The Ghost in the Machine (Arkana)

Customer Reviews:

Stick to It - Great Read.......2005-09-09

There is no doubt that Mr. Koestler explains his thoughts in immense detail and labor... This will affect you in a couple of possible ways:
- You'll love following the train of thought and appreciate even the train wrecks; or
- You'll start drifting off into visions of dancing monkeys and magical fireworks...

In all seriousness Mr. Koestler explains the reasoning and imagination behind all of his assertions and assumptions with exacting detail...

His theory is excellent and combines some mainstream stuff (from his time and relevant now) with some of the fringe ideas of various fields. The whole package is woven together with expert touch and Mr. Koestler has a rare gift of explaining things not in an "idiot-proof" fashion but down-to-earth enough to let you think about it.

The basic premise is the exploration of mankind's "darker" side -mentally speaking. The pathological human mind that 'builds splendid cathedrals and decorates them with gargoyles'; Mr. Koestler explains them as "two sides of the same medal coined in the evolutionary mint" - and indeed he makes that case with astounding persuasiveness... His concepts sound extremely plausible and seem to be well-founded on facts and ideas alike...

Stick to the heavier or rambling parts as he ties them into the overall idea eventually! You will walk away from this book having learned something...

Pride covetousness lust anger gluttony envy & selfishness?.......2004-02-25

ýA man coins not a new word without some peril; for if it happens to be received, the praise is but moderate; if refused, the scorn is assured.ý

So wrote Ben Jonson, and so quoted Arthur Koestler on page 48 of his The Ghost in the Machine (1967). Koestler inserted the quotation to express the uneasiness he felt at suggesting a neologism. The very useful word he coinedýýholonýýseems to have gone tragically underappreciated, while Koestler has, I suspect, not received much in the way of scorn for his impudence (at least in this respect). Jonson was wrong. A man coins not a new word without some peril, itýs true. But the nature of the peril is this: if it happens to be received, the praise is but moderate; if refused, the coiner gets not even scorn.

What is a holon? Coined from the Greek holos (whole) and the diminutive suffix -on (after the pattern of proton, electron, etc.), the term holon ýmay be applied to any stable biological or social sub-whole which displays rule-governed behavior.ý Koestler writes:

Parts and wholes in an absolute sense do not exist in the domain of life.... The organism is to be regarded as a multi-leveled hierarchy of semi-autonomous sub-wholes, branching into sub-wholes of a lower order, and so on. Sub-wholes on any level of the hierarchy are referred to as holons. Biological holons are self-regulating open systems which display both the autonomous properties of wholes and the dependent properties of parts. This dichotomy is present on every level of every type of hierarchic organization, and is referred to as the Janus Effect.... The concept of holon is intended to reconcile the atomistic and holistic approaches. (Appendix I.1; scrambled somewhat for conciseness.)

The first third of Koestlerýs book, the section titled ýOrder,ý is dedicated to the concept of the holon, and his introduction to open hierarchic system theory. The versatility and universality of the holon concept should have guaranteed its entry into the language. Its prevalence in all ordered, i.e. hierarchic, systems, and particularly biological organisms, Koestler illustrates through the parable of the two watchmakers, Mekhos and Bios. Their watches are of equal quality and of equal complexity (a thousand pieces each) but their methods of production differ. Bios builds durable sub-units of ten pieces each, ten of which can be joined together to create a secure sub-assembly of one-hundred piecesýand ten sub-assemblies, of course, make one complete watch. Mekhos, on the other hand, adds one piece at a time, seriatim; as such, any interruption requires him to start afresh. Biosýs method is clearly superior not just because an interruption will only set him back, at most, nine steps (versus Mekhosýs possible 999), but because Biosýs watches will tend to be much sturdier than Mekhosýs. ýIt is easy to show mathematically that if a watch consists of a thousand bits, and if some disturbance occurs at an average of once in every hundred assembling operationsýthen Mekhos will take four thousand times longer to assemble a watch than Bios. Instead of a single day, it will take him eleven years.ý Consequently, Biosýs business thrives, while Mekhos barely manages to scrape by.

Biological systems (Bios), in other words, are not just vortices of chance patterns constrained by deterministic mechanical laws (Mekhos); they are hierarchic systems made up of Janus-faced, quasi-independent holons. In ýBecoming,ý the second part of the book, Koestler discusses evolution in holarchic terms, citing organelles (e.g. mitochondria) and homologous organs (e.g. the human arm and the birdýs wing) as examples of evolutionary holonsýsub-units which appear, with striking similarity, across countless discrete species. Just as nearly every company has an IT department, every cell has chemical power plants which extract energy from food. And just as automobile designers do not overhaul but rather perform variations on basic components such as the engine, chassis, or suspension system, evolution progresses by making small changes to existing tried and true mechanismsýthe arm of the human, the wing of the bird, the leg of the dog, and the flipper of the seal, however different in appearance or function, are all made of bones, muscles, and blood vessels.

