Armored Fighting Vehicles: 300 of the World's Greatest Military Vehicles

Book Description

Starting with the crude and unreliable tanks that clashed on the Western Front in World War I, roll through years and on to the vehicles of World War II, such as the Panzer IV, Panther, Tiger, Sherman, and T-34, and right up to the most recent fighting machines, including the Abrams and Challenger, and Bradley and Warrior infantry tanks. 300 in all.

Customer Reviews:

A Very Good Pocket Guide.......2006-10-17

That is if you have a slightly larger than normal pocket.

Although the cover shows only WW2 era vehicles, the book DOES cover from WW1 to the present day, and even has mention of some of the "less" (or in some cases UNARMORED) armored vehicles such as the Jeep and the "Deuce and a half" cargo truck. If the title were merely "Fighting Vehicles" that would have been more correct, but we won't split hairs here.

The illustrations are very well rendered, and the comments can be taken (mainly) verbatim, although the author does take a tad of "literary embellishment".

There are some omissions, such as the M26 Pershing, the M48 Patton II, the M41 Walker Bulldog (but the M42 Duster is included), so it just misses the "10-ring" on that.

The artwork is superb, but I wonder if actual photographs (of the vehicles in action) might not have improved the book overall.

All in all, it IS still a quite decent compilation of most any fighting vehicle you can think of, and makes for quite the handy reference for those times when you just HAVE to know "what type of tank was that in BATTLE OF THE BULGE that the Germans were tooling around in, because they SURE were NOT TIGERS"?
((ans: M47s that were sold to Spain))

Perhaps Mr. Trewhitt will correct these errors and subsequently have a new and better printing of an otherwise very good book.

Weak and strong..........2004-12-25

This book is a good starting point for learning about military vehicles from all eras and countries. Much of the information is OK but there are obvious errors and inaccuracies in some of the histories I sampled. A military vehicle book, with a scope as large as this one, has a few glaring ommisions such as the M26 Pershing and the Russian KV-2, while at the same time,containing many varients of modern Chinese armor, British "funnies" from WW2 as well as many varients of German WW2 halftracks. The book also includes many "softskin" vehicles, so the title is a bit misleading. This book is "pocket" sized and it does have a great deal of info and a drawing of each vehicle. Just dont take it all for gospel though.

Global Security guide.......2004-05-07

Ever like to pretend you're a Romanian dictator on parade-ground watching your pet brigade of Belgian-manufactured SIBMAS infantry fighting vehicles go by? With a couple of battalions of spanking-new French AMX-40 tanks to beef them up, of course; never mind that noone ever ordered any AMX-40s at all, the real entertaiment in such reference manuals inevitably is in imagining how all these assorted vehicles would face off against each other in combats that, even in our contentious world, are unlikely to happen (Leopard IIs versus Leclercs? Not in this EU century); or, on a less grisly note, how much fun it would be to have your own giant deterrent force to fondly sink your national budget on (ever wonder if Pentagon wonks spend way too much free time playing Risk?). Covering the history of tanks and their lighter supporting vehicles ranging from self-propelled artillery (much of this including weapons also covered in this Barnes & Noble series' Artillery volume) and personnel carriers to reconnaisance armored cars and engineering vehicles, this allows the reader to ponder essential specs on these famous machines of war from Kursk to Desert Storm, accompanied by clearly drawn illustrations. Though there are a few oversights (the Soviet BMP-1 is absent, though the complementary BMP-2 as well as the airborne units' BMD-1 are featured), this gives you most of the information you need to know when pondering the state of the equipment in the NATO arsenals and that of the post-Soviet-client states that threaten them. Presumably up-and-coming designs like the new Stryker vehicles or France's much-anticipated VBCI infantry fighting vehicles will get included in subsequent editions. In the meantime, if you're shopping for a couple of armoured divisions, check this out first.

