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On DEATH . . . What is shared by spawning Pacific salmon, towering trees, and suicidal bacteria? In his lucid and concise exploration of how and why things die, Tyler Volk explains the intriguing ways creatures-including ourselves-use death to actually enhance life. Death is not simply the end of the living, though even in that aspect the Grim Reaper has long been essential to natural selection. Indeed, the exquisite schemes and styles of death that have emerged from evolution have been essential to the great story from life's beginnings in tiny bacteria nearly four thousand million years ago to ancient human rituals surrounding death and continuing to the existential concerns of human cultu...
Transcending the various formal concepts of life, this captivating book offers a unique overview of life's history, essences, and future. "A masterpiece of scientific writing. You will cherish "What Is Life?" because it is so rich in poetry and science in the service of profound philosophical questions".--Mitchell Thomashow, "Orion". 9 photos. 11 line illustrations.
In this lavishly illustrated work of extraordinary range and originality, one of the world's most accomplished life scientists and a gifted science writer examine that "sine qua non" of human existence--sex--the profoundly mysterious procreative force that is the root of our very being. 80 color photos. 15 charts.
At the crossroads of philosophy and science, the sometimes-dry topics of evolution and ecology come alive in this new collection of essays--many never before anthologized. Learn how technology may be a sort of second nature, how the systemic human fungus Candida albicans can lead to cravings for carrot cake and beer, how the presence of life may be why there's water on Earth, and many other fascinating facts. The essay "Metametazoa" presents perspectives on biology in a philosophical context, demonstrating how the intellectual librarian, pornographer, and political agitator Georges Bataille was influenced by Russian mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky and how this led to his notion of the absenc...
In the 1970s, microbiologist Lynn Margulis and atmospheric chemist James Lovelock developed the Gaia theory. Embracing the circular logic of life and engineering systems, the Gaia theory states that Earth is a self-regulating complex system in which life interacts with and eventually becomes its own environment. Gaia describes a living Earth: a body in the form of a planet. Fusing science, mathematics, philosophy, ecology and mythology, *Gaia and Philosophy*, with a new introduction by Dorion Sagan, challenges Western anthropocentrism to propose a symbiotic planet. In its striking philosophical conclusion, the revolutionary Gaia paradigm holds important implications not only for understanding life's past but for shaping its future.
First appearing as a McGraw-Hill hardcover in 1990, and then, later that year as a Bantam paperback, Biospheres: the Metamorphosis of Planet Earth, was translated into French and Italian. Dorion Sagan's first sole-authored book, it was a meditation on the nature of biospheric life, presenting a Nietzschean ecology and arguing that Earth itself did indeed bear signal traits of a living organism. Long out of print, this speculative work on the nature and future of life on Earth is once again being made available.
Tireless, controversial, and hugely inspirational to those who knew her or encountered her work, Lynn Margulis was a scientist whose intellectual energy and interests knew no bounds. Best known for her work on the origins of eukaryotic cells, the Gaia hypothesis, and symbiogenesis as a driving force in evolution, her work has forever changed the way we understand life on Earth. When Margulis passed away in 2011, she left behind a groundbreaking scientific legacy that spanned decades. In this collection, Dorion Sagan, Margulis's son and longtime collaborator, gathers together the voices of friends and colleagues to remark on her life and legacy, in essays that cover her early collaboration wi...
Draws on the principles of philosophy and science to explore the question of man's existence on Earth.
In this groundbreaking book, Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan present an answer to one of the enduring mysteries of evolution -- the source of inherited variation that gives rise to new species. Random genetic mutation, long believed to be the main source of variation, is only a marginal factor. As the authors demonstrate in this book, the more important source of speciation, by far, is the acquisition of new genomes by symbiotic merger. The result of thirty years of delving into a vast, mostly arcane literature, this is the first book to go beyond -- and reveal the severe limitations of -- the "Modern Synthesis" that has dominated evolutionary biology for almost three generations. Lynn Margulis, whom E. O. Wilson called "one of the most successful synthetic thinkers in modern biology," and her co-author Dorion Sagan have written a comprehensive and scientifically supported presentation of a theory that directly challenges the assumptions we hold about the variety of the living world.
Mac guru Bill Atkinson shoots pictures of cut and polished rock slabs, transmuting them into masterpieces of "found" art with his high-resolution scanning camera and innovative color management techniques. For "Within the Stone," Atkinson picks 72 rock images for their evocative painterly qualities. Seven eminent poets and science writers, including Diane Ackerman and John Horgan, take turns responding to each image as a dream, landscape, seduction, or excogitative stimulus. In an appendix, three mineralogists describe each specimen's provenience, geological setting, and mineral composition. "A beautiful work of art." "Gems & Gemology." "Abstract masterpieces." "Popular Photography." "Revelations of the inner beauty of rocks." "PC Photo" "High tech meets timeless beauty." "Lapidary Journal." "Apple's soft ware star turns his code into art." "Macworld" Winner of 2004 Gold Ink Award, American Photo Best Photo Book of 2004