A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY205 start with D start with D
Combining scientific curiosity with travel and adventure, Dancing at the Dead Sea takes the reader on an intimate tour through the world's environmental hotspots. Readers join Mitchell as she tracks the spectacular biodiversity of regions as extraordinary as the island of Madagascar, the rain forests of Suriname, the parched oases of Jordan, the Arctic desert of Banks Island, the volcanic crests of Iceland, and, ultimately, the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin conducted his famous research. Along the way, Mitchell introduces us to the numerous scientists and conservationists who are working to protect these endangered places. She also chronicles the courageous efforts of everyday men and women in these regions as they try to convince governments to turn the world's hotspots into environmentally protected areas.
Ultimately, Mitchell's travels around the world compel her to ponder our shelf life as a species in the grand evolutionary scheme of the planet. She wonders what Darwin would make of the profound ecological destruction she witnesses. Is the human race suicidal? What can help our species avert extinction? Posing tough and cutting questions such as these, Dancing at the Dead Sea is a must-read for aficionados of good science writing and travel literature alike.
The Dancing Bees draws on previously unexplored archival sources in order to reveal von Frisch’s full story, including how the Nazi government in 1940 determined that he was one-quarter Jewish, revoked his teaching privileges, and sought to prevent him from working altogether until circumstances intervened. In the 1940s, bee populations throughout Europe were facing the devastating effects of a plague (just as they are today), and because the bees were essential to the pollination of crops, von Frisch’s research was deemed critical to maintaining the food supply of a nation at war. The bees, as von Frisch put it years later, saved his life. Munz not only explores von Frisch’s complicated career in the Third Reich, she looks closely at the legacy of his work and the later debates about the significance of the bee language and the science of animal communication.
This first in-depth biography of von Frisch paints a complex and nuanced portrait of a scientist at work under Nazi rule. The Dancing Bees will be welcomed by anyone seeking to better understand not only this chapter of the history of science but also the peculiar waggles of our garden visitors.
Today, we know more than ever before about the powerful forces that can cause catastrophe, but significant questions remain. Why can’t we better predict some natural disasters? What do scientists know about them already? What do they wish they knew? In Dangerous Earth, marine scientist and science communicator Ellen Prager explores the science of investigating volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, rip currents, and—maybe the most perilous hazard of all—climate change. Each chapter considers a specific hazard, begins with a game-changing historical event (like the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens or the landfall and impacts of Hurricane Harvey), and highlights what remains unknown about these dynamic phenomena. Along the way, we hear from scientists trying to read Earth’s warning signs, pass its messages along to the rest of us, and prevent catastrophic loss.
A sweeping tour of some of the most awesome forces on our planet—many tragic, yet nonetheless awe-inspiring—Dangerous Earth is an illuminating journey through the undiscovered, unresolved, and in some cases unimagined mysteries that continue to frustrate and fascinate the world’s leading scientists: the “wish-we-knews” that ignite both our curiosity and global change.
As our earliest ancestors migrated out of Africa, they encountered entirely new floras. By sampling these, they found plants that appeared to (and sometimes did) heal wounds, cure maladies, and ease troubled minds. This process of discovery continues today, as multinational pharmaceutical companies bioprospect in the globe's remaining wild places for the next tamoxifen or digitalis.
The gardener and botanist David Stuart tells the fascinating story of botanical medicine, revealing more than soothing balms and heroic cures. Most of the truly powerful and effective medicinal plants are double-edged, with a dark side to balance the light. They can heal or kill, calm or enslave, lift depression or summon our gods and monsters. Often the difference between these polar effects is a simple change in dosage.
Stuart chronicles the tale of how the herbal materia medica of healing and killing plants has sparked wars, helped establish intercontinental trade routes, and seeded fortunes. As plant species traveled the globe, their medicinal uses evolved over miles and through centuries. Plants once believed to be cure-alls are now considered too dangerous for use. Others, once so valuable that they sowed the wealth of empires, are merely spices on the kitchen shelf.
David Stuart recounts engrossing human stories too, not only of the scientists, explorers, and doctors who gathered, named, and prescribed these plants but also the shamans, magicians, and quacks who claimed to possess the ultimate herbal aphrodisiac or elixir.
In 1880 a young medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle embarked upon the “first real outstanding adventure” of his life, taking a berth as ship’s surgeon on an Arctic whaler, the Hope. The voyage took him to unknown regions, showered him with dramatic and unexpected experiences, and plunged him into dangerous work on the ice floes of the Arctic seas. He tested himself, overcame the hardships, and, as he wrote later, “came of age at 80 degrees north latitude.”
A special limited, numbered edition of the clothbound book is also available. In addition, a text-only e-book edition is published as Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure, Text-only Edition.
This e-book features the complete text found in the print edition of Dangerous Work, without the illustrations or the facsimile reproductions of Conan Doyle's notebook pages.
"This book, by a distinguished Italian historian of philosophy, is a worthy successor to the author's important works on Francis Bacon and on technology and the arts. First published in Italian (in 1979), it now makes available to English readers some subtly wrought arguments about the ways in which geology and anthropology challenged biblical chronology and forced changes in the philosophy of history in the early modern era. . . . [Rossi] shows that the search for new answers about human origins spanned many disciplines and involved many fascinating intellects—Bacon, Bayle, Buffon, Burnet, Descartes, Hobbes, Holbach, Hooke, Hume, Hutton, Leibniz, de Maillet, Newton, Pufendorf, Spinoza, Toland, and, most especially, Vico, whose works are impressively and freshly reevaluated here."—Nina Gelbart, American Scientist
Everett sketches a blank-slate picture of human cognition that focuses not on what is in the mind but, rather, what the mind is in—namely, culture. He draws on years of field research among the Amazonian people of the Pirahã in order to carefully scrutinize various theories of cognitive instinct, including Noam Chomsky’s foundational concept of universal grammar, Freud’s notions of unconscious forces, Adolf Bastian’s psychic unity of mankind, and works on massive modularity by evolutionary psychologists such as Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, Jerry Fodor, and Steven Pinker. Illuminating unique characteristics of the Pirahã language, he demonstrates just how differently various cultures can make us think and how vital culture is to our cognitive flexibility. Outlining the ways culture and individual psychology operate symbiotically, he posits a Buddhist-like conception of the cultural self as a set of experiences united by various apperceptions, episodic memories, ranked values, knowledge structures, and social roles—and not, in any shape or form, biological instinct.
The result is fascinating portrait of the “dark matter of the mind,” one that shows that our greatest evolutionary adaptation is adaptability itself.
Why is the sky dark at night?
The answer to this ancient and celebrated riddle, says Edward Harrison, seems relatively simple: the sun has set and is now shining on the other side of the earth. But suppose we were space travelers and far from any star. Out in the depths of space the heavens would be dark, even darker than the sky seen from the earth on cloudless and moonless nights. For more than four centuries, astronomers and other investigators have pondered the enigma of a dark sky and proposed many provocative but incorrect answers. Darkness at Night eloquently describes the misleading trails of inquiry and strange ideas that have abounded in the quest for a solution.
In tracing this story of discovery—one of the most intriguing in the history of science—astronomer and physicist Harrison explores the concept of infinite space, the structure and age of the universe, the nature of light, and other subjects that once were so perplexing. He introduces a range of stellar intellects, from Democritus in the ancient world to Digges in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, followed by Kepler, Newton, Halley, Chéseaux, Olbers, Poe, Kelvin, and Bondi.
Harrison’s style is engaging, incisive yet poetic, and his strong grasp of history—from the Greeks to the twentieth century—adds perspective, depth, and scope to the narrative. Richly illustrated and annotated, this book will delight and enlighten both the casual reader and the serious inquirer.
The intricate forms of living things bespeak design, and thus a creator: nearly 150 years after Darwin's theory of natural selection called this argument into question, we still speak of life in terms of design--the function of the eye, the purpose of the webbed foot, the design of the fins. Why is the "argument from design" so tenacious, and does Darwinism--itself still evolving after all these years--necessarily undo it?