Too much author opinion, too few details........2003-04-14

It's good for quick referance, and there's a lot of content, but detail is somewhat lacking and the manner in which some information is presented can be misleading at times. Additionally, the author interdicts his opinion in several instances as fact in regards to which vehicles are better than the others instead of allowing the reader to draw that conclusion for themselves, which I felt lead to the book occassioanlly being self-contradictory.

A good quick reference.......2003-01-27

Provides basic information on a wide variety of armored vehicles of all conceivable types. A little short on detail, with no photos (but good side view illustrations). Makes a good starter volume or quick reference guide.

Book Description

Beginning with the creation of the universe in the Jewish year (3760 B.C.E.) and ending with the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 5745 (1985). This volume employs chronologies and time lines to convey Jewish history's people and events. Kantor writes from the perspective of a traditional Jew, covering events such as the Flood, giving of the Torah, and the fall of the Tower of Babel, placing these within the chronology of history along with the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.

Customer Reviews:

A must have tool for the serious scholar.......2000-04-18

My title says it all. Mattis Kantor has composed the richest collection of information available on the subject of Jewish (and world) history. The reader will discover a wealth of knowledge that gives detail yet is easily referenced. Beautiful work. If a person is a true scholar then no collection is complete without this book.

Average customer rating:

The Jewish Time Line Encyclopedia
Mattis Kantor
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MU789E

Amazon.com

In 1996, an article entitled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" was published in the cultural studies journal Social Text. Packed with recherché quotations from "postmodern" literary theorists and sociologists of science, and bristling with imposing theorems of mathematical physics, the article addressed the cultural and political implications of the theory of quantum gravity. Later, to the embarrassment of the editors, the author revealed that the essay was a hoax, interweaving absurd pronouncements from eminent intellectuals about mathematics and physics with laudatory--but fatuous--prose.

In Fashionable Nonsense, Alan Sokal, the author of the hoax, and Jean Bricmont contend that abuse of science is rampant in postmodernist circles, both in the form of inaccurate and pretentious invocation of scientific and mathematical terminology and in the more insidious form of epistemic relativism. When Sokal and Bricmont expose Jacques Lacan's ignorant misuse of topology, or Julia Kristeva's of set theory, or Luce Irigaray's of fluid mechanics, or Jean Baudrillard's of non-Euclidean geometry, they are on safe ground; it is all too clear that these virtuosi are babbling.

Their discussion of epistemic relativism--roughly, the idea that scientific and mathematical theories are mere "narrations" or social constructions--is less convincing, however, in part because epistemic relativism is not as intrinsically silly as, say, Regis Debray's maunderings about Gödel, and in part because the authors' own grasp of the philosophy of science frequently verges on the naive. Nevertheless, Sokal and Bricmont are to be commended for their spirited resistance to postmodernity's failure to appreciate science for what it is. --Glenn Branch

Book Description

In 1996, Alan Sokal published an essay in the hip intellectual magazine Social Text parodying the scientific but impenetrable lingo of contemporary theorists. Here, Sokal teams up with Jean Bricmont to expose the abuse of scientific concepts in the writings of today's most fashionable postmodern thinkers. From Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva to Luce Irigaray and Jean Baudrillard, the authors document the errors made by some postmodernists using science to bolster their arguments and theories. Witty and closely reasoned, Fashionable Nonsense dispels the notion that scientific theories are mere "narratives" or social constructions, and explored the abilities and the limits of science to describe the conditions of existence.

Customer Reviews:

Know what you are talking about.......2006-12-15

Alan Sokal, physics professor at New York University submitted an essay, `Transgressing the Boundaries,' to the prestigious journal Social Text, in 1996. The article was a deliberate hoax intended to mimic the deliberate obscurantism of the Post-Modernist/Post-Structuralist French intellectual community that had coalesced since the 1960's. This book, coauthored with Jean Bricmont, attempts to expose the post-modern movement for their asinine misappropriations of science and mathematics in a vain attempt to consolidate their academic positions. The authors under scrutiny are psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, literary theorist Julia Kristeva, feminist Luce Irigaray, Bruno Latour, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Paul Virilio, and `Epistemic Relativism in the Philosophy of Science' and the misappropriation of Godel's theorem, and abuses in the field of astrophysics.

