This Canadian naturalist's polemic shows humanity as abandoning a holistic natural order for a self-centered life as a rogue species. Humanity's initial step toward separating itself from wild nature was, in effect, to remake itself into the first domesticated species, argues Livingston (Environmental Studies/York University, Ontario; One Cosmic Instant, 1973, etc.). Just as domestic animals can no longer live the way their wild ancestors did, humans have interposed technology between themselves and nature. The price of this insulation from nature is high: a loss of sensory detail (especially in senses other than sight), homogenization of the human environment, and a sense of life as a competitive enterprise rather than a cooperative one. Citing the primate studies of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, Livingston contends that, in the natural world, aggression between members of the same species is so rare as to be pathological. He goes to some length to point out Darwin's (unconscious) adoption of the paradigms of market capitalism as the basis for his theory of natural selectioncreating a picture of nature that fit all the preconceptions of Victorian Englishmen. Livingston stresses the evidence for self-awareness in animals, removing the last barrier between ``higher'' and ``lower'' intelligence. But he also presents the evidence for a form of ``group consciousness'' in natureas in the simultaneous changes of direction of the members of a flock of birds. While Livingston takes potshots at a wide array of easy targets (colonialism, vivisection, fur hunters), he saves the heavy ammo for ``zero-order humanism'': the belief that any action can be justified if it serves the ultimate good of humanity. This way lies the destruction of what remains of the natural world. The problems Livingston sees are real enough, and he articulates them powerfully; but at the end, he has no answers other than somehow getting back in touch with our innate ``wildness.''
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-57098-058-6
Page Count: 228
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1995
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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