This tendency to recycle old parts has its risks as well as its obvious benefits, however. The legacy systems donýt always interact smoothly with the enhancements. This is essentially the thesis of the third part of the book, ýDisorderý: that it is not unreasonable to assume that, considering the ýexplosive rate of the brainýs development, which so widely overshot its mark, something may have gone wrong ... More precisely, that the lines of communication between the very old and the brand-new structures were not developed sufficiently to guarantee their harmonious interplay, the hierarchic co-ordination of instinct and intelligence.ý

In short, Koestler blames the dominance of instinct over intellectýthe latterýs subservience to the former as physiologically manifest in the neocortexýs subjection to the brainýs more reptilian limbic systemsýfor not only humanityýs spectacular social and moral cataclysms, but the halting, erratic progress of science as well. The ýpassionate neighing of affect-based beliefsý prevent us from listening to the voice of reason. This is why all moral exhortation, all efforts of persuasion by reasoned argument, are doomed to failure; they

rely on the implicit assumption that homo sapiens, though occasionally blinded by emotion, is a basically rational animal, aware of the motives of his own actions and beliefsýan assumption which is untenable in the light of both historical and neurological evidence. All such appeals fall on barren ground; they could take root only if the ground were prepared by a spontaneous change in human mentality all over the worldýthe equivalent of a major biological mutation.

The solution to our predicament is sketched out and advocated by Koestler in the final few pages of The Ghost in the Machine; it is, to put it succinctly, a pharmacological one. Readers will bristle at the contentious, and some might say contemptible, declaration that mankindýs only hope for long-term survival is through medication, but to me the answer seems logical enough. If we agree that something has gone awry in our phylogenetic development, and it seems an anodyne enough hypothesis, then nothing short of ýtampering with human natureý can rectify the pathology of our species, which has been so garishly demonstrated in holocaust after holocaust. And as Koestler is himself quick to point out, we tamper with our nature every day, and have done so ýever since the first hunter wrapped his shivering frame into the hide of a dead animal.ý It could be argued that part of our problem has been tampering: Pasteur et al. tampered on a microscopic level, and with colossal repercussions. No one would seriously propose a voluntary abjuration of antibiotics, however, in order to cull the herd a bit. We can only move forward.

Letýs be explicit: we are considering an overpopulated, irrational, imbalanced species equipped with the ability to manufacture weapons of genosuicidal magnitudeýan ability which will not evaporate:

As the devices of atomic and biological warfare become more potent and simpler to produce, their spreading to young and immature, as well as old and over-ripe, nations is inevitable. An invention, once made, cannot be dis-invented; the bomb has come to stay. Mankind has to live with it forever: not merely through the next crisis and the next one, but forever; not through the next twenty or two hundred or two thousand years, but forever. It has become part of the human condition.

ýThe Promethean myth,ý Koestler goes on, ýhas acquired an ugly twist: the giant reaching out to steal the lightning from the gods is insane.ý With this in mind, the advent of a suggestibility-curbing pillýýan artificially simulated, adaptive mutation to bridge the rift between the phylogenetically old and new brain, between instinct and intellect, emotion and reason,ý to ýcounteract misplaced devotion and that militant enthusiasm, both murderous and suicidal, which we see reflected in the pages of the daily newspaperýýseems relatively benign. We cannot ask people to be more rational, more thoughtful, less susceptible to blind passion, bigotry, murderous devotion.

I sympathize with Koestlerýs proposal, but I am pessimistic as to its practicality. And I think he might have overlooked the possibility that suggestibility and subservience to the affect-based beliefs might be the very epoxies holding society togetherýfor better or for worse.

Consider Heinrich Eichmann who, as Koestler observes, ýwas not a monster or a sadist, but a conscientious bureaucrat, who considered it his duty to carry out his orders and believed in obedience as the supreme virtue; far from being a sadist, he felt physically sick on the only occasion when he watched the Zircon gas at work.ý He was, in other words, the perfect cog, a smoothly functioning holon in something larger than himself. He was a good citizen in a bad society. Where exactly does his sin lie? Where his pathology?

ýWar is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars; and loyalty is a noble thing.ý And Solzhenitsyn wrote:

Ideologyýthat is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and othersý eyes, so that he wonýt hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.... Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed these millions?

