology was one of the first attempts (in the current cycle of sociobiological interest) to apply Darwinian thinking to human morality. The book is profoundly disturbing. Like any work of theory, many of the specifics of Alexander's analysis will be revised but the main argument that morality can only be understood within the Darwinian framework is important. Subsequently many authors have pusued the same line of thought but Alexander's treatment is one of the most interesting. The discusison of deception is particularly provocative.
Book Description
Who seeing the stunning order in networks linking tens upon tens of thousands of variables can fail to entertain a central thought: if ever we are to attain a final theory in biology, we will surely have to see that we are the natural expressions of a deeper order. Ultimately, we will discover in our creation myth that we were expected after all. —Stuart Kauffman
Exhilarating photographs and inspiring words take us on a microscopic tour of a miraculous phenomenon—the human body—leading to a sense that our existence is no accident. This photographic journey into inner space utilizes microscopic imagery to document the beautiful and mysterious realm of the tiniest components of human life—brain waves, nerve endings, cell structures, acid crystals—revealing a symmetry, a perfection, and, ultimately, a revelation.
Illuminating quotes from the finest literary and scientific minds—Pasteur, Tolstoy, Einstein, St. Augustine, Thoreau, Darwin, just to name a few—support the idea that science may prove to be a path to God and that the human brain itself, through what researchers are now calling its "spirituality circuit," is wired to lead us to that path.
With an introduction by Wall Street Journal science editor Sharon Begley, Inside the Mind of God promises to provide further insight into the abiding question: why is there something, rather than nothing?
Three years ago Michael Reagan's best-selling book The Hand of God juxtaposed photographs of spiraling galaxies, shimmering nebulae, and luminous stars with the words of great scientists and philosophers to suggest the profound link between the scientific and the spiritual. Inside the Mind of God, continues this journey, now into inner space. The stunning photographs and inspiring quotes create a sense of wonder and awe in the miraculous evidence of God's hand in the smallest details of our existence.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful book.......2007-06-27
This book has beautiful pictures of various kinds of cells. I only wish that I had known that some of the pictures are of life threatening diseases.
Outstanding Visuals and Inspiring Quotes.......2005-02-24
Upon seeing the title and cover of this book, I picked it up from the bookstore. It is lovely eye-candy! It has a colorful picture of a human brain on the front cover. Always curious as to what is in the mind of God, it was a have-to-have it book.
It combines for the most part beautiful images (and some stunningly beautiful) of the inner body processes blown up to mega-size and, in some cases, resembling a kind of impressionistic art. Even cancer cells have a certain beauty blown up many times their actual size.
Among the many images, with carefully chosen quotations that match each picture so well, are adrenaline crystals; synaptic connections between neurons (brain cells), the flu virus, normal white blood cells, and so much more!
What this kind of compilation does is to bring home the resounding truth that we are a living universe---each of us. We are not so different than the grand Hubble shots of deep space that have become so sought after. While we metaphysicians "knew" this truth intuitively, it is now verifiable by photography. It is a bit like when aura photography came into vogue and made the electromagnetic field accessible visually to the masses.
This is a book of inspiration, and it succeeds grandly in its intent. I highly recommend it to those of you who can be fascinated by your inner workings and inspired by the wonderful quotes which accompany each picture.
Beautiful photos, great quotes.......2004-11-01
Beautiful photographs of brain cells, brain imaging, molecules of neurotransmitters and much more, with exquisitely chosen quotes of scientists who sit on both sides of the divided opinions about whether the brain is the source of mind, or whether spirit embodies itself in the brain (mostly emphasizing the latter).
Here are a few:
There are a limitless number of different sciences, but without one basic science, that is, what is the meaning of life and what is good for the people, all other forms of knowledge and art become idle and harmful entertainment." --Leo Tolstoy (p. 33)
Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.
--Pope John Paul II (p. 84)
I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much. --Mother Teresa (p. 95)
In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.
--Rabbi Harold S. Kushner (p. 124)
An excellent holiday gift.
Beautiful and poetic ... and that's just the pictures.......2003-01-09
Pairing startlingly beautiful photographs of the most minute aspects of life -- neurons, cancer cells, adrenaline, anthrax bacillus, embryonic stem cells, sperm and egg, DNA and more -- with great thoughts of scientists, clergy, philosophers, writers, political leaders and artists is utterly ingenious in this book.
For example, a gentle blue photograph of a breast cancer cell appears beside a quote from Mother Teresa: "I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much."
This book not only offers a glimpse inside the human body and related "landscapes," but also a glimpse of great thinking. I found myself marveling at the photographs and mulling the ideas that appear with them.
Beautiful pictures, lovely words, but . . ........2002-12-14
The idea of this book, if I understand it, is "to suggest the profound link between the scientific and the spiritual" through the juxtaposition of beautiful pictures of "inner space"--in this case of cells, organs, and crystals--with quotes about faith, mystery and belief.
The book starts with a fine essay by Sharon Begley, science editor of the Wall Street Journal. She discusses the thesis that God must exist because of the perfection of the workings of nature--the famous argument from design. She presents some of the arguments for and against it with considerable balance. She also writes about the concept of "biological evil"--the implications of the existence of "evil" things such as disease-causing organisms and cancer cells. She goes on to describe brain-scanning experiments that may help explain how the brain of a meditator or Sufi dancer might create a sense of loss of self and unity with the universe. She concludes by inviting the reader to "see the sacred in the science of life," hoping that the book's microphotographs will bring life's "sacred depths ... to the surface for everyone to appreciate."