In all fairness, the authors are able to land a couple of substantive blows against Lacan's abstruse use of mathematics in psychoanalysis, and Irigaray's unwise talk of `white male science,' but Sokal and Bricmont don't have their logic together, they make to many critical leaps in the inquiry. Without wanting to get into an involved exegesis of the divisions between analytic and continental philosophy that have existed since the beginning of the 20th century, I will simply say that as a general a priori principle of the human mind, the former believes in objective truth, and the latter is more skeptical, particularly of the principles of the enlightenment. But I am not so sure that Bricmont and Sokal are aware of the history of this division, and the key thinkers that have impacted the division. For example, in a tirade against Epistemic Relativism, the authors writes: "This relativist zeitgeist originates partly from contemporary works in the philosophy of science, such as Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Paul Feyerabend's Against Method, and partly from extrapolations of these philosophers' work by their successors" (51). Sokal and Bricmont go on to write in a footnote that "There are, of course, many other sources of the relativist zeitgeist, from Romanticism to Heidegger, but we shall not deal with them here" (ibid). Yes, never mind Heidegger, arguably the most important philosopher of the 20th century and the leading figure in the existentialist/post-modern movement in continental philosophy. Never mind his essay `Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics' which outlines a number of problems with reviewing the accomplishments of philosophy from a scientific point of view.

The authors of this text constantly misunderstand the achievements of `Enlightenment' philosophers that they believe the post-modern movement has digressed from, like Descartes and Hume. They write: "The universality of Humean skepticism is also its weakness. Of course, it is irrefutable. But since no one is systematically skeptical (when he or she is sincere) with respect to ordinary knowledge, one ought to ask why skepticism is rejected in that domain and why it would nevertheless be valid when applied elsewhere for instance, to scientific knowledge" (55). What are we supposed to take from this sentence? That we should believe that modern science objectively seeks the truth because...no one actually is a skeptic? Hume argues cogently in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that knowledge of causality can never truly be attained or demonstrably proven, it is merely an appearance based on the properties of a close relation in time and contiguity which deludes our senses. Why then, should we believe in the empirical sciences? The authors merely revert to (often incorrect) digressions on Popper's writings on falsifiability which the authors still seem to think is obsolete and the irrelevance of Cartesian rationalism. In short, they don't answer the problems philosophy has posed to the natural sciences. Sokal and Bricmont don't bother to mention anything about Foucault's archeology of the human sciences in `the Order of Things,' nor do they address any of the classical problems of epistemology and human knowledge raised by Kant or Hegel.

The largest problem with `Fashionable Nonsense' is that the authors take some legitimate criticisms and deduce too much from them. It is worth exposing a thinker for being unclear, meaningless, or irrelevant. However, they go entirely too far in attempting to write off the whole of post-modernity as sheer charlatanism based on a moderate amount of legitimate criticisms. What of the writings of Roland Barthes? What of Levinas? And what about the achievements of post-modern anthropologists like Pierre Bourdieu? After all, the vast majority of the work that is being done in these intellectual domains are more focused on the humanities, on literature, on politics and history, and purely philosophical activities like ontology or phenomenology that have nothing to do whatever with science. Sokal and Bricmont don't have their logic together. They write in their epilogue: "1. It is a good idea to know what one is talking about" (185). Yet I doubt they know anything about the history of philosophy outside of what they have read in Bertrand Russell. They seem to believe in the objective principles of truth established in the Enlightenment, but their political tirade does not mention a word of Rousseau or Nietzsche. They pay no attention to the intellectual bombs dropped on structuralism by Derrida, or by the Marxist analyses of Althusser. In short, they don't know what they are talking about. How ironic.

Biased but valid critique of postmodern nonsense.......2006-11-24

Alan Sokal, a physicist, published a famous hoax in a prestigious humanities journal called 'The Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.' The article mixed various ideas from postmodern literary theory and philosophy with ideas from logic, science, astronomy, mathematics and cosmology which in the end seemed to claim that all science is really just another form of textual interpretation.