Perhaps hereýs a way of daring to insist that evildoers do not exist: by declaring, instead, that only bureaucrats exist. We could move up the hierarchy and blame everything on its head (Hitler in this case) but frequently the hierarchy has no headýperhaps there is only an amorphous board of directors; perhaps the hierarchy is open-endedýand of course no hierarchy operates in a vacuum, and no hierarchy can function without its sub-holons.

Eichmann, we feel compelled to say, was as culpable as anyoneýi.e., fully, or not at all. In him, perhaps, we are given a glimpse of the true nature of contemporary ýevilý: conscientious bureaucracy; obedience as the supreme virtue. The integrative tendency, the desire to transcend the self, the desire to belong, to fit in, to function as a part of some larger organization, to serve something larger than the petty egoýthis is what stymies intellectual progress and permits wars and pogroms. Death camps cannot be implemented without a stable hierarchic society to carry out the plan; humans cannot exterminate one another on such a cosmic scale without first getting along.

ýThe self-assertive behaviour of the group is based on the self-transcending behaviour of its members, which often entails sacrifice of personal interests and even of life in the interest of the group. To put it simply: the egotism of the group feeds on the altruism of its members.ý This is the most important revelation in Koestlerýs book: that the virtuous, self-denying, self-transcending, integrative urges are far more dangerous than the self-assertive ones.

And this urge to integrate, to belong, to blindly submit to the rules of the social holon you belong to, is the warp and the woof of the fabric of society. It may well be instinctualýit may well be written in our genesýbecause it is implicit, inescapable, a necessity in any hierarchic system. The human individual is truly Janus-faced because his or her self-assertive and integrative inclinations are at odds, true, but also mutually dependent. To do whatýs best for your group is in fact whatýs best for you; self-surrender is self-preservation. If the body dies, so do all of its cells.

What would we have had Eichmann do? We fancy that we can imagine a scenario in which his refusal to administrate the death camps (a pang of conscience prompted, in our thought experiment, by Koestlerýs Pill, perhaps) might have made some difference. ýHe could have conscientiously objected,ý we say from the smug safety of our armchair. And then what? He probably would have been exterminated, and someone with less compunctions, someone with a stronger desire to fit in, put in his place.

Hegel has said that ýWhat experience and history teach us is thisýthat people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.ý If this is true, it is probably unnecessary to pose this question: Have any of us learned anything from, for example, the Holocaust? How would we, as people or governments, prevent a repeat? We glibly take it for granted that nothing so horrific, and in so recent memory, can have failed to make us a little more jaded, a little less naïve, a little less susceptible to mass hysteria or national insanityýand we leave it at that. Hereýs all weýve really learned: Nazisýbad. Hitlerýreal bad. Case closed. But of course the next Nazis will not call themselves Nazis; the next Hitler wonýt have the mustache.

What we should have learned, perhaps, is that our suggestibility needs to be curbed; that each of us has an obligation to be extremely careful about which holons we allow ourselves to be subsumed by; that our integrative tendencies need to be reined and restrained. Before we resort to pharmacology, we should presumably attempt education. So maybe we should be indoctrinating our children with the belief that blindly accepting indoctrination can be disastrous. ýOh. You see the problem.

Koestlerýs Pill, or any equivalent thereof, might well dissolve society. If we were properly critical, properly rational, all the time, if we took nothing on faith, we would never learn. The paradox is that the march of science is founded on credulity. Specialization, which has become more or less prerequisite to progress in any field, is a hierarchic branching out and narrowing down of knowledge. If every generation of physicists had to rediscover the electron, no one would have ever got to the quark; if I paused to evaluate, to impugn, to prove every one of the ýstatements of factý Iýve received from parents and professors, television and textbooks, over the course of my lifetime I would probably never have graduated from high school. In fact I am critical of very little. How could I afford to be? We stand like Newton on the shoulders of giants but only because we trust the giants enough to get up on their shouldersýwhen of course they could dash us to the earth if they so desired. Jacob Empson has written (in Sleep and Dreaming):

Rather than modern Western beliefs being less mystic than those in antiquity, or in underdeveloped communities, they seem equally if not more so than some. It could be argued that the very incomprehensibility of the modern world has made us even more credulous. Many of the quite commonplace products of modern technology might as well be magic, for all that any normal person could be expected to understand how they work.

The human race is an unfathomably complex network of overlapping open-ended hierarchies; it is a juggernaut trundling forth, with no one at the helm.

And so too is each one of us. How can it be otherwise?

This is one of the best books I've read in a while. Koestler's erudition, humanity, and prose are nonpareil. Read it and make up your own mind -- it's your moral imperative.