The definitive work on these contentious questions, Darwin and Design surveys the argument from design from its introduction by the Greeks, through the coming of Darwinism, down to the present day. In clear, non-technical language Michael Ruse, a well-known authority on the history and philosophy of Darwinism, offers a full and fair assessment of the status of the argument from design in light of both the advances of modern evolutionary biology and the thinking of today's philosophers--with special attention given to the supporters and critics of "intelligent design."
The first comprehensive history and exposition of Western thought about design in the natural world, this important work suggests directions for our thinking as we move into the twenty-first century. A thoroughgoing guide to a perennially controversial issue, the book makes its own substantial contribution to the ongoing debate about the relationship between science and religion, and between evolution and its religious critics.
"Richards's book is now the obvious introduction to the history of ideas about mind and behavior in the nineteenth century."—Mark Ridley, Times Literary Supplement
"Not since the publication of Michael Ghiselin's The Triumph of the Darwinian Method has there been such an ambitious, challenging, and methodologically self-conscious interpretation of the rise and development and evolutionary theories and Darwin's role therein."—John C. Greene, Science
"His book . . . triumphantly achieves the goal of all great scholarship: it not only informs us, but shows us why becoming thus informed is essential to understanding our own issues and projects."—Daniel C. Dennett, Philosophy of Science
Only now, with Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection, do we have a comprehensive and meticulously researched account of Darwin’s path to its formulation—one that shows the man, rather than the myth, and examines both the social and intellectual roots of Darwin’s theory. Drawing on the minutiae of his unpublished notes, annotations in his personal library, and his extensive correspondence, Evelleen Richards offers a richly detailed, multilayered history. Her fine-grained analysis comprehends the extraordinarily wide range of Darwin’s sources and disentangles the complexity of theory, practice, and analogy that went into the making of sexual selection. Richards deftly explores the narrative strands of this history and vividly brings to life the chief characters involved. A true milestone in the history of science, Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection illuminates the social and cultural contingencies of the shaping of an important—if controversial—biological concept that is back in play in current evolutionary theory.
Darwin’s theory thrust human life into time and nature and subjected it to naturalistic rather than spiritual or moral analysis. Insisting on gradual and regular–lawful–change, Darwinian thought nevertheless requires acknowledgment of chance and randomness for a full explanation of biological phenomena. George Levine shows how these conceptions affected nineteenth–century novelists—from Dickens and Trollope to Conrad—and draws illuminating contrasts with the pre–Darwinian novel and the perspective of natural theology.
Levine demonstrates how even writers ostensibly uninterested in science absorbed and influenced its vision. A central chapter treats the almost aggressively unscientific Trollope as the most Darwinian of the novelists, who worked out a gradualist realism that is representative of the mainstream of Victorian fiction and strikingly consonant with key Darwinian ideas. Levine’s boldly conceived analysis of such authors as Scott and Dickens demonstrates the pervasiveness and power of this revolution in thought and sheds new light on Victorian realism.
In Darwin Deleted, Bowler argues that no one else, not even Wallace, was in a position to duplicate Darwin’s complete theory of evolution by natural selection. Evolutionary biology would almost certainly have emerged, but through alternative theories, which were frequently promoted by scientists, religious thinkers, and moralists who feared the implications of natural selection. Because non-Darwinian elements of evolutionism flourished for a time in the real world, it is possible to plausibly imagine how they might have developed, particularly if the theory of natural selection had not emerged until decades after the acceptance of the basic idea of evolution. Bowler’s unique approach enables him to clearly explain the non-Darwinian tradition—and in doing so, he reveals how the reception of Darwinism was historically contingent. By taking Darwin out of the equation, Bowler is able to fully elucidate the ideas of other scientists, such as Richard Owen and Thomas Huxley, whose work has often been misunderstood because of their distinctive responses to Darwin.
Why do humans engage in scientific research? For some, it’s simply a career. Others are drawn to science for its potential financial rewards. And still others do it out of competitiveness—to be the first in their field. But in Darwin Meets Einstein Frans W. Saris argues that in our postmodern times we have lost the meaning of science—that science is not about competition, nor about creating wealth, nor about the joy of discovery. Science is for survival—the survival of humans, the survival of life.
In this accessible collection of essays and columns, Saris brings together in conversation a number of great minds—Charles Darwin, Baruch Spinoza, Niko Tinbergen, Francis Bacon, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, Franz Kafka, and Albert Einstein—to answer the question: why science? With selections like “Diary of a Physicist,” “The Scientific Life,” “The Mother of All Knowledge,” and “Science Through the Looking Glass of Literature,” Darwin Meets Einstein will entertain its readers and ultimately encourage them to reconsider the meaning—and the purpose—of science.
Darwinian Politics is the first book to examine political behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. Here, Paul H. Rubin discusses group or social behavior, including ethnic and racial conflict; altruism and cooperation; envy; political power; and the role of religion in politics ¾ issues that have formed the hallmark of human social behavior.
Adopting a Darwinian perspective, Rubin demonstrates why certain political-moral philosophies succeed or fail in modern Western culture. He begins by showing relationships between biology and natural selection and the history of political philosophy and explains why desirable policies must treat each person as an individual. He considers the notion of group identity and conflict, observing a human propensity to form in-groups, a behavior that does not necessitate but often leads to deviancies such as racism. In discussing altruism, Rubin shows that people are willing to aid the poor if they are convinced that the recipients are not shirkers or free loaders. This explains why recent welfare reforms are widely viewed as successful. Envy, a trait that is often counterproductive in today’s world, is also addressed. In comparing major moral philosophical systems, Rubin contends that utilitarianism is broadly consistent with our evolved preferences. He illustrates evolutionary premises for religious belief and for desires to regulate the behavior of others, and how in today’s world such regulation may not serve any useful purpose.
Ultimately, Rubin argues that humans naturally seek political freedom, and modern Western society provides more freedom than any previous one. In light of his analysis, the author extrapolates that, while there are still areas for improvements, humans have done a remarkably good job of satisfying their evolved political preferences.
With clarity and wit, Darwinian Reductionism navigates this difficult and seemingly intractable dualism with convincing analysis and timely evidence. In the spirit of the few distinguished biologists who accept reductionism—E. O. Wilson, Francis Crick, Jacques Monod, James Watson, and Richard Dawkins—Rosenberg provides a philosophically sophisticated defense of reductionism and applies it to molecular developmental biology and the theory of natural selection, ultimately proving that the physicalist must also be a reductionist.
For this edition Michael Ruse has written a new afterword that takes into account the research published since his book's first appearance.
"It is difficult to believe that yet another book on Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution could add anything new or contain any surprises. Ruse's book is an exception on all counts. Darwin scholars and the general reader alike can learn from it."—David L. Hull, Nature
"No other account of the Darwinian Revolution provides so detailed and sympathetic an account of the framework within which the scientific debates took place."—Peter J. Bowler, Canadian Journal of History
"A useful and highly readable synthesis. . .skillfully organized and written with verve, imagination, and welcome touches of humor."—John C. Greene, Science
In 1997, even as Pope John Paul II was conceding that evolution was "more than just a theory," local school boards and state legislatures were still wrangling over the teaching of origins--and nearly half of all Americans polled believed in the recent special creation of the first humans. Why do so many Americans still resist the ideas laid out by Darwin in On the Origin of Species? Focusing on crucial aspects of the history of Darwinism in America, Ronald Numbers gets to the heart of this question.
Judiciously assessing the facts, Numbers refutes a host of widespread misconceptions: about the impact of Darwin's work on the religious ideas of scientists, about the character of the issues that exercised scientists of the immediate post-Darwin generation, about the Scopes trial of 1925 and its consequences for American schools, and about the regional and denominational distribution of pro- and anti-evolutionary sentiments.
Displaying the expertise that has made Numbers one of the most respected historians of his generation, Darwinism Comes to America provides a much-needed historical perspective on today's quarrels about creationism and evolution--and illuminates the specifically American nature of this struggle.
Drawing on his own ambitious research in Darwin’s manuscripts and at the Beagle’s remotest ports of call, Sponsel takes us from the ocean to the Origin and beyond. He provides a vivid new picture of Darwin’s career as a voyaging naturalist and metropolitan author, and in doing so makes a bold argument about how we should understand the history of scientific theories.
