Finding Order In Nature

Author: Paul Lawrence Farber
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 0801873541
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
“Engaging . . . a concise work that gives the general reader a solid understanding . . . an excellent introduction to the history of natural history.” —Library Journal Since emerging as a discipline in the middle of the eighteenth century, natural history has been at the heart of the life sciences. It gave rise to the major organizing theory of life—evolution—and continues to be a vital science with impressive practical value. Central to advanced work in ecology, agriculture, medicine, and environmental science, natural history also attracts enormous popular interest. In Finding Order in Nature Paul Farber traces the development of the naturalist tradition since the Enlightenment and considers its relationship to other research areas in the life sciences. Written for the general reader and student alike, the volume explores the adventures of early naturalists, the ideas that lay behind classification systems, the development of museums and zoos, and the range of motives that led collectors to collect. Farber also explores the importance of sociocultural contexts, institutional settings, and government funding in the story of this durable discipline. “The history of natural history can rarely have been as succinctly told as in Paul Lawrence Farber’s 129-page Finding Order in Nature. From the intellectual revolutions of Linnaeus and Darwin through the Victorian obsessions with classifying and collecting, to the conservationists led by E. O. Wilson, it is an odyssey beautifully told.” —New Scientist “Farber does an impressive job of demonstrating how practitioners like Linnaeus, Buffon, Saint-Hilaire and Cuvier advanced the field and set the stage for the development of science as we know it today.” —Publishers Weekly

This Outside Life

Author: Laurie Ostby Kehler
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN: 0736975799
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
Step Into Wonder Has your breath ever caught at the sight of a sunset? Have you ever stopped in your tracks to listen to a birdsong? When was the last time you stood in awe of the world around you? If it’s been so long you can’t remember, living life at a sprint might be leaving you nature blind. If you’re feeling stressed, disconnected from God, and disenchanted with life, this book will help you find solace for your scattered soul. Through storytelling, practical application, and reflective questions, Laurie Kehler invites you on a journey of discovery to… escape the crazy and reset your spiritual compass to explore pathways of peace seek connections with nature and others—starting in your own backyard recognize God’s work in creation and in your life as you live in expectation of his promises Are you ready to set out on a new kind of adventure? Consider this your trail guide for uncovering God’s signposts in the world and revealing his fingerprints on your life.

Not So Different

Author: Nathan H. Lents
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231178327
Category : Animal behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 349

Book Description
With evidence from psychology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology and ethnolgy, the biologist Nathan H. Lents argues that the same evolutionary forces of cooperation and competition have shaped both humans and animals.

Our True Nature - Finding a Zest for Life in the National Park System

Author: Audrey Peterman
Publisher: Fideli Publishing
ISBN: 9781604146233
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
"Audrey's love of nature and the national parks is equaled only by her love for people." -Juan Martinez, National Geographic Emerging Explorer, Wyoming "Audrey opens up the country to us in a whole new way. She weaves the beauty, history and culture she has found in our national parks into a spellbinding story that makes me want to get out there even more." - Rue Mapp, founder, Outdoor Afro, California "In Our True Nature, Audrey Peterman expresses the joy and wonder to be found in our national parks. Her effervescent words bubble with the enthusiasm she has for the parks and all they bring to humanity." - John Poimiroo, CEO, National Parks Promotion Council "Audrey's writing is so vivid, I feel like I am there with her, whether it's in the wilds of Alaska or the historic town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia. This is a welcome guide for anyone interested in history, beauty, nature, travel, adventure or just understanding what it means to be an American." -Al Calloway, historian and writer, Florida ________ Audrey Peterman is a national award winning environmentalist. A native of Jamaica and a citizen of the US, she and her husband Frank co-authored the book, Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Treasures and Tells Why Every American Should Care. Since 1995 she has visited more than 160 of the 397 units of the National Park System and is an advocate for their continued protection.