Not true to his own theories.......2003-07-26

This book is one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. Koestler presents a fascinating theory that we are a flawed species and then -- out of thin air -- produces the "better living through chemistry" cure (we all need to be medicated because our reptilian brains are ill at ease with our advanced mammalian brains). However, earlier in a coherent part of the book, he presents a theory that genetic failures and designs which have become over-specialized (like his example of the marsupial) eventually are resolved by paedomorphosis (a kind of "backtracking" in which evolution goes back a level and tries another branch to a better solution - rather like the depth-first search) and "self-repair". Thus the true solution to man's problems, in Koestler's own framework (had he not just tossed off the chapter he did), would have to have been human genetic re-engineering, not pharmacology. But what a ride this book is!

A mind working overtime.......2002-04-15

What an enigma Arthur Koestler was! His books range from Zionism to telepathic powers, as well as novels about the Stalinist trials. The Ghost in the machine was my introduction to his writings and it is an astonishing approach to evolution -explained simply leading to frightening and telling conclusions about man and his capacity for war. It is the work of a mind that cannot keep still and keep taking one step further on. Read it and I hope that it opens this exciting and daunting author to you as well. I was never the same after reading it and it has coloured all my thinking ever since. Read it and understand the Taliban, World War One and the Ku Klux Klan. It is nothing less than an evolutionary argument for our collective insanity.

The Evil that Men do.......2001-02-10

When I first read this book I was stunned... and as one of the other reviewers said, baffled by why he produced that ending! (it's the ending which has "taken" one star off my rating). Always the polymath, Koestler starts by covering psychology, including Skinner's experiments with rats and subsequent theories on human nature which he pulls apart thoroughly. Koestler then comes out with the unfashionable theory that the human brain may have evolutionary flaws in it, since it was merely built on the older more primitive brains of its ancestors and the new and old parts do not always communicate well with one another. Partially because of this we have a lot of the problems of human life such as the urge to self-destruction and violence, which emanate from the older parts of the brain. He ties this in with history and if I remember, results of some shocking experiments. It has lost some of its immediacy since the end of the Cold War (nuclear bombs are still with us more than ever in Israel, Pakistan, India, China etc).

While I have simplified some of the book's ideas above, it is not always light reading, but it can be read by a layman. I think some of the subjects Koestler tackles are taboo (such as the idea humans overall are instrinsically "evil") rather than innately good, and he dismisses wishful thinking. Some people do take issue with his ideas... unfortunately some of the attacks are ad hominem... but where they aren't I suggest you examine very carefully both sides of the story. The message in this book is still pertinent enough, even if the proposed solution isn't.

(if you would like to read more on Koestler, read my review and others, about Cesarani's biography of him on this site)

Average customer rating:

Not a good read.

Dissapointing! Darwin's ghost must be feeling very uneasy...

a brilliant concept, brilliantly executed

No respect!

An absolute Must read book!

Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated
Steve Jones
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Amazon.com

Biologists have a dirty little secret: while practically everyone knows of The Origin of Species (and owes much to it), almost nobody has read it. British geneticist Steve Jones wants to make the arguments contained in that great text accessible to modern audiences, and succeeds with the delightful Darwin's Ghost. Approximating the structure of Darwin's opus, Jones uses the original chapter headings and summaries as a scaffolding to build an up-to-date demonstration of the power of a few simple ideas. Heredity, variation, and natural selection are all you need to infer evolution over time, and now that Jones can fill in the gaps in Darwin's pre-Mendelian understanding of genetics, the case becomes airtight.

More than a polemic, though, Darwin's Ghost is nearly as pleasurable a read as its ancestor is--one suspects that part of Jones's mission is to inspire today's readers to turn back to the grand but humble Origin of Species. While he may not be able to quite match Darwin's vast erudition or hawk's eye for detail, he still makes the theory of evolution shudder and breathe on the page. Dog breeding, mass extinctions, and weird fossils of tiny elephants all march to his drumbeat and--just when you least expect it--return to the main point that all living things share a common ancestor. Whether you're one of the elite who's had the pleasure of Darwin's literary company or you'd like a taste of what you're missing, Darwin's Ghost will bring the spirit of the great man back into your world of ideas. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species is probably the best-known, least-read book. One of the most important achievements of the past millennium, it did for biology what Galileo did for astronomy: made it into a single science rather than a collection of unrelated facts. Important though Origin remains, its examples and intricate Victorian prose are now a century and a half old. They are ripe for renewal and reaffirmation. Writing as "Darwin's ghost," eminent geneticist Steve Jones updates this seminal work—and restates evolution's case for the 21st century.