Two species come to mind when one thinks of the Galapagos Islands—the giant tortoises and Darwin’s fabled finches. While not as immediately captivating as the tortoises, these little brown songbirds and their beaks have become one of the most familiar and charismatic research systems in biology, providing generations of natural historians and scientists a lens through which to view the evolutionary process and its role in morphological differentiation.
In Darwin’s Finches, Kathleen Donohue excerpts and collects the most illuminating and scientifically significant writings on the finches of the Galapagos to teach the fundamental principles of evolutionary theory and to provide a historical record of scientific debate. Beginning with fragments of Darwin’s Galapagos field notes and subsequent correspondence, and moving through the writings of such famed field biologists as David Lack and Peter and Rosemary Grant, the collection demonstrates how scientific processes have changed over time, how different branches of biology relate to one another, and how they all relate to evolution. As Donohue notes, practicing science today is like entering a conversation that has been in progress for a long, long time. Her book provides the history of that conversation and an invitation to join in. Students of both evolutionary biology and history of science will appreciate this compilation of historical and contemporary readings and will especially value Donohue’s enlightening commentary.
Darwin was a brilliant and revolutionary botanist whose observations and theories were far ahead of his time. With Darwin’s Most Wonderful Plants, biologist and gardening expert Ken Thompson restores this important aspect of Darwin’s biography while also delighting in the botanical world that captivated the famous scientist. Thompson traces how well Darwin’s discoveries have held up, revealing that many are remarkably long-lasting. Some findings are only now being confirmed and extended by high-tech modern research, while some have been corrected through recent analysis.
We learn from Thompson how Darwin used plants to shape his most famous theory and then later how he used that theory to further push the boundaries of botanical knowledge. We also get to look over Darwin’s shoulder as he labors, learning more about his approach to research and his astonishing capacity for hard work. Darwin’s genius was to see the wonder and the significance in the ordinary and mundane, in the things that most people wouldn’t look at twice.
Both Thompson and Darwin share a love for our most wonderful plants and the remarkable secrets they can unlock. This book will instill that same joy in casual gardeners and botany aficionados alike.
Mirroring the structure of Fertilisation of Orchids, Darwin’s Orchids investigates flowers from Darwin’s home in England, through the southern hemisphere, and on to North America and China as it seeks to address a set of questions first put forward by Darwin himself: What pollinates this particular type of orchid? How does its pollination mechanism work? Will an orchid self-pollinate or is an insect or other animal vector required? And how has this orchid’s lineage changed over time? Diverse in their colors, forms, aromas, and pollination schemes, orchids have long been considered ideal models for the study of plant evolution and conservation. Looking to the past, present, and future of botany, Darwin’s Orchids will be a vital addition to this tradition.
There has always been a mystery surrounding Darwin: How did this quiet, respectable gentleman come to beget one of the most radical ideas in the history of human thought? It is difficult to overstate what Darwin was risking in publishing his theory of evolution. So it must have been something very powerful—a moral fire, as Desmond and Moore put it—that helped propel him. That moral fire, they argue, was a passionate hatred of slavery.
In opposition to the apologists for slavery who argued that blacks and whites had originated as separate species, Darwin believed the races belonged to the same human family. Slavery was a “sin,” and abolishing it became his “sacred cause.” By extending the abolitionists’ idea of human brotherhood to all life, Darwin developed our modern view of evolution.
Drawing on a wealth of fresh manuscripts, family letters, diaries, and even ships’ logs, Desmond and Moore argue that only by acknowledging Darwin’s abolitionist heritage can we fully understand the development of his groundbreaking ideas.
Leonelli is the first scholar to use a study of contemporary data-intensive science to provide a philosophical analysis of the epistemology of data. In analyzing the rise, internal dynamics, and potential impact of data-centric biology, she draws on scholarship across diverse fields of science and the humanities—as well as her own original empirical material—to pinpoint the conditions under which digitally available data can further our understanding of life. Bridging the divide between historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science, Data-Centric Biology offers a nuanced account of an issue that is of fundamental importance to our understanding of contemporary scientific practices.
The era of the Scientific Revolution has long been epitomized by Galileo. Yet many women were at its vanguard, deeply invested in empirical culture. They experimented with medicine and practical alchemy at home, at court, and through collaborative networks of practitioners. In academies, salons, and correspondence, they debated cosmological discoveries; in their literary production, they used their knowledge of natural philosophy to argue for their intellectual equality to men.
Meredith Ray restores the work of these women to our understanding of early modern scientific culture. Her study begins with Caterina Sforza’s alchemical recipes; examines the sixteenth-century vogue for “books of secrets”; and looks at narratives of science in works by Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella. It concludes with Camilla Erculiani’s letters on natural philosophy and, finally, Margherita Sarrocchi’s defense of Galileo’s “Medicean” stars.
Combining literary and cultural analysis, Daughters of Alchemy contributes to the emerging scholarship on the variegated nature of scientific practice in the early modern era. Drawing on a range of under-studied material including new analyses of the Sarrocchi–Galileo correspondence and a previously unavailable manuscript of Sforza’s Experimenti, Ray’s book rethinks early modern science, properly reintroducing the integral and essential work of women.
The first fruits of Greek botany.
Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.
In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.
In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.
Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.
The first fruits of Greek botany.
Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.
In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.
In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.
Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.
The first fruits of Greek botany.
Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BC, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle’s zoological works.
In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties—covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. This edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises, On Odours and Weather Signs.
In De causis plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books 1 and 2 are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books 3 and 4 Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books 5 and 6 he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavors and odors. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in three volumes.
Theophrastus’ celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.
The threat of biological weapons has never attracted as much public attention as in the past five years. Current concerns largely relate to the threat of weapons acquisition and use by rogue states or by terrorists. But the threat has deeper roots—it has been evident for fifty years that biological agents could be used to cause mass casualties and large-scale economic damage. Yet there has been little historical analysis of such weapons over the past half-century.
Deadly Cultures sets out to fill this gap by analyzing the historical developments since 1945 and addressing three central issues: Why have states continued or begun programs for acquiring biological weapons? Why have states terminated biological weapons programs? How have states demonstrated that they have truly terminated their biological weapons programs?
We now live in a world in which the basic knowledge needed to develop biological weapons is more widely available than ever before. Deadly Cultures provides the lessons from history that we urgently need in order to strengthen the long-standing prohibition of biological weapons.
The Columbus Day Storm of 1962 was a freak of nature, a weather outlier with deadly winds topping one hundred miles per hour. The storm killed dozens, injured hundreds, damaged more than fifty thousand homes, and leveled enough timber to build one million homes. To find an equally ferocious storm of its kind, fast-forward fifty years and cross the continent to Superstorm Sandy’s 2012 attack on the East Coast. While Superstorm Sandy was predicted days in advance, the Columbus Day Storm caught ill-equipped weather forecasters by surprise.
This unrivalled West Coast windstorm fueled the Asian log export market, helped give birth to the Oregon wine industry, and influenced the 1962 World Series. It remains a cautionary tale and the Pacific Northwest benchmark for severe windstorms in this era of climate change and weather uncertainty. From its genesis in the Marshall Islands to its final hours on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, the storm plowed an unparalleled path of destruction.
In A Deadly Wind, veteran journalist John Dodge tells a compelling story spiced with human drama, Cold War tension, and Pacific Northwest history. This is a must-read for the tens of thousands of storm survivors, for history buffs, and for anyone interested in the intersection of severe weather events and climate change.
The present rate and extent of species extinction -- estimated by some scientists as one species every 20 minutes -- are unprecedented in the history of mankind. Human activities are responsible for nearly all species loss, yet ethical aspects of this crisis are rarely mentioned. Any concern expressed tends to be over potentially valuable resources -- information for scientists, or compounds that could be used in new medicines -- that are lost when a species disappears.
In The Death of Our Planet's Species, Martin Gorke argues that such a utilitarian perspective is not only shortsighted but morally bankrupt. Holding doctoral degrees in both ecology and philosophy, Gorke is uniquely qualified to examine the extinction crisis from both scientific and philosophical perspectives. He offers a wide-ranging review of the literature on the subject, drawing together those two lines of reasoning that are almost always pursued separately.
