Can squirrels be said to be good or bad? For an answer to questions of that sort, this is the book to read. A treat for...
Forester Wohlleben (The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World, 2016) turns his attention to how animals feel.
Writing nontechnically but with obvious depth of knowledge, the author invites readers to imagine that animals have many of the same feelings we do. His argument might not pass the most rigorous of scientific challenges, but it makes good sense. “Basically,” he writes, “emotions are linked to the unconscious part of the brain. If animals lacked consciousness, all that would mean is that they would be unable to have thoughts.” That does not presuppose, however, that animals cannot have emotions, since animals certainly have the same sorts of automatic nervous system responses humans have; in that view, maternal love may be hard-wired in deer or frogs just as much as it is in humans. All vertebrates, argues Wohlleben, share the same hardware, so to speak, for emotions, and he takes this down into other orders, noting, for instance, that fish produce oxytocin, “the hormone that not only brings joy to mothers, but also strengthens the love between partners,” and that even single-celled animals can perform complex tasks involving awareness of their surroundings and, therefore, at least a kind of intelligence. And what of the love that an animal might feel for a human? In that instance, the author observes, the driving force may not be anything quite so immutable but instead a more variable quality: the ability to have curiosity about the world. The upshot is that humans need to give animals more credit for feeling—and therefore should not be so quick to eat them, to say nothing of other kinds of maltreatment. Indeed, on reading this gently learned book, readers will pay more attention to animals generally and learn how to be better neighbors to them.
Can squirrels be said to be good or bad? For an answer to questions of that sort, this is the book to read. A treat for animal lovers of all stripes.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77164-301-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Greystone Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
An attempt to bridge the gap between spiritual and scientific inquiries into the nature and origins of the universe, from a physics professor at Dartmouth. Actually, Gleiser believes that the studies of cosmologists such as himself are spiritual; it's just that scientists seek to prove their intuitions, rather than to rely on faith. He finds the notion that scientists are cold and objective, rather than passionate, to be ludicrous and even offensive, and his accounts of the work of Einstein, Copernicus, and Newton wonderfully personalize the essentially spiritual quests these men made on their paths to discoveries with reproducible results. Einstein spoke of a ``cosmic religious feeling,'' for instance. To go back a long way indeed, the Pythagoreans were a monastic order of sorts, their mathematical discoveries a way of proving order in the universe and, to their minds, a divine intelligence. Sometimes, Gleiser is hard pressed to find much spirituality at work—in the endeavors of Niels Bohr, for instance. Nonetheless, the spirituality that is evident in the groundbreaking work of many great scientists is convincingly illuminated by Gleiser in this rather unique overview. He begins with a survey of various creation myths, from Hopi to Zoroastrian to Christian, and shows their links to the early astronomy of the Babylonians and Greeks. He devotes a great deal of attention to the Greeks, then moves on to the ideas of the ``pious heretic,'' Galileo; the origins and intent of Newton's laws of motion; the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics; and the turbulent discoveries of the modern age, beginning with Einstein and progressing through quantum physics and on to the ramifications of the uncertainty principle. Even if one cares little for Gleiser's spiritual asides, this is an exceptionally clear summary of 2,500 years of science and a fascinating account of the ways in which it often does intersect with spiritual beliefs. (30 b&w drawings, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 1997
ISBN: 0-525-94112-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An Amish farmer's blissful account of the rhythms of nature and work, finding delight in everyday places. ``Sometimes I wonder whether I farm to make a living or whether it is all a front, just an excuse to be out in the fields looking at clouds,'' writes Kline (Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer's Journal, 1990), who works the farm in northwestern Ohio where he grew up. He's not a typical modern-day farmer: He plows with draft horses and uses chemical pesticides only as a last resort, and then reluctantly. His view of wildlife is more enlightened, too. He tolerates woodchucks (considered unredeemed pests by farmers dependent on expensive heavy equipment) because their burrows nurture foxes, rabbits, and other species. Kline organizes his observations into short, discursive essays that shift easily from farmstead to fields, woods, and the community. Though some early passages seem pedestrian (the section on spiders reads like an elementary science text), his observations of plants and animals grow more intriguing the farther from home he wanders. Kline's finest moments involve fascinating interactions with wildlife that show how attuned he is to nature. He observes a titmouse plucking fur for its nest from a sleeping raccoon's back, recalls a pet crow from childhood who liked to grip the hood ornaments of cars and go for a feather-ruffling ride, and stands stock still in a field until a weasel passes between his legs, close enough for Kline to observe drops of blood on its nose. He respects nature, and it rewards him with genuine oddities: A damselfly lays eggs on his finger; a napping woodchuck arches its back appreciatively when he scratches it with his walking stick. Though Kline's thoroughly charming survey of the natural world focuses on the flora and fauna indigenous to Ohio, it has much to teach us about appreciating wild things wherever we happen to be. (four illustrations, not seen) (Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1997
ISBN: 0-8203-1938-4
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Univ. of Georgia
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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