Jones is a writer of engaging wit and dazzling erudition and has been called "the British Carl Sagan." Using modern examples—the AIDS virus, the puzzles of sexual selection, the physiology and psychology of pets, and the unparalleled genetic success of our own species—he shows the power and immediacy of Darwin's great argument and makes us appreciate how it makes life make sense. Eye-opening and entertaining, filled with astonishing facts, amusing anecdotes, and the very latest research, Darwin's Ghost is contemporary science writing at its very best.

Customer Reviews:

Not a good read........2006-03-28

I tend to agree with criticism presented in previous reviews.
I found "Darwin's Ghost" (my first attempt to learn more about Darwin and recent progress on his evolution theory) rather difficult to read. Certain fragments are very interesting and even shocking to the layman (just for example: Earth's history, details about bacterias, ants, bees and behavior of cuckoos and other birds/animals). And OK, I understand: there is no charity in Nature, everything comes down to DNA, its mobility, exchange, transmittance, etc.(meaning DNA science is a key in today's research on evolution). However I had to struggle quite often over many sections of this text. Swamped by chaos of too many examples, "Darwin's Ghost's" huge disadvantage is a lack of 'Glossary of Scientific Terms' - a MUST for any popular science book! I suspect that Richard Dawkins would be better pick, though on the other hand beware: he is focused too much on preaching atheism.

Dissapointing! Darwin's ghost must be feeling very uneasy..........2005-05-27

I expected to find an easy and enjoyable introduction to Darwin's original. I ended up reading only the extracts from Darwin's original. How much more rationally structured and carefully exposed were Darwin's ideas and how sad the contrast with Jones' clumsy arguments and unstructured accumulation of examples. I needed no convinving about evolution against creationism. I was looking though for an adequate exposition of the alternative theories of evolution. Jones takes adaptionist/genetically-determined evolution as the "truth" and he discards alternative views in a few sentences (in his view "punctuated equilibrium" theories have been rejected....I wonder what Gould would have to say about it...). And while rejecting both in the intro and the conclusions that biological evolution can be extrapolated into human affairs, the book is full of unfounded anthropomorphic examples (e.g. cities "struggling for survival", some surviving and others vanishing!). No doubt that the acknowledgement of Lewontin, a radical Harvard biologist, at the first page of the book was the one that fooled me. The book is a tribute to Dawkins' and Spencerian ideas of evolution, not the complex evolution that Lewontin, Gould, Eldrege and others write about.

The book is the perfect example of what popular science writing SHOULD NOT BE. In order to make science accessible to the public, contestable theories are presented as undoubted "truths" and long and complex scientific debates muted.

Dr Giorgos Kallis, University of California at Berkeley

a brilliant concept, brilliantly executed.......2005-04-15

This is a great book, an update of Darwin's THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, taking the structure of the revolutionary 1859 book and writing new chapters with the latest research findings, of course including modern genetics, which Darwin knew nothing about. The author, Steve Jones, is a genetics professor at University College London, so he is well qualified for this project. Every chapter is packed with fascinating examples of the mechanisms of "descent with modification through natural selection." While Jones makes clear where gaps have been filled in Darwin's theorizing, modern biology has mainly vindicated Darwin in every chapter, and has built on his amazing insights.

I thoroughly enjoyed Jones's style, which is infused with mordant wit. Over the years I have tried to read Darwin's great work more than once, and my eyes have glazed over. It is considered great literature by some, and I know it contains some beautiful phrases, but I found Jones to be far more entertaining. With DARWIN'S GHOST he joins Gould and Dawkins as one of the leading popularizers of biology of our times. This book claims a place on a very short list of essential books for any non-biologist who wants to gain a basic understanding of evolutionary biology in the early 21st century.

[NEWSFLASH -- the school board in Kansas is trying to downgrade evolution again -- it may be the Earth is flat, the sun revolves around the Earth, the Earth is only 6000 years old, and there is no such thing as evolution. It may also be the case that pigs can fly.]

No respect!.......2004-06-02

It is interesting to notice that while Charles Darwin remains the main reference in evolutionary theory, it is becoming more and more difficult to show respect for the ideas of a man that, besides being mentally sick, didn't really know what he was talking about. Since Darwin thought that the cell was just a little bit of indiferenciated protoplasm, it was fairly easy for him to come up with some just so stories about its hipothetical evolution out of nothing. Random mutations and natural selection have proved to be incapable of explaining evolution. Today, what we know about DNA and molecular machines is enough for us to conclude that there is no such thing as simple life and that we can hardly imagine how the complex specified information in the cell could be generated without the work of God, the Super Inteligent Designer. Besides, all the mutations that are generally presented as evidence of evolution has proved to be totally incapable to generate new DNA information. What is remarkable is how easily the intelectual community accepted Darwin's just so stories. But then again, if one thinks about how easily many intelectuals accepted Karl Marx's "scientific socialism" one just has to conclude that most intellectuals will readily accept all kinds of nonsense, as long as it keeps God out of the equation. They call this science, but for me it is just a (not that clever) form of self deceit.