After critical examination of the current state of relevant ecological knowledge, Gorke presents a carefully considered case for attributing intrinsic value to all of nature, including all species. At the heart of his argument is an analysis of the concept of morality. According to this analysis, the universal character of morality does not permit us to establish limits of moral considerability. More precisely, every act of exclusion from the moral community is an arbitrary act and is not compatible with a moral point of view.
The Death of Our Planet's Species sets forth a sound and original argument about the philosophical and ethical dimensions of species conservation. Throughout, the author combines a high level of theoretical sophistication with clear and straightforward writing. Orignially published in German, this Island Press edition makes The Death of Our Planet's Species available for the first time to English-speaking experts and lay readers.
The Death of Ramón González has become a benchmark book since its publication in 1990. It has been taught in undergraduate and graduate courses in every social science discipline, sustainable and alternative agriculture, environmental studies, ecology, ethnic studies, public health, and Mexican, Latin American, and environmental history. The book has also been used at the University of California-Santa Cruz as a model of interdisciplinary work and at the University of Iowa as a model of fine journalism, and has inspired numerous other books, theses, films, and investigative journalism pieces.
This revised edition of The Death of Ramón González updates the science and politics of pesticides and agricultural development. In a new afterword, Angus Wright reconsiders the book's central ideas within the context of globalization, trade liberalization, and NAFTA, showing that in many ways what he called "the modern agricultural dilemma" should now be thought of as a "twenty-first century dilemma" that involves far more than agriculture.
Examining key disagreements about Darwin that continue to confound even committed Darwinists, Richards and Ruse offer divergent views on the origins and nature of Darwin and his ideas. Ruse argues that Darwin was quintessentially British and that the roots of his thought can be traced back to the eighteenth century, particularly to the Industrial Revolution and thinkers such as Adam Smith and Thomas Robert Malthus. Ruse argues that when these influences are appreciated, we can see how Darwin’s work in biology is an extension of their theories. In contrast, Richards presents Darwin as a more cosmopolitan, self-educated man, influenced as much by French and particularly German thinkers. Above all, argues Richards, it was Alexander von Humboldt who both inspired Darwin and gave him the conceptual tools that he needed to find and formulate his evolutionary hypotheses. Together, the authors show how the reverberations of the contrasting views on Darwin’s influences can be felt in theories about the nature of natural selection, the role of metaphor in science, and the place of God in Darwin’s thought.
Revealing how much there still is to investigate and interrogate about Darwin’s ideas, Debating Darwin contributes to our understanding of evolution itself. The book concludes with a jointly authored chapter that brings this debate into the present, focusing on human evolution, consciousness, religion, and morality. This will be powerful, essential reading for anyone seeking a comprehensive understanding of modern-day evolutionary science and philosophy.
These essays, originally delivered as the 2010 Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography at the Newberry Library, encompass more than two centuries and three continents—Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Ranging from the late eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth, contributors study topics from mapping and national identity in late colonial Mexico to the enduring complications created by the partition of British India and the racialized organization of space in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. A vital contribution to studies of both colonization and cartography, Decolonizing the Map is the first book to systematically and comprehensively examine the engagement of mapping in the long—and clearly unfinished—parallel processes of decolonization and nation building in the modern world.
Twelve renowned scientists and theologians offer penetrating insights into the evolution dialogue in The Deep Structure of Biology. Each considers whether the orthodox evolution model is sufficient and offers their perspective on evolution and biology. Essays include:
- Chance and Necessity in Evolution
- Green Plants as Intelligent Organisms
- Canny Corvoids and Political Primates: A Case for Convergent Evolution in Intelligence
- Social and Cultural Evolution in the Ocean: Convergences and Contrasts with Terrestrial Systems
- Purpose in Nature: On the Possibility of a Theology of Evolution
Editor Simon Conway Morris provides the introduction, an overview of the issues, and an essay on evolution and convergence. Other contributors are Richard Lenski, George McGhee, Karl Niklas, Anthony Trewavas, Nigel Franks, Nicola Clayton, Nathan Emery, HalWhitehead, Robert Foley, Michael Ruse, Celia Deane-Drummond, and John Haught.
The discussion of biology and evolution in these essays broadens the scope of the traditional evolution discussion as it aims to stimulate the development of other research programs. Scholars in the science and religion field will find this book a valuable resource.
On dry land, most organisms are confined to the surface, or at most to altitudes of a hundred meters—the height of the tallest trees. In the oceans, though, living space has both vertical and horizontal dimensions: with an average depth of 3800 meters, the oceans offer 99% of the space on Earth where life can develop. And the deep sea, which has been immersed in total darkness since the dawn of time, occupies 85% of ocean space, forming the planet’s largest habitat. Yet these depths abound with mystery. The deep sea is mostly uncharted—only about 5 percent of the seafloor has been mapped with any reasonable degree of detail—and we know very little about the creatures that call it home. Current estimates about the number of species yet to be found vary between ten and thirty million. The deep sea no longer has anything to prove; it is without doubt Earth’s largest reservoir of life.
Combining the latest scientific discoveries with astonishing color imagery, The Deep takes readers on a voyage into the darkest realms of the ocean. Revealing nature’s oddest and most mesmerizing creatures in crystalline detail, The Deep features more than two hundred color photographs of terrifying sea monsters, living fossils, and ethereal bioluminescent creatures, some photographed here for the very first time. Accompanying these breathtaking photographs are contributions from some of the world’s most respected researchers that examine the biology of deep-sea organisms, the ecology of deep-sea habitats, and the history of deep-sea exploration.
An unforgettable visual and scientific tour of the teeming abyss, The Deep celebrates the incredible diversity of life on Earth and will captivate anyone intrigued by the unseen—and unimaginable—creatures of the deep sea.
Diving into our current understanding of and dynamic research on dolphin and whale cognition, communication, and culture, Deep Thinkers reveals how incredibly sophisticated these mammals are—and how much we can learn about other animal minds by studying cetacean behavior. Through a combination of fascinating text and more than 150 beautiful and informative illustrations, chapters compare the intelligence markers of cetaceans with those of birds, bats, and primates, asking how we might properly define intelligence in nonhumans. As all-encompassing and profound as the seas in which these deep cetacean cultures have evolved, Deep Thinkers is an awesome and inspiring journey into the fathoms—a reminder of what we gain through their close study, and of what we lose when the great minds of the sea disappear.
What lies beneath the surface of the ocean has mystified humankind for millennia. Today, we have explored more of the surface of the Moon than we have the deep sea. What thrives in these mysterious depths, how did these life-forms evolve from ancient life, and how has this environment changed over time as our planet has developed?
Introducing us to the ancient, complex, and fascinating life-forms that have evolved into the marine life we recognize today—from stromatolites, structures created by some of the earliest life billions of years ago and still found today, to yeti crabs, bioluminescent firefly squid, and giant jellyfish—Deep Water is an eye-opening journey into the world far beneath the waves. Our guide, brilliant science communicator and self-described “fossil fanatic” Riley Black, has studied marine biology and paleontology, and she brings her vast knowledge and inimitable voice to our voyage. Through text and image, Black leads us further and further into the depths to reveal how this unique and largely unexplored habitat came into being, what lives there and why, how it has evolved, and what the future will bring in this dark and mysterious environment.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Baynton explains, immigration restriction in the United States was primarily intended to keep people with disabilities—known as “defectives”—out of the country. The list of those included is long: the deaf, blind, epileptic, and mobility impaired; people with curved spines, hernias, flat or club feet, missing limbs, and short limbs; those unusually short or tall; people with intellectual or psychiatric disabilities; intersexuals; men of “poor physique” and men diagnosed with “feminism.” Not only were disabled individuals excluded, but particular races and nationalities were also identified as undesirable based on their supposed susceptibility to mental, moral, and physical defects.
In this transformative book, Baynton argues that early immigration laws were a cohesive whole—a decades-long effort to find an effective method of excluding people considered to be defective. This effort was one aspect of a national culture that was increasingly fixated on competition and efficiency, anxious about physical appearance and difference, and haunted by a fear of hereditary defect and the degeneration of the American race.
Anthony Grafton is erudite and elegant in the style of the best historical writers who make the past come alive for the reader. In a full-scale presentation of the world of scholarship, from the Renaissance to the modern period, Grafton sets before us in three-dimensional detail such seminal figures as Poliziano, Scaliger, Kepler, and Wolf. He calls attention to continuities, moments of crisis, and changes in direction.