The photographs, of neurons and sperm cells, DNA molecules and chromosmes, stem cells and embryos, are remarkable and beautiful. To me they made many of the scientific findings I read about far more real. And the quotes, from spiritually minded scientists like Einstein, poets, philosophers, writers and mystics, were also beautiful. I particularly liked one from Annie Dillard. "The extravagent gesture is the very stuff of creation... The whole show has been on fire since the word go!"
I consider myself to be fascinated with science, and more than casually interested in the great questions that religion addresses as well. I'm as prone to feeling awe at the night sky, the grandeur of the Sierra Nevada or the inner workings of a cell as the next person. Still, for reasons I can't quite figure out, this book didn't bring those two areas any closer for me. I almost feel apologetic, as if I should have felt the awe and mystery that Begley and editor Michael Reagan set out to evoke. In the end, I found the book more puzzling than enlightening, more frustrating than inspiring.
It seems like such a good idea, however, that I hope it will work better for other readers than it did for me.
Robert Adler, author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (Wiley, 2002).
Average customer rating:
- An excellent synthesis
- Deep Ecology Reformulated
- Important for the philosophy of deep ecology
- Knowledgable forecast
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The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep Ecology
Frederic L. Bender
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ASIN: 1591020557 |
Customer Reviews:
An excellent synthesis.......2005-03-13
In this book, Bender has managed to pull together ideas that might be seen by some as difficult to reconcile -- recent scientific research, deep ecology, general systems theory, nondualist spirituality, and leftist political activism -- to create one of the most stimulating works that I have read in a long time.
Deep Ecology Reformulated.......2004-12-08
Bender offers the following reformulation of the deep ecology platform. He believes the platform's language should be forthright about deep ecology's debt to ecology, hence also its biological nondualism. At the same time, since there are many paths to deep ecology, if you accept some, but not all of the points, you are to that extent still a supporter of the deep ecology movement. Bender takes into account some of Naess's 1993 reflections and his own earlier arguments. The following are proposed nondogmatically, or, as Naess now suggests, as a set of abstract, general statements that most supporters of the deep ecology movement might accept.
Proposed New Deep-Ecology Platform
1. Everything on earth is both interdependent and transient.
2. Each species' self-realization requires and contributes to that of all others.
3. Nonhumans do not exist for humans' sake.
4. Continued evolution without catastrophic setback requires the preservation of biodiversity, especially at the genetic and ecosystemic levels.
5. Other things being equal, human action is justifiable when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and complexity of the biotic community; it is wrong when it tends otherwise.
6. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive and rapidly worsening.
7. Significant reduction of human impact requires first doing no further harm, then protecting and restoring biodiversity, wild-' ness, and evolution.
8. Deep ecology supporters encourage the deep questioning if human happiness, progress, and technology as commonly .1 defined. The necessary changes include deliberately and humanely lowering the human population, redesigning the global economy, adopting low-impact technology, and changing personal lifestyles as required for ecological sustain- ability.
9. Ecological sustainability also requires peace and justice throughout the world, and recognition that quality-of-life is about more than material standard of living. Especially in the poorest countries, social justice and long-term ecological sustainability are equally necessary, if people's material, self-preservation, rootedness, and spiritual-growth needs are to be met.
10. Those who subscribe to these points have an obligation directly or indirectly to try to carry out the necessary changes. Though the platform's applications vary considerably, in general deep ecology supporters work for local self-sufficiency and autonomous cooperation, and against centralization of power, exploitation of the weak, and corporate-controlled economic globalization.
The platform, in short, poses a counteroffer to the culture of extinction, outlining numerous possibilities for engagement for those who take nondualism, ecology, ecocide, or overshoot seriously. Thus, deep ecology is potentially a solution, not only to ecocide, but to nihilism.
Important for the philosophy of deep ecology .......2004-10-31
I would say that anyone who has a serious theoretical interest in deep ecology and Green theoretical issues should have a copy of this expensive book. The book is important for the philosophy of deep ecology, and the radical environmental and deep Green political movements. Bender wants to help "draw millions to deep ecology."
This book has forced me to look at the evolution of deep ecology, as reflected in the writings of Arne Naess, in a new, supportive yet more critical manner. For Bender, the distinguishing characteristic of deep ecology is "nondualism" (what we would perhaps call ecocentricism). He argues that Naess has moved away from this nondualist position as reflected in the original 1972 statement and also become more apolitical.
It has a thoughtful and very interesting discussion of Bender's own "ecosophy", named after the place where he wrote much of his book. His book concludes with a ten-point "Proposed New Deep-Ecology Platform" which incorporates his critique.
Bender is a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and was, according to book cover information, the editor of _The Communist Manifesto: A Norton Critical Review_; _The Betrayal of Marx_; and _Karl Marx: The Essential Writings_. What is interesting for me is that such a substantive book on deep ecology has been written by someone who very definitely considers himself part of the Left. Bender now takes his place alongside other Left deep ecologists who have books out, like Richard Sylvan, Andrew McLaughlin and Andrew Dobson.
Bender wants to reformulate deep ecology and we all need to pay attention to what he is telling us. I did find the book on the abstract side. Overall however, this book is a wonderful achievement and will help us all move forward on the deep ecology path.
Knowledgable forecast.......2004-07-23
Written for the academic, but geared to present a total picture, The Culture of Extinction is an in-depth look at what we have created on this planet and what we can expect if we do not listen to this writer and others who are shouting as loud as they can. Excellent for the classroom.
Books:
- Stormwater Collection Systems Design Handbook
- Streams in the Desert
- Student Study Guide for Biology
- Student Study Guide to accompany Anatomy and Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function
- The Cathedral Within: Transforming Your Life by Giving Something Back
- The Developing Person Through the Life Span (paper)
- The Diversity of Life
- The Dragonfly Door
- The Evolutionary Ecology of Ant-Plant Mutualisms (Cambridge Studies in Ecology)
- The Female Brain
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