An absolute Must read book!.......2004-03-06

A MUST READ for any lover of Darwin's works or evolution in general. If you are a believer in creationism, you may not like it, but then again, you would not like any book other than the bible anyway.

The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms

Average customer rating:

An awesome book!
Ghosts, ghosts, hauntings, ghosts . . . what?
The Ghosts of Evolution
Not bad, but hardly serious science
Who mourns for the mastodons?

The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms
Connie Barlow
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

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Conservation | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Ecology | Environment | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

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Endangered Species | Conservation | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0465005527

Book Description

"Fascinating, imaginative, and stimulating, The Ghosts of Evolution is a wonderful piece of writing--well worth reading by anyone interested in nature and its myriad components." --Michael J. Balick, The New York Botanical Garden.

A new vision is sweeping through ecological science: The dense web of dependencies that makes up an ecosystem has gained an added dimension--the dimension of time. Every field, forest, and park is full of living organisms adapted for relationships with creatures that are now extinct. In a vivid narrative, Connie Barlow shows how the idea of "missing partners" in nature evolved from isolated, curious examples into an idea that is transforming how ecologists understand the entire flora and fauna of the Americas. This fascinating book will enrich the experience of any amateur naturalist, as well as teach us that the ripples of biodiversity loss around us are just the leading edge of what may well become perilous cascades of extinction.

Customer Reviews:

An awesome book!.......2007-09-30

This book does a great job of explaining the history of many of our common plants and foods, and why they are what they are. It's a great tool for helping us understand how foods have co-evolved with us and with other species. The story is basic to our understanding of the whole web of life. It's an awesome and extremely understandable and fascinating book. Buy it!

Ghosts, ghosts, hauntings, ghosts . . . what?.......2006-10-25

Anachronistic fruiting structures and their traditional, but unfortunately extinct, dispersers makes for a fascinating scientific/natural history topic. Unfortunately, it was Ms. Barlow who tackled this one and in the first 13 pages has made more references to 'ghosts' and 'haunted groves' than my scientific stomach can retain. To be fair, the first chapter is entitled 'Ghost Stories' - what should I have expected?! If I'd read the Table of Contents and skimmed its content, I probably would have recognized the work for what it seems to be - a knock-off parasite of the scholarly paper-back book genre. Who the hell are the Perseus Book Group anyway -- certainly not Harvard Press!

The Ghosts of Evolution.......2005-09-01

The Ghosts of Evolution is based on some very interesting observations, and the science cited is worth looking into. I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone who is seriously interested in evolutionary theory.
On the downside the book does suffer from the fact that, while the idea is intriguing, it has been spread to thin. It is too long, and too chatty, nevertheless, the basic contention proposed in the book is fascinating enough to make it worth reading

Not bad, but hardly serious science.......2002-12-06

If you lived a few thousands or tens of thousands of years after the last of the dinosaurs had died out, you might have seen something very much like what Ms. Barlow describes in Ghosts of Evolution - plants that had evolved with dinosaurs in mind, but which now had to fend for themselves, dispersing their seeds without the benefit of large, grazing herbivores to whose presence they had adapted.

We live in a comparable age. Innumerable species have been rendered extinct, including a large percentage of the so-called "megafauna" - large vertebrates like Mammoths - largely through the action of humans. To the extent that plants and animals evolved strategies for cooperative coexistence, which is hardly unusual, and to the extent that the plants are able to survive for thousands of years in spite of losing their preferred method of seed distribution, we might expect to find plants whose seeds were "overbuilt" for the animals currently distributing them.

And so it was with high hopes that I picked up this book. Sadly, though, I cannot join the chorus of gushing praise. Ghosts of Evolution is a pleasant book. But it seems to want to be taken as serious science, even as it is presented in a chatty, breezy style which makes that almost impossible. At one point, after several chapters of having referred to recent and fossilized dung in both the vernacular and the vulgar, Ms. Barlow worries whether naming the fox that visits her home "Miss Foxy" will be appropriate in a "serious" science book. She needn't have worried. By the time that passage appears, all pretext of serious science had been lost. If any doubt remains, it is erased at the end of the book, when the author dons a plant costume, seeds dangling from her head, and eulogizes the Mammoths that no longer graze upon her pods. Say what you will of scientific popularizers like Carl Sagan, but I never saw Dr. Sagan wear an astrolabe on his head.