A Beautiful Question

Author: Frank Wilczek
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143109367
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Book Description
Does the universe embody beautiful ideas? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this “beautiful question.” With Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek as your guide, embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek’s groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature. This is the deep logic of the universe—and it is no accident that it is also at the heart of what we find aesthetically pleasing and inspiring. Wilczek is hardly alone among great scientists in charting his course using beauty as his compass. As he reveals in A Beautiful Question, this has been the heart of scientific pursuit from Pythagoras and the ancient belief in the music of the spheres to Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and into the deep waters of twentieth-century physics. Wilczek brings us right to the edge of knowledge today, where the core insights of even the craziest quantum ideas apply principles we all understand. The equations for atoms and light are almost the same ones that govern musical instruments and sound; the subatomic particles that are responsible for most of our mass are determined by simple geometric symmetries. Gorgeously illustrated, A Beautiful Question is a mind-shifting book that braids the age-old quest for beauty and the age-old quest for truth into a thrilling synthesis. It is a dazzling and important work from one of our best thinkers, whose humor and infectious sense of wonder animate every page. Yes: The world is a work of art, and its deepest truths are ones we already feel, as if they were somehow written in our souls.

Explaining Cancer

Author: Anya Plutynski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199967466
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
In Explaining Cancer, Anya Plutynski addresses a variety of philosophical questions that arise in the context of cancer science and medicine. She begins with the following concerns: · How do scientists classify cancer? Do these classifications reflect nature's "joints"? · How do cancer scientists identify and classify early stage cancers? · What does it mean to say that cancer is a "genetic" disease? What role do genes play in "mechanisms for" cancer? · What are the most important environmental causes of cancer, and how do epidemiologists investigate these causes? · How exactly has our evolutionary history made us vulnerable to cancer? Explaining Cancer uses these questions as an entrée into a family of philosophical debates. It uses case studies of scientific practice to reframe philosophical debates about natural classification in science and medicine, the problem of drawing the line between disease and health, mechanistic reasoning in science, pragmatics and evidence, the roles of models and modeling in science, and the nature of scientific explanation.

Finding Sanctuary in Nature

Author: Jim PathFinder Ewing
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1844093042
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 168

Book Description
These spiritual lessons are based on Native American shamanism but fit a wide range of interests from yoga and alternative medicine to Bible study and nature hiking. Hands-on exercises, step-by-step instructions for ceremonies, and sketches by the author's wife explain how to clear spaces of unwanted energy, create simple ceremonies, connect with spirit guides and angels, and interpret symbols. An extended discussion tells how to make a medicine wheel that resembles a labyrinth and use it as an engine for distance healing. Additional ceremonies for daily living, healing the earth, and soul retrieval are also described, and the spiritual quest itself is shown to follow the process of choosing a sacred place in nature, finding a sacred place within oneself, and connecting to the inner and outer worlds. Readers are encouraged to keep a notebook about their spiritual growth and refer to the key words and suggestions for internet research that are included.

Finding Order in Nature

Author: Paul Lawrence Farber
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801863905
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 156

Book Description
The importance of naming and categorizing nature has its roots in the biblical Genesis, as does the problematic view of man's domination over it. Farber (history, Oregon State U.) traces the scientific study of the natural world from its 18th century beginnings with Swedish botanist Linnaeus and his French rival Buffon, through Darwin's synthesis, to the modern theory of evolution (1900-50), and concerns over biodiversity by the "naturalist as generalist" exemplified by Wilson. Includes modest b&w illustrations.Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

How Nature Works

Author: Sarah Besky
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
ISBN: 0826360866
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
We now live on a planet that is troubled—even overworked—in ways that compel us to reckon with inherited common sense about the relationship between human labor and nonhuman nature. In Paraguay, fast-growing soy plants are displacing both prior crops and people. In Malaysia, dispossessed farmers are training captive orangutans to earn their own meals. In India, a prized dairy cow suddenly refuses to give more milk. Built from these sorts of scenes and sites, where the ultimate subjects and agents of work are ambiguous, How Nature Works develops an anthropology of labor that is sharply attuned to the irreversible effects of climate change, extinction, and deforestation. The authors of this volume push ethnographic inquiry beyond the anthropocentric documentation of human work on nature in order to develop a language for thinking about how all labor is a collective ecological act.

Finding the Mother Tree

Author: Suzanne Simard
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0525656103
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. In this, her first book, now available in paperback, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. Simard writes--in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways—how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies--and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. And Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world.