Sokal follows up on this hoax with a book on the nonsense of postmodern thought. To their credit, the authors argue (rightly in my view) that critical theory and hermeneutical questions about the meaning of texts are appropriate in the humanities, but not when it comes to science and scientific theories. They then move on to criticize several postmodern thinkers and sociologists of science including Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour and Harold Bloor, for holding views of science which completely misunderstand science or carelessly borrow concepts from science which in their original context had very precise meaning (such as energy or infinite sets) and are given very sloppy intellectual treatment, woven into a fluid and chaotic system which makes zero logical sense and is in fact, nonsense.

These 'category mistakes' (as Ryle would put it) are certainly true in many cases. The loose thinking of Derrida and some other post-modern thinkers seems so sloppy at times one wonders what is going on; I don't believe serious issues in philosophy, theology or science should be approached in the same way as creating a novel, play or poem is (in effect trying to turn something into literary art which it isn't). I am not against artists using concepts from philosophy, science, theology or elsewhere to make art, and great poets have done this for centuries in a consistent manner (Dante, Shakespeare, Shelley and T.S. Eliot come to mind), but rationality remains important and sense cannot substitute for nonsense. Perhaps, unless you are Lewis Carroll.

However at the same time in my view it is legitimate for the humanities to examine science and ask what place science has in the scheme of culture, and also what light science sheds on old questions. Scientific methods have been very successfully integrated into many of the humanities, ranging from more rigorous logic and theories of cognition in philosophy, to scientific methods of textual interpretation in literary theory, to scientific methods of dating and analysis in archeaology. Similarly, many scientists have examined the philosophical implications of their work, ranging from evolutionary biology (Matt Ridley, Edmund Wilson) to physics (Heisenberg, Bohm and Bohr) to scientific cosmology (Paul Davies). There is no need for a facile culture war between the partisans of science and those of the human sciences, rather, both need to understand they are on a common quest for understanding. The task of both is really to enable us to understand ourselves and our place in the universe, and also the universe itself. The universe of the philosopher may be different from that of the physicist, and it is not necessary that the insights of philosophy are rendered useless by the findings of physics, and vice versa. Both try to explore reality and offer a rational and coherent account of it, using logic, observation and theory. The ideas of philosophy may not be expressible in terms of a simple set of equations, but that does not make philosophical ideas any less lacking in beauty, depth or elegance than the so called grand unified theories of theoretical physics.

The humanities also need to be critical of science, just as sometimes science should be critical of the humanities. Scientific knowledge has been misused for many things, ranging from the creation of atomic weapons to the pollution of the biosphere. While science is in many ways our best hope for improving our condition, science also needs to be informed by ethics and the understandings given by the humanities to the human condition. This certainly does not mean ideas in say, pure mathematics or theoretical physics or cosmology should be determined by the considerations of literary theory or politics (which is absolute and patent nonsense), any more than the ideas of pure mathematics should determine what philosophical vision of the universe is wrong or right. Science should not be the handmaiden of the humanities, but nor should the humanities be the handmaiden of science. However, both can complement, enrich and help each other both through dialogue and conflict, but not through polemical warfare.

Flawed, but compelling.......2006-11-23

The idea behind this book is an entertaining one: Sokal got a satirical article published in Social Text - an article which was essentially meaningless jargon about relativism's influence on epistemic certainty, all pasted together with authentic quotations from various intellectuals. In the wake of this scandal, Sokal and Bricmont wrote this book which further decries the people they quote. Various chapters dissect passages from Lacan, Kristeva, Latour, Irigaray, Baudrillard, Virilio, and Deleuze/Guattari, revealing these authors' use of scientific jargon in social-scientific contexts to be mostly misplaced.