Ghosts balances on a fence between describing ongoing research and explaining a well-established scientific principle. It is a wonderfully sensible notion that plants, which evolved seeds designed to be dispersed by specific fauna that is now extinct, hobble along without the brutes to which they were adapted. Most of the examples do justice to the theory; the reader's imagination can carry the notion to its logical conclusion, even if the book fails to establish the facts necessary to make a particularly compelling case.

A weakness of Ghosts is the insertion of many utterly non-scientific "experiments" by the author. These include feeding supposed "ghost" seeds to animals that may, or may not behave like the supposed agents of dispersion from the Pleistocene. If an elephant eats an Osage orange, success! That may (or may not) suggest that Mammoths age Osage oranges as well. If not, well, maybe elephants aren't exactly like Mammoths after all. Or perhaps they're just naturally suspicious of new, odd-smelling, odd-tasting food. Considering the differences in food preferences between my wife and myself - both members of the same species, and born in the same small town - I find it incredible that anyone would pass off such shabby anecdotal information as "evidence" of a scientific theory, much less try to pass the entire book off as a "serious" scientific work.

As a decidedly popular work of science writing, bringing a very interesting scientific idea to the folks, Ghosts works fairly well. Even as such, I am not a big fan. I still find the addition of non-scientific "experiments" completely improper. But its very easy reading, and mostly enjoyable.

Who mourns for the mastodons?.......2002-06-24

"The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls..."
--from a poem by Arthur Guiterman

The exciting idea in this book is that there are trees that "lament" the passing of the mastodons and the other extinct megafauna that once distributed their seeds. What animal now regularly eats the avocado whole, swallows the seed and excretes it far from the tree in a steamy, nourishing pile of dung? No such animal exists in the Western Hemisphere to which the avocado is native. (Barlow reports that elephants in Africa, where the avocado has been introduced, eat the avocado and do indeed excrete its pit whole.)

How about the mango with its pulp that adheres so tightly to the rather large pit? As Barlow surmises, such fruits were "designed" for mutualists that would take the fruit whole and let the pit pass through their digestive systems to emerge intact for germination away from the mother tree. Note that the avocado pit is not only too large to pass comfortably through the digestive system of any current native animal of the Americas, but is also highly toxic so that such an animal would have quickly learned not to chew it. Note too that the mango pit is extremely hard, thus encouraging a large animal to swallow it along with the closely adhering pulp rather than try to chew it or spit it out. Consider also the papaya. The fruit are large and soft so that a large animal could easily take one into its mouth and just mash it lightly and swallow. Note too that the fruits of the papaya tree grow not high in the tree, nor is the tree a low lying bush. Instead the tree is taller than a bush but its fruits are clustered at a height supermarket convenient for a large animal to pluck.

Barlow considers a number of other trees, the honey locust and the osage orange, for example, as examples of ecological anachronisms, trees that have out-lived their mutualists and consequently must form new partnerships with other seed distributors or face extinction. For those trees that have pleased humans, the avocado, the mango, the papaya, etc., there is no immediate danger, but some other trees are at the edge of extinction. Their fruits fall to the ground and stay there until they rot. New trees grow only down hill when an occasional flood of water moves their fruit to a new location.

Barlow also sees ghosts from the Mesozoic era. She writes, "Ghosts of dinosaurs are easy to conjure in October and November wherever city landscapers planted ginkgo trees...even when I forget to look for the ghosts of dinosaurs my nose alerts me to their presence. Only a carrion eater could find the odor of fallen ginkgo fruit appealing. Before beginning this book, I wrongly blamed the alcoholic homeless for the vomitlike stench in Washington Square Park." (p. 12)

In short this book is about those trees--anachronisms--have been without their mutualists since the mass extinction of the megafauna of the Western Hemisphere that took place about 13,000 years ago. It is a popular expansion on some original work done by ethnologist Daniel H. Janzen and paleontologist Paul S. Martin, their seminal paper appearing in the journal Science in 1982. Connie Barlow's prose is not only very readable, but is full of the excitement of scientific discovery, vivid and concrete, and packed with an amazing amount of information so that not only the trees described, but the giant sloths, mastodons and mammoths--the ghosts of harvests past--come alive on the pages.

What Barlow does more than anything is open our eyes to the ecological nature of fruit and the relationships that exist between trees and the animals that eat the fruit. We learn how color, taste, aroma, texture, nutritional value, toughness of rind, size, shape, number of seeds and how they are encased, etc.--how all these qualities of fruit have evolved to entice the animals that will faithfully distribute the seeds, but also how some qualities discourage other animals, "pulp thieves" or "seed predators," that benefit from the food provided by the tree, but do not help in its propagation.