The central issue in Defenders of the Text is the relation between humanism and science from the mid-fifteenth century to the beginning of the modern period. Treatments of Renaissance humanism in English have emphasized the humanists’ commitment to rhetoric, ethics, and politics and have accused the humanists of concentrating on literary matters in preference to investigating the real world via new developments in science, philosophy, and other technical disciplines. This revisionist book demonstrates that humanism was neither a simple nor an impractical enterprise, but worked hand-in-hand with science in developing modern learning.
Grafton makes clear that humanism remained an integral and vital part of European culture until the eighteenth century, maintaining a technical component of its own—classical philology—which developed in as rich, varied, and unexpected a way as any other field of European thought. Attention to the text led the humanists to develop a whole range of cools and methods that lent power to science and learning for centuries to come. Grafton shows the continued capacity of classical texts to provoke innovative work in both philology and philosophy, and traces a number of close and important connections between humanism and natural science. His book will be important to intellectual historians, students of the classics and the classical tradition, and historians of early modern science.
The 1890s was an exciting time in American biology, a time of great intellectual debate and turmoil. Much of this activity centered on the now-famous Evening Lectures delivered at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory on Cape Cod, where leading biologists gathered to research the leading issues of the day. There was no better way to learn about what was being discussed and debated at the cutting edge of biology than through the Evening Lectures. The lectures of outstanding scientists such as C. 0. Whitman, E. B. Wilson, E. G. Conklin, J. Loeb, and T. H. Morgan redefined our thinking about biology.
These Evening Lectures stimulated major biological revolutions: the conversion of embryology to an independent discipline; the beginnings of ethology; the rise of genetics and especially cytogenetics; and the application of chemistry and physics to cell function-the birth of what is now called cell biology. Some of the central problems that scientists still puzzle over were first proposed at Woods Hole.
Not only are these lectures important scientific accomplishments, they also provide an invaluable record of the beginnings of a truly American school of biology. Printed in a limited edition, they have remained inaccessible to many people interested in knowing more about the meteoric rise of American biology. Jane Maienschein has selected key lectures, written an introductory essay, and provided brief explanations of the significance and impact of each lecture. Ernst Mayr, distinguished biologist and historian, has added a Foreword about the intellectual importance of the lectures to the formation of American biology; and Paul Gross, present Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory, has contributed an Epilogue that conveys the excitement and later significance of the 1890s.
Neil Tarrant challenges conventional thinking by looking at the longer history of censorship, considering a five-hundred-year continuity of goals and methods stretching from the late eleventh century to well into the sixteenth.
Unlike earlier studies, Defining Nature’s Limits engages the history of both learned and popular magic. Tarrant explains how the church developed a program that sought to codify what was proper belief through confession, inquisition, and punishment and prosecuted what they considered superstition or heresy that stretched beyond the boundaries of religion. These efforts were continued by the Roman Inquisition, established in 1542. Although it was designed primarily to combat Protestantism, from the outset the new institution investigated both practitioners of “illicit” magic and inquiries into natural philosophy, delegitimizing certain practices and thus shaping the development of early modern science. Describing the dynamics of censorship that continued well into the post-Reformation era, Defining Nature's Limits is revisionist history that will interest scholars of the history science, the history of magic, and the history of the church alike.
Where is the line between instinct and free will in humans? How far can technology and medicine go to manipulate the brain? With every new discovery about the human mind, more and more questions emerge about the boundaries of consciousness, responsibility, and how far neuroscience research can go. The fledgling field of neuroethics has sought answers to these questions since the first formal neuroethics conference was held in 2002. This groundbreaking volume collects the expert and authoritative writings published since then that have laid the groundwork for this rapidly expanding debate.
Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science traverses the breadth of neuroethics, exploring six broad areas—including free will, moral responsibility, and legal responsibility; psychopharmacology; and brain injury and brain death—in thirty provocative articles. The scientific and ethical consequences of neuroscience research and technology are plumbed by leading thinkers and scientists, from Antonio Damasio’s “The Neural Basics of Social Behavior: Ethical Implications” to “Monitoring and Manipulating Brain Function” by Martha J. Farah and Paul Root Wolpe. These and other in-depth chapters articulate the thought-provoking questions that emerge with every new scientific discovery and propose solutions that mediate between the freedom of scientific endeavor and the boundaries of ethical responsibility.
As science races toward a future that is marked by startling new possibilities for our bodies and minds, Defining Right and Wrong in Brain Science is the definitive assessment of the ethical criteria guiding neuroscientists today.
Here are essays examining the Delta’s physical properties, boundaries, and climate from a geologist, archeologist, and environmental historian. The Delta is also viewed through the lens of the social sciences and humanities—historians, folklorists, and others studying the connection between the land and its people, in particular the importance of agriculture and the culture of the area, especially music, literature, and food.
Every turn of the page reveals another way of seeing the seven-state region that is bisected by and dependent on the Mississippi River, suggesting ultimately that there are myriad ways of looking at, and defining, the Delta.
In The Defoliation of America: Agent Orange Chemicals, Citizens, and Protests, Amy M. Hay profiles the attitudes, understandings, and motivations of grassroots activists who rose to fight the use of phenoxy herbicides, or Agent Orange chemicals as they are commonly known, in various aspects of American life during the post-WWII era. Hay focuses her analysis on citizen responses to illuminate how regulatory policies were understood, challenged, and negotiated, contributing to a growing body of research on chemical regulatory policies, risk society, and hazardous chemicals. This volume uncovers new understandings about the authority of the state and its obligation to society, the role of scientific authority and expertise, and the protests made by various groups of citizens.
First introduced in 1946, phenoxy herbicides mimic hormones in broadleaf plants, causing them to “grow to death” while grass, grains, and other monocots remain unaffected. By the 1950s, millions of pounds of these chemicals were produced annually for use in brush control, weed eradication, forest management, and other agricultural applications. Pockets of skepticism and resistance began to appear by the late 1950s, and the trend intensified after 1962 when Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring directed mainstream attention to the harm modern chemicals were causing in the natural world. It wasn’t until the Vietnam War, however, when nearly 19 million gallons of Agent Orange and related herbicides were sprayed to clear the canopy and destroy crops in Southeast Asia, that the long-term damage associated with this group of chemicals began to attract widespread attention and alarm.
Using a wide array of sources and an interdisciplinary approach, Hay contributes to the robust fields of chemical toxicity, regulation, environmental management, and public health. This study of the scientists, health and environmental activists, and veterans who fought US chemical regulatory policies and practices reveals the mechanisms, obligations, and constraints of state and scientific authority in mid-twentieth-century America. Hay also shows how these disparate and mostly forgotten citizen groups challenged the political consensus and contested government and industry narratives of chemical safety.
If humankind were given a mandate to do everything in our power to undermine the earth's functioning, we could hardly do a better job than we have in the past thirty years on the world's oceans, both by what we are putting into it-millions of tons of trash and toxic materials-and by what we are taking out of it-millions of tons of wildlife. Yet only recently have we begun to understand the scale of those impacts.
Defying Ocean's End is the result of an unprecedented effort among the world's largest environmental organizations, scientists, the business community, media, and international governments to address these marine issues. In June 2003, in the culmination of a year-long effort, they met specifically to develop a comprehensive and achievable agenda to reverse the decline in health of the world's oceans.
As conservation organizations begin to expand their focus from land issues to include a major focus on preservation of the sea, it is increasingly apparent that we have to approach marine conservation differently and at much larger scale than we have to date. What's also clear is the magnitude and immediacy of the growing ocean concerns are such that no one organization can handle the job alone.
Defying Ocean's End is a bold step in bringing the resources needed to bear on this vast problem before it is too late. It offers a broad strategy, a practical plan with priorities and costs, aimed at mobilizing the forces needed to bring about a "sea change" of favorable attitudes, actions, and outcomes for the oceans-and for all of us.
Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Press introduces the primary debate in this confrontation as a choice between political centralization and decentralization. Do citizens faced with environmental crises tend to look first to a centralized leadership for solutions or do they tend to respond at a more local and grassroots level? What is the role of technical expertise in this process and how does it effect public participation in these matters? Do confrontations over environmental issues increase support for a more fully democratic decisionmaking process? Representing social, political, and economic challenges to democracy, these and other questions are then investigated empirically through analyses of case studies. Focusing on two recent controversies in the western United States, ancient-forest logging in Oregon and California and hazardous waste management in California, and drawing on in-depth interviews with individuals involved, Press clarifies the relationship between environmentalism and democracy and explores the characteristics of "new" democratic forms of environmental policymaking.
Revealing a need for a more decentralized process and increased individual and collective action in response to environmental crises, Democratic Dilemmas in the Age of Ecology will be of interest to a wide range of audiences, from scholars concerned with applications of democratic theory, to activists and policymakers seeking to change or implement environmental policy.
In one of the most comprehensive works yet written on the history of inequality and metropolitan development in modern America, Andrew R. Highsmith uses the case of Flint to explain how the perennial quest for urban renewal—even more than white flight, corporate abandonment, and other forces—contributed to mass suburbanization, racial and economic division, deindustrialization, and political fragmentation. Challenging much of the conventional wisdom about structural inequality and the roots of the nation’s “urban crisis,” Demolition Means Progress shows in vivid detail how public policies and programs designed to revitalize the Flint area ultimately led to the hardening of social divisions.
A Financial Times, Sunday Times, and Telegraph Best Science Book of the Year
What is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question, for life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. Huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery.
In this penetrating and wide-ranging book, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name; it is a domain where biology, computing, logic, chemistry, quantum physics, and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity which has the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and force us to fundamentally reconsider what it means to be alive—even illuminating the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.
From life’s murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine journeys across an astounding landscape of cutting-edge science. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window onto the secret of life itself.
Demons in Eden considers these questions using the latest scientific discoveries from the plant world. Readers join Silvertown as he explores the astonishing diversity of plant life in regions as spectacular as the verdant climes of Japan, the lush grounds of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, the shallow wetlands and teeming freshwaters of Florida, the tropical rainforests of southeast Mexico, and the Canary Islands archipelago, whose evolutionary novelties—and exotic plant life—have earned it the sobriquet "the Galapagos of botany." Along the way, Silvertown looks closely at the evolution of plant diversity in these locales and explains why such variety persists in light of ecological patterns and evolutionary processes. In novel and useful ways, he also investigates the current state of plant diversity on the planet to show the ever-challenging threats posed by invasive species and humans.
Bringing the secret life of plants into more colorful and vivid focus than ever before, Demons in Eden is an empathic and impassioned exploration of modern plant ecology that unlocks evolutionary mysteries of the natural world.
Demystifying Orchid Pollination explores the fascinating history of orchids and the means by which they reproduce. Adam P. Karremans reveals orchids’ hidden secrets, highlights the key role of pollinators in securing the survival of these delicate plants, and provides past and present scientific knowledge that challenges common beliefs about orchid reproduction. Demystifying Orchid Pollination celebrates biodiversity while stressing the importance of further ecological study and advocating for increased conservation efforts and thorough research and development.
What does it mean for scientists to truly understand, rather than to merely describe, how the world works? Michael Strevens proposes a novel theory of scientific explanation and understanding that overhauls and augments the familiar causal approach to explanation. What is replaced is the test for explanatorily relevant causal information: Strevens discards the usual criterion of counterfactual dependence in favor of a criterion that turns on a process of progressive abstraction away from a fully detailed, physical causal story. The augmentations include the introduction of a new, non-causal explanatory relevance relation—entanglement—and an independent theory of the role of black-boxing and functional specification in explanation.
The abstraction-centered notion of difference-making leads to a rich causal treatment of many aspects of explanation that have been either ignored or handled inadequately by earlier causal approaches, including the explanation of laws and other regularities, with particular attention to the explanation of physically contingent high-level laws, idealization in explanation, and probabilistic explanation in deterministic systems, as in statistical physics, evolutionary biology, and medicine.
The result is an account of explanation that has especially significant consequences for the higher-level sciences: biology, psychology, economics, and other social sciences.
Descartes and his Contemporaries recreates the tumultuous intellectual community of seventeenth-century Europe and provides a detailed, modern analysis of the Meditations in its historical context. The book's chapters examine the arguments and positions of each of the objectors—Hobbes, Gassendi, Arnauld, Morin, Caterus, Bourdin, and others whose views were compiled by Mersenne. They illuminate Descartes' relationships to the scholastics and particularly the Jesuits, to Mersenne's circle with its debates about the natural sciences, to the Epicurean movements of his day, and to the Augustinian tradition. Providing a glimpse of the interactions among leading 17th-century intellectuals as they grappled with major philosophical issues, this book sheds light on how Descartes' thought developed and was articulated in opposition to the ideas of his contemporaries.
Garber achieves a philosophically rigorous reading of Descartes that is sensitive to the historical and intellectual context in which he wrote. What emerges is a novel view of this familiar figure, at once unexpected and truer to the historical Descartes.
The book begins with a discussion of Descartes' intellectual development and the larger project that frames his natural philosophy, the complete reform of all the sciences. After this introduction Garber thoroughly examines various aspects of Descartes' physics: the notion of body and its identification with extension; Descartes' rejection of the substantial forms of the scholastics; his relation to the atomistic tradition of atoms and the void; the concept of motion and the laws of motion, including Descartes' conservation principle, his laws of the persistence of motion, and his collision law; and the grounding of his laws in God.
"An intelligently researched and fully documented analysis of this noble rock-climber's life history, and ecology, and the human management of this nearly impossible-to-manage wilderness species." —American Field
"An outstanding and comprehensive work." —Books of the Southwest
"There is quite simply nothing else around that can tell you anywhere near as much about desert sheep, by anywhere near so distinguished a crew of authors." —Safari
For most of us the word "desert" conjures up images of barren wasteland, vast, dry stretches inimical to life. But for a great array of creatures, perhaps even more plentiful than those who inhabit tropical rainforests, the desert is a haven and a home. Travel with Michael Mares into the deserts of Argentina, Iran, Egypt, and the American Southwest and you will encounter a rich and memorable variety of these small, tenacious animals, many of them first discovered by Mares in areas never before studied. Accompanying Mares on his forays into these hostile habitats, we observe the remarkable behavioral, physiological, and ecological adaptations that have allowed such little-known species of rodents, bats, and other small mammals to persist in an arid world. At the same time, we see firsthand the perils and pitfalls that await biologists who venture into the field to investigate new habitats, discover new species, and add to our knowledge of the diversity of life.
Filled with the seductions and trials that such adventures entail, A Desert Calling affords an intimate understanding of the biologist's vocation. As he astonishes us with the range and variety of knowledge to be acquired through the determined investigation of little-known habitats, Mares opens a window on his own uncommon life, as well as on the uncommon life of the remote and mysterious corners of our planet.
Phoenix is known as the “Valley of the Sun,” while Tucson is referred to as “The Old Pueblo.” These nicknames epitomize the difference in the public’s perception of each city. Phoenix continues to sprawl as one of America’s largest and fastest-growing cities. Tucson has witnessed a slower rate of growth, and has only one quarter of Phoenix’s population. This was not always the case. Prior to 1920, Tucson had a larger population. How did two cities, with such close physical proximity and similar natural environments develop so differently?
Desert Cities examines the environmental circumstances that led to the starkly divergent growth of these two cities. Michael Logan traces this significant imbalance to two main factors: water resources and cultural differences. Both cities began as agricultural communities. Phoenix had the advantage of a larger water supply, the Salt River, which has four and one half times the volume of Tucson’s Santa Cruz River. Because Phoenix had a larger river, it received federal assistance in the early twentieth century for the Salt River project, which provided water storage facilities. Tucson received no federal aid. Moreover, a significant cultural difference existed. Tucson, though it became a U.S. possession in 1853, always had a sizable Hispanic population. Phoenix was settled in the 1870s by Anglo pioneers who brought their visions of landscape development and commerce with them.
By examining the factors of watershed, culture, ethnicity, terrain, political favoritism, economic development, and history, Desert Cities offers a comprehensive evaluation that illuminates the causes of growth disparity in two major southwestern cities and provides a model for the study of bi-city resource competition.
