So why did all those critters go extinct? MacPhee suggests rather than asserts, but his book, featuring beautiful...
Working the “borderland between archeology and paleontology,” a paleomammalogist examines a suite of causes for the extinction of large animals during the late Pleistocene.
In 1814, when John James Audubon observed a flock of passenger pigeons over the Ohio River, the population numbered in the untold billions. A century later, the last passenger pigeon died in a zoo. That, notes MacPhee (Race to the End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole, 2010, etc.), who has worked at the American Museum of Natural History for three decades, is the “fastest decline on record for a vertebrate with an initially large population size”—and, he adds cautiously, the “most supported” cause is overhunting. Why the caution, when the historical record is full of accounts of passenger pigeons being blasted out of the sky? Because the author is wrestling with the thorny question of what brought on the deaths of so many large animals, including mastodons, marsupial lions, dodos, and baboon lemurs. In a noir film, the smoking gun would be in the hands of the humans who just happened to show around the time of extinction. In science, greater care must be taken in establishing causality, and even if MacPhee bridles at the line of argument established by Paul Martin and his followers blaming the megafaunal extinction on the human “blitzkrieg,” he at least includes human killing among the causes. Others factors include climate change, the collapse of food webs, and the introduction of invasive species. Concluding that there is no compelling common cause in the extinctions, MacPhee closes by considering the possibilities of genetically reviving lost species, or “de-extinction,” noting, finally, “it is to be hoped that any brave new creations can be integrated into existing ecosystems without destroying them—something we have been unable to do with ourselves, for at least the last 50,000 years."
So why did all those critters go extinct? MacPhee suggests rather than asserts, but his book, featuring beautiful illustrations from Schouten, adds thoughtful fuel to a scholarly debate that shows no signs of ending.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-393-24929-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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