The book succeeds in ridiculing these isolate passages; unfortunately, it doesn't quite convince in its larger critiques. Sokal and Bricmont, in various "intermezzos," make half-baked attempts to link the thought of Kuhn and Feyerabend up with the absurdities expounded in the works they quote, none of which seems historically to follow. This alone weakens the book's overarching argument, that scientific "relativism" is somehow to blame in the phenomena the book addresses. Regardless of the authors' defense that they don't mean to attack the entirety of "postmodern" scientific process, I can't see what else they could intend.

But the book's critique of the scholars fails on even more significant grounds. Sokal and Bricmont argue that, for instance, if Luce Irigaray laughably misuses concepts drawn from her shallow understanding of fluid mechanics, the rest of her work is to be thrown into question. But the authors fail to address the fact that these authors' works are not homogenous. Julia Kristeva has written a lot of nonsense, I'm sure, but she's also written cogently and expertly on depression in _Black Sun_; Baudrillard's works are equally varied.

So ultimately, while this is a vastly amusing work, it probably shouldn't be taken as a final word on the subject. Rather, it's a cautionary anthology of the places where jargon, erudition, and cryptic language overlap far too much, with too little critical evaluation.

Mandatory Reading.......2006-10-03

Many of the reviews on this page -- the "top reviews" in particular -- are thorough and to the point. I agree with them entirely. FN is not perfect, but perfection is hardly achievable. I was not aware of the "Sokal Hoax" when it first emerged, and have only recently learned of it through the serendipitous discovery of FN at a used book store. Suffice it to say, my few dollars' investment was richly rewarded. I can well imagine (and understand) the fury that the Sokal Hoax sparked. Having reviewed only a tiny portion of the critical literature that emerged in the wake of Sokal's Social Text publication, it is clear that a book-length treatment of the issues Sokal and Bricmont subsequently took on in FN was much needed. The result -- FN -- is an incisive (and incidentally quite entertaining) critique of fuzzy thinking/writing/argumentation that has taken root (or at least had -- I'm not up on current developments) in certain academic disciplines. Sokal and Bricmont are careful to define the scope of their criticisms, and to anticipate the kinds of criticisms that might be leveled against them in turn. On both scores, they perform masterfully. FN is about the uses and abuses of (pseudo-)science and (pseudo-)scientific jargon in certain academic disciplines. The focus of the book may be narrow, and the claims (rigorously argued) modest, but its importance is far greater. In an age of increasing anti-intellectualism, FN is, above all, a plea for critical thought. It is a tour-de-force.

In which Pooh goes shooting fish in a barrel, but the Big One gets away.......2006-09-23

Before I start, let me nail my colours to the mast: I'm pro-science, I'm pro-evolution, I really like the idea of rational enquiry and I'm a sceptic bordering on the cynical. I'm *not* some lentil-munching, kaftan-wearing, feng-shui-hugging hippie with airbrushed unicorns and a yin-yang sign on the side of my Kombi. Honestly.

Now we've got that cleared up, let me say it straight: This book takes on some big arguments, but, other than humorously swatting some flies, loses hands down. All it succeeds in doing is illustrating that there are fakers, losers, charlatans and wankers to be found in the Social Sciences departments of any given University. Anyone who's been to university and didn't know that deserves a clip around the ear and to be sent to the back of the class. Now either Sokal didn't know that ( - ~clip~ -), or he's spent half his book shooting fish in a barrel. That might seem like good sport, but before long it becomes obvious it's a cheap thrill.

Having said that, I sincerely doubt that the titillation of seeing dumb French Feminists taken apart is what made this book such a splash: I think it's because of Sokal's purported intent: to undermine the notion of cognitive relativism, especially as it associated with modern philosophy of science, in particular the work of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. This is the battle: Sokal aligns with those who say scientists are the exclusive purveyors of a shining light called truth; the Barbarians at the gate are these simpering postmodernists who want to tear the temple down.

While the poseurs cited in this book are certainly (for the most part) phoneys or idiots, I think Thomas Kuhn was neither, and while Paul Feyerabend overplayed the court jester hand, he had some important things to say too.