Leading experts in geography, biology, botany, zoology, and geoscience present new research on the desert grassland and review a vast amount of earlier work. They reveal that present-day grasses once grew in the ice-age forests that existed in these areas before the climate dried and the trees vanished and how the intensity and frequency of fire can influence the plant and animal species of the grassland. They also document how the influence of humans—from Amerindians to contemporary ranchers, public land managers, and real estate developers—has changed the relative abundance of woody and herbaceous species and how the introduction of new plants and domesticated animals to the area has also affected biodiversity. The book concludes with a review of the attempts, both failed and successful, to reestablish plants in desert grasslands affected by overgrazing, drought, and farm abandonment.
Meticulously researched and copiously illustrated, The Desert Grassland is a major contribution to ecological literature. For advanced lay readers as well as students and scholars of history, geography, and ecology, it will be a standard reference work for years to come.
Winner of the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Excellence in Biological and Life Sciences
A world-renowned researcher of animal behavior reveals the extraordinary orienteering skills of desert ants, offering a thrilling account of the sophisticated ways insects function in their natural environments.
Cataglyphis desert ants are agile ultrarunners who can tolerate near-lethal temperatures when they forage in the hot midday sun. But it is their remarkable navigational abilities that make these ants so fascinating to study. Whether in the Sahara or its ecological equivalents in the Namib Desert and Australian Outback, the Cataglyphis navigators can set out foraging across vast expanses of desert terrain in search of prey, and then find the shortest way home. For almost half a century, Rüdiger Wehner and his collaborators have devised elegant experiments to unmask how they do it.
Through a lively and lucid narrative, Desert Navigator offers a firsthand look at the extraordinary navigational skills of these charismatic desert dwellers and the experiments that revealed how they strategize and solve complex problems. Wehner and his team discovered that these insect navigators use visual cues in the sky that humans are unable to see, the Earth’s magnetic field, wind direction, a step counter, and panoramic “snapshots” of landmarks, among other resources. The ants combine all of this information to steer an optimal course. At any given time during their long journey, they know exactly where to go. It is no wonder these nimble and versatile creatures have become models in the study of animal navigation.
Desert Navigator brings to light the marvelous capacity and complexity found in these remarkable insects and shows us how mini brains can solve mega tasks.
For more than 30 years, John Tillman Lyle (1934-1998) was one of the leading thinkers in the field of ecological design. Design for Human Ecosystems, originally published in 1985, is his classic text that explores methods of designing landscapes that function in the sustainable ways of natural ecosystems. The book provides a framework for thinking about and understanding ecological design, along with a wealth of real-world examples that bring to life Lyle's key ideas.
Lyle traces the historical growth of design approaches involving natural processes, and presents an introduction to the principles, methods, and techniques that can be used to shape landscape, land use, and natural resources in an ecologically sensitive and sustainable manner. Lyle argues that careful design of human ecosystems recognizes three fundamental concerns: scale (the relative size of the landscape and its connections with larger and smaller systems), the design process itself, and the underlying order that binds ecosystems together and makes them work. He discusses the importance of each of these concerns, and presents a workable approach to designing systems that effectively accounts for all of them. The theory presented is supported throughout by numerous case studies that illustrate its practical applications.
This new edition features a foreword by Joan Woodward, noted landscape architecture professor and colleague of Lyle, that places the book in the context of current ecological design thinking and discusses Lyle's contributions to the field. It will be a valuable resource for landscape architects, planners, students of ecological design, and anyone interested in creating landscapes that meet the needs of all an area's inhabitants -- human and nonhuman alike.
Design with Nature on Cape Cod and the Islands seeks to reverse this damaging trend by offering landscape professionals, local officials, and homeowners a sustainable approach to landscape design based on the ecoregion’s native plants and plant communities. Presenting detailed discussions of Cape Cod’s natural history, Jack Ahern focuses on the principal plant communities that define its landscape character and that are well adapted to local soils and growing conditions, including climate change. The book also includes strategies for ecological planting design and a portfolio of photographs of active ecologically designed landscapes.
Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy is the first such guide, bringing together the latest research and analysis around low carbon energy solutions. Written by Hal Harvey, CEO of the policy firm Energy Innovation, with Robbie Orvis and Jeffrey Rissman of Energy Innovation, Designing Climate Solutions is an accessible resource on lowering carbon emissions for policymakers, activists, philanthropists, and others in the climate and energy community. In Part I, the authors deliver a roadmap for understanding which countries, sectors, and sources produce the greatest amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and give readers the tools to select and design efficient policies for each of these sectors. In Part II, they break down each type of policy, from renewable portfolio standards to carbon pricing, offering key design principles and case studies where each policy has been implemented successfully.
We don’t need to wait for new technologies or strategies to create a low carbon future—and we can’t afford to. Designing Climate Solutions gives professionals the tools they need to select, design, and implement the policies that can put us on the path to a livable climate future.
Anyone working in biodiversity conservation or field ecology should understand and utilize the common-sense process of scientific inquiry: observing surroundings, framing questions, answering those questions through well-designed studies, and, in many cases, applying results to decision making. Yet the interdisciplinary nature of conservation means that many workers are not well versed in the methods of science and may misunderstand or mistrust this indispensable tool.
Designing Field Studies for Biodiversity Conservation addresses that problem by offering a comprehensible, practical guide to using scientific inquiry in conservation work. In an engaging and accessible style, award-winning tropical ecologist and teacher Peter Feinsinger melds concepts, methods, and intellectual tools into a unique approach to answering environmental questions through field studies. Focusing on the fundamentals of common sense, independent thinking, and natural history, he considers:
- framing the question and designing the study
- interpreting and applying results through judicious use of statistical inference
- taking into account the natural history of plants, animals, and landscapes
- monitoring and assessing progress through approaches such as "bioindicator species" or "species diversity measures"
- helping other interested parties (park guards, local communities, school teachers) use scientific inquiry in addressing their own concerns
Detailed appendixes explain technical issues, while numerous sidebars and illustrations provide important background and thought-provoking exercises. Throughout, the author challenges the reader to integrate conceptual thinking with on-the-ground practice in order to make conservation truly effective. Feinsinger concentrates on examples from Latin America but stresses that the approach applies to local conservation concerns or field biology questions in any landscape.
Designing Field Studies for Biodiversity Conservation is an essential handbook for staff and researchers working with conservation institutions or projects worldwide, as well as for students and professionals in field ecology, wildlife biology, and related areas.
In 2006 anthropologists Paul Rabinow and Gaymon Bennett set out to rethink the role that human sciences play in biological research, creating the Human Practices division of the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center—a facility established to create design standards for the engineering of new enzymes, genetic circuits, cells, and other biological entities—to formulate a new approach to the ethical, security, and philosophical considerations of controversial biological work. They sought not simply to act as watchdogs but to integrate the biosciences with their own discipline in a more fundamentally interdependent way, inventing a new, dynamic, and experimental anthropology that they could bring to bear on the center’s biological research.
Designing Human Practices is a detailed account of this anthropological experiment and, ultimately, its rejection. It provides new insights into the possibilities and limitations of collaboration, and diagnoses the micro-politics which effectively constrained the potential for mutual scientific flourishing. Synthesizing multiple disciplines, including biology, genetics, anthropology, and philosophy, alongside a thorough examination of funding entities such as the National Science Foundation, Designing Human Practices pushes the social study of science into new and provocative territory, utilizing a real-world experience as a springboard for timely reflections on how the human and life sciences can and should transform each other.
Ice-Age Eastern Europe was an inhospitable place, isolated from the moderating influence of oceans. Unlike Western Europe, which was settled over half a million years ago, Eastern Europe remained largely unoccupied until the appearance of the cold-adapted Neanderthals. When modern humans arrived from southern latitudes, they were anatomically less suited to colder climates, but successfully colonized Eastern Europe with the aid of innovative technologies that their Neanderthal predecessors lacked.
John F. Hoffecker provides an overview of Pleistocene or Ice-Age settlement in Eastern Europe with a heavy focus on the adaptations of Neanderthals and modern humans to this harsh environmental setting. Hoffecker argues that the Eastern European record reveals a stark contrast between Neanderthals and modern humans with respect to technology and social organization, both of which are tied to the development of language and the use of symbols. Desolate Landscapes will bring readers up to date with the rich archaeological record in this significant region and its contribution to our understanding of one of our most important events in human evolution - the rise of modern humans and the extinction of the Neanderthals.
The book is divided into seven chapters. The first discusses general anthropological principles and theories pertaining to human adaptation and development in cold environments. The second outlines the environmental conditions of the specific area under study in the book.
The next two chapters focus on Neanderthal finds in the area. The following two chapters discuss the replacement of the local Neanderthal population by the Cro-magnons, and the development of their way of life in the cold Loess Steppe environment. The final chapter summarizes the discussion and is followed by an extremely valuable and extensive bibliography, more than half of which consists of non-English (primarily Russian) sources.
A Telegraph Book of the Year
A Washington Post Notable Work
A Times Book of the Year
A Hughes Award Finalist
“An indisputable masterpiece…comprehensive, fascinating, and persuasive.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Brimming with wisdom and brio, this masterful work spans the history of psychiatry. Exceedingly well-researched, wide-ranging, provocative in its conclusions, and magically compact, it is riveting from start to finish. Mark my words, Desperate Remedies will soon be a classic.”
—Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire
“Compulsively readable…Scull has joined his wide-ranging reporting and research with a humane perspective on matters that many of us continue to look away from.”
—Daphne Merkin, The Atlantic
"Scull's fascinating and enraging book is the story of the quacks and opportunists who have claimed to offer cures for mental illness...Madness remains the most fascinating—arguably the defining—aspect of Homo sapiens."
—Sebastian Faulks, Sunday Times
“I would recommend this fascinating, alarming, and alerting book to anybody. For anyone referred to a psychiatrist it is surely essential.”
—The Spectator
For more than two hundred years disturbances of the mind have been studied and treated by the medical profession. Mental illness, some insist, is a disease like any other, from which one can be cured. But is this true?
From the birth of the asylum to the latest drug trials, Desperate Remedies brings together a galaxy of mind doctors working in and out of institutional settings: psychologists and psychoanalysts, neuroscientists and cognitive behavioral therapists, as well as patients and their families desperate for relief. Surprising, disturbing, and compelling, this passionate account of America’s long battle with mental illness challenges us to revisit some of our deepest assumptions and to confront the epidemic of mental illness so visible all around us.
Where did humanity get the idea that outer space is a frontier waiting to be explored? Destined for the Stars unravels the popularization of the science of space exploration in America between 1944 and 1955, arguing that the success of the US space program was due not to technological or economic superiority, but was sustained by a culture that had long believed it was called by God to settle new frontiers and prepare for the inevitable end of time and God’s final judgment. Religious forces, Newell finds, were in no small way responsible for the crescendo of support for and interest in space exploration in the early 1950s, well before Project Mercury—the United States’ first human spaceflight program—began in 1959.
In this remarkable history, Newell explores the connection between the art of Chesley Bonestell—the father of modern space art whose paintings drew inspiration from depictions of the American West—and the popularity of that art in Cold War America; Bonestell’s working partnership with science writer and rocket expert Willy Ley; and Ley and Bonestell’s relationship with Wernher von Braun, father of both the V-2 missile and the Saturn V rocket, whose millennial conviction that God wanted humankind to leave Earth and explore other planets animated his life’s work. Together, they inspired a technological and scientific faith that awoke a deep-seated belief in a sense of divine destiny to reach the heavens. The origins of their quest, Newell concludes, had less to do with the Cold War strife commonly associated with the space race and everything to do with the religious culture that contributed to the invention of space as the final frontier.
In 1973, economist E. F. Schumacher published Small Is Beautiful, which introduced a mainstream audience to his theory of “appropriate technology”: the belief that international development projects in the Global South were most sustainable when they were small-scale, decentralized, and balanced between the traditional and the modern. His theory gained widespread appeal, as cuts to the foreign aid budget, the national interests of nations seeking greater independence, postcolonial activism, and the rise of the United States’ tech sector drove stakeholders across public and private institutions toward cheaper tools. In the ensuing decades, US foreign assistance shifted away from massive modernization projects, such as water treatment facilities, toward point-of-use technologies like village water pumps and oral rehydration salts. This transition toward the small scale had massive implications for the practice of global health.
Developing to Scale tells the history of appropriate technology in international health and development, relating the people, organizations, and events that shaped this consequential idea. Heidi Morefield examines how certain technologies have been defined as more or less “appropriate” for the Global South based on assumptions about gender, race, culture, and environment. Her study shows appropriate technology to be malleable, as different constituencies interpreted its ideas according to their own needs. She reveals how policymakers wielded this tool to both constrain aid to a scale that did not threaten Western interests and to scale the practice of global health through the development and distribution of technical interventions.
As concern for the future of biodiversity mounts, Devils Hole Pupfish asks how a tiny blue fish—confined to a single, narrow aquifer on the edge of Death Valley National Park in Nevada’s Amargosa Desert—has managed to survive despite numerous grave threats.
For decades, the pupfish has been the subject of heated debate between environmentalists intent on protecting it from extinction and ranchers and developers in the region who need the aquifer’s water to support their livelihoods. Drawing on archival detective work, interviews, and a deep familiarity with the landscape of the surrounding Amargosa Desert, author Kevin C. Brown shows how the seemingly isolated Devils Hole pupfish has persisted through its relationships with some of the West’s most important institutions: federal land management policy, western water law, ecological sciences, and the administration of endangered-species legislation.
The history of this entanglement between people and the pupfish makes its story unique. The species was singled out for protection by the National Park Service, made one of the first “listed” endangered species, and became one of the first controversial animals of the modern environmental era, with one bumper sticker circulating in Nevada in the early 1970s reading “Save the Pupfish,” while another read “Kill the Pupfish.”
But the story of the pupfish should be considered for more than its peculiarity. Moreover, Devils Hole Pupfish explores the pupfish’s journey through modern American history and offers lessons for anyone looking to better understand the politics of water in southern Nevada, the operation of the Endangered Species Act, or the science surrounding desert ecosystems.
A primatologist and a humanist together explore the meaning of being a “human animal”
Humanness is typically defined by our capacity for language and abstract thinking. Yet decades of research led by the primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has shown that chimpanzees and bonobos can acquire human language through signing and technology.
Drawing on this research, Dialogues of the Human Ape brings Savage-Rumbaugh into conversation with the philosopher Laurent Dubreuil to explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of what being a “human animal” means. In their use of dialogue as the primary mode of philosophical and scientific inquiry, the authors transcend the rigidity of scientific and humanist discourses, offering a powerful model for the dissemination of speculative hypotheses and open-ended debates grounded in scientific research.
Arguing that being human is an epigenetically driven process rather than a fixed characteristic rooted in genetics or culture, this book suggests that while humanness may not be possible in every species, it can emerge in certain supposedly nonhuman species. Moving beyond irrational critiques of ape consciousness that are motivated by arrogant, anthropocentric views, Dialogues on the Human Ape instead takes seriously the continuities between the ape mind and the human mind, addressing why language matters to consciousness, free will, and the formation of the “human animal” self.
She’s the mascot for the University of Maryland’s sports teams and her ancestors were nearly driven to extinction by Victorians who indulged in turtle soup. But as she buries herself in the mud every night to sleep, the diamondback terrapin knows none of this. The size of a dinner plate and named for the beautiful concentric rings on her shell, she can live at least forty years and is the only turtle in North America who can live in brackish and salty waters. Several diamondback populations have been the subjects of ecological studies in recent years, but most of that information was buried in scientific literature and various state and federal reports—until this book.
Synthesizing all known research on this remarkable animal, Diamonds in the Marsh is the first full-scale natural history of the diamondback terrapin. Focusing on the northern diamondback, Barbara Brennessel examines its evolution, physiology, adaptations, behavior, growth patterns, life span, genetic diversity, land use, reproduction, and early years. She also discusses its relationship to humans, first as an important food source from colonial times through the nineteenth century, and more recently as a cultural icon, frequently depicted in Native American art and design. She concludes with a look at contemporary hazards to the terrapin and urges continued study of this marvelous creature. Updated with a new introduction by Brennessel, and with a foreword by Bob Prescott, former executive director of Massachusett’s Audubon Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary, Diamonds of the Marsh is perfect for those interested in the conservation of a species.
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