So, to the first point: Proving that one writer (or a hundred, or a thousand) who purports to adhere to relativism is a charlatan doesn't establish anything about *the idea* of relativism. All you have established is that you have a found yourself a charlatan. Give yourself a star.

But while you're pinning it on, remember that postmodernists do not have a monopoly on illogical, bamboozling, balderdash:

Example: Sir Roger Penrose (Emeritus Rouse Ball professor of mathematics at Oxford University, no less) and his dreadful, lumpen-headed, and deliberately bamboozling anti-AI tract "The Emperor's New Mind". The very point of the (no doubt correct but nonetheless entirely irrelevant) science deluged on the reader in that book is to obscure the fact that the real emperor was Roger Penrose and his arguments on AI really blow the kumara.

Example: Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker's Linguistic Nativism, which has held sway for a good thirty years in many linguistics departments, and is anything but post-modern: nativism holds that humans have an innate understanding of grammar hard wired into their biology. From my paltry readings in linguistics and the philosophy of language, my impression is that Pinker's and Chomsky's arguments are seriously flawed. (See: Sampson: "The Language Instinct Debate" for a thorough linguistic critique of nativism; see Rorty: "Contingency Irony, and Solidarity" for a philosophical perspective on the contingency of language). Make note of this example, as it becomes relevant later on.

Secondly, Sokal and Bricmont (quite deliberately) refuse to engage on certain topics, in particular on cultural or aesthetic relativism, which they say (without providing a reason) "raise very different issues". Take that star away, for this statement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about relativism. Actually, ethical, aesthetic and cognitive relativisms raise different manifestations of *exactly* the same issue: Cognitive relativism, in that it relates to "epistemic" truth (as opposed to "moral" truth or "aesthetic" truth - both of which seem intuitively more questionable ideas) is simply a cut closer to the quick: indeed, the aesthetic and moral brands of relativism rely for their plausibility on cognitive relativism anyway (i.e. if the truths we understand about the physical universe are contingent on our language, then it follows that ideals of right and wrong and beauty must be similarly contingent on our language).

Thirdly, Sokal provides the following account of cognitive relativism:

"While scientists ... try to obtain an objective view ... of the world, relativist thinkers tell them that they are wasting their time and that such an enterprise is, in principle, an illusion"

Now that, to put it mildly, is a *very* punchy version of relativism, and not one that any credible relativist philosopher I know of (and certainly not Thomas Kuhn, who spent a whole book explaining how and why the process scientific discovery works) subscribes to.

That is, in the trade, known as a straw-man argument: You set it up to knock it over. Here goes:

P1: Relativists say science is a waste of time
P2: Science helps us reliably predict and react coherently to phenomena occurring in the world
P3: Things which help to predict and react to such phenomena have genuine utility
C1: Therefore, science has genuine utility
C2: Ergo, science is not a waste of time

Case closed. Is relativism dead? No: the problem is, most relativists I know would completely agree with all of the above argument except for premise 1. The cat is most definitely still out of the bag. (In a nutshell, all reasonably stated relativism says is that you can't know that your theory actually maps onto the actual configuration of the outside world; it may, it may not: logically there will always be some other possible explanation for the same set of data, however implausible or difficult to imagine, and in part that difficulty in imagination may be a function of the historical contingency of our belief in, and description of the world in terms of, the current "paradigm". Relativism simply says the best you can do is to know that, for now, your theory works, not that it is *true*. Though Sokal and Bricmont may disagree, I don't think this is controversial amongst philosophers nor, really, scientists.)

Lastly, in criticising an admittedly utterly ludicrous passage bestowed on the world by that splendidly silly feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva, Sokal makes the following footnote:

"...Kristeva seems to be appealing ... to the 'Sapir-Whorf thesis' in linguistics that is ...that our language radically conditions our view of the world. This thesis nowadays is sharply criticised by some linguists: see, for example Pinker ..."

Hold the phone. The implication is that the Sapir-Whorf thesis (as to the contingency of language) has been discredited, but by none other than Steven Pinker in his "The Language Instinct" which, as per the above, is at the very least a controversial piece of writing. This is an extremely important point, since it's utterly central to the credibility of the anti-relativist cause, and if one takes Geoffrey Sampson's book (cited above) at face value the nativist claims themselves are built on very suspect reasoning and scientific research. It seems to me (and to writers like Richard Rorty) that language must radically condition our view of the world, because that's the only basis on which we can even describe it.

At the end of the day, properly stated cognitive relativism is no a threat to modern scientific discourse, except that it relegates the scientist from "truth knower" or "person through whom you may have exclusive access to the truth" (sounds a bit like a grand high pooh-bah or - dare I say it - high priest, doesn't it?) to "person whose theory works the best for now" and who may be in competition for that status with other people in the community whether or not they're scientists.

If science *does* work better than feng shui or healing crystals (and I, for one, think it does) then this shouldn't be a particularly troubling way of looking at the world for a scientist who is at ease with his views and his value to the community. So it makes the knee-jerk reactions against relativism, from the likes of Sokal and elsewhere Richard Dawkins, all the more mystifying.

Olly Buxton

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science.(Review) : An article from: Issues in Science and Technology

Average customer rating:

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science.(Review) : An article from: Issues in Science and Technology
Daniel Barbiero
Manufacturer: National Academy of Sciences
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Science & Technology | Subjects | e-Docs | Formats | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Issues in Science and Technology, published by National Academy of Sciences on June 22, 1999. The length of the article is 2002 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science.(Review)
Author: Daniel Barbiero
Publication: Issues in Science and Technology (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 1999
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
Volume: 15 Issue: 4 Page: 76(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Biological Conservation, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
A review of the value for fauna of conifer and eucalypt plantations in Australia is presented. Five key reasons highlight a need for wildlife conservation as part of plantation management. These are: (1) The plantation estate in Australia is set to triple in the coming decades, and where new plantations are located and how they are managed will influence the biota that currently exist in such landscapes. This is particularly critical in many semi-cleared former grazing landscapes where the establishment of new plantations is focused. This is because: (1) (a) native vegetation communities in these areas are poorly represented in the existing reserve system, and, (b) uses such as wood and pulp production need to be balanced with other management values such as wildlife conservation. (2) The maintenance of some elements of the biota within plantations could have benefits for key ecosystem processes like pest control. (3) Although some species cannot be conserved in plantation-dominated landscapes, many species can be through the adoption of (sometimes minor) modifications to forest management. (4) The maintenance (or loss) of biota in plantations is relevant for moves toward ecological standards and the certification of plantations in many parts of the world. And, (5) simple plantation forestry which has a narrow and intensive management focus on producing a forest crop for a limited array of purposes, may not meet societal demands for a range of outputs from plantations in addition to wood and pulp. It also may not be congruent with the principles of ecological sustainability. Our review showed that almost all research undertaken in Australian plantations, both in conifers and eucalypts, highlighted the importance of landscape heterogeneity and stand structural complexity for fauna conservation. At the landscape level, patches of retained native vegetation, strips of riparian vegetation, dams, open and clearing areas can significantly increase the number of native species that occur within plantations. Some species that occur in these areas can also use adjacent planted areas, a result common to conifer and eucalypt plantations. The spatial juxtaposition of stands of varying ages throughout plantation landscapes also can contribute to the maintenance of some populations of native taxa. At the stand level, structural complexity is also important for fauna with many species responding positively to the presence of native understorey plants, the presence of windrowed logs, and logging slash left on the forest floor. The management of plantations to promote landscape heterogeneity and stand structural complexity will, in many cases, involve trade-offs that will influence wood and pulp production. The extent to which this occurs will be dependent on the objectives of plantation management and how far they extend toward the complex plantation forestry model to incorporate social and environmental values in addition to wood and pulp production.

Conservation of Australia's Forest Fauna

Average customer rating:

Conservation of Australia's Forest Fauna

Manufacturer: Not Avail
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 095860858X

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books