The story of the desert gourd was of particular interest to me because during many walks in the chaparral and deserts of California I have come across this vine with its hard, dry and unattractive gourds that were never picked or eaten. Barlow theorizes that the plant is also an anachronism, and that there did exist in the past animals that found the gourds, if not delicious, at least palatable.

Another curious anachronism reported on is the devil's claw of the Chihuahuan desert of Mexico. This plant produces a most amazing apparatus that wraps itself around an animal's foot and claw-like clings to the animal, dribbling its seeds to the ground as the animal moves. There is a photo of the claw on page 151 wrapped around a human ankle. Incidentally, the text is enhanced by a number of interesting black and white photos of the trees and their fruits.

Amazon.com

The pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) evolved, it would seem, to feed a host of predators, ranging from coyotes and wolves to the long-disappeared saber-toothed tiger and American cheetah. (Cheetahs, John A. Byers writes, were probably "the principal agents of selection that prompted the evolution of astounding running speed in pronghorn"--a speed that has been clocked at 100 kilometers an hour.) Lacking many of those predators, today the pronghorn population has grown throughout the American West, making the animals a common sight for ecotourists and residents alike. Among other things considered in this thorough survey of pronghorn biology, Byers looks at "ghost behavior"--patterns of action determined by ecological conditions that long ago changed. Horses, for instance, remain herd-based social animals as a protective mechanism against predators, although, as he writes, "predator-driven selection has been relaxed."

Book Description

Pronghorn antelope are the fastest runners in North America, clocked at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour. Yet none of their current predators can come close to running this fast. Pronghorn also gather in groups, a behavior commonly viewed as a "safety in numbers" defense. But again, none of their living predators are fearsome enough to merit such a response.

In this elegantly written book, John A. Byers argues that these mystifying behaviors evolved in response to the dangerous predators with whom pronghorn shared their grassland home for nearly four million years: among them fleet hyenas, lions, and cheetahs. Although these predators died out ten thousand years ago, pronghorn still behave as if they were present—as if they were living with the ghosts of predators past.

Byers's provocative hypothesis will stimulate behavioral ecologists and mammalogists to consider whether other species' adaptations are also haunted by selective pressures from predators past. The book will also find a ready audience among evolutionary biologists and paleontologists.

Customer Reviews:

Pronghorn are not antelope!!!.......2001-11-04

This book basically explains why pronghonr are the coolest animal on earth. Big, mean, fast predators a really long time ago selected for fast moving animals. Pronghorn have really good eye sight and live in really open places. They have really intersting reproductive adaptations. They are a really neat animal.

Book Description

The human being aspires to the best possible performance. Both individuals and enterprises are looking for optimal - in other words, the best possible - solutions for situations or problems they face. Most of these problems can be expressed in mathematical terms, and so the methods of optimization undoubtedly render a significant aid.

In cases where there are many local optima; intricate constraints; mixed-type variables; or noisy, time-dependent or otherwise ill-defined functions, the usual methods donâ€™t give satisfactory results. Are you seeking fresh ideas or more efficient methods, or do you perhaps want to be well-informed about the latest achievements in optimization? If so, this book is for you.

This book develops a unified insight on population-based optimization through Differential Evolution, one of the most recent and efficient optimization algorithms. You will find, in this book, everything concerning Differential Evolution and its application in its newest formulation. This book will be a valuable source of information for a very large readership, including researchers, students and practitioners. The text may be used in a variety of optimization courses as well.

Features include: Neoteric view of Differential Evolution; Unique formula of global optimization; The best known metaheuristics through the prism of Differential Evolution; Revolutionary ideas in population-based optimization.

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Communist Filth: A Manifesto of Degeneration
Our world. Uncensored.
An unexpected departure from the zombie genre

(d)EVOLUTION
Joseph Bertalmio
Manufacturer: PublishAmerica
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

ASIN: 1424175542
Release Date: 2007-04-30

Book Description

Abandonment, addiction, AIDS, alcoholism, angels, beer, blood, bourbon, burlap, butane, candles, cocktails, death, deception, devolution, drugs, earwigs, evolution, fear, floods, Gatorade, germophobia, Goldfish crackers, hairspray, handguns, health insurance, heaven, hell, heresy, heroin, homophobia, hypodermics, juvenile delinquency, life, manufactured consent, media blockades, Messiah Complex, nightmares, oblivion, painkillers, paranoia, prayer, prescriptions, quarantine, racism, railroad spikes, razors, rebirth, repentance, retribution, revolution, revolvers, rifles, sacrifice, sex, shotguns, sin, sores, soup, suicide, teen angst, violence, vodka, vomit, weight loss, and zombies.

Customer Reviews:

Communist Filth: A Manifesto of Degeneration.......2007-06-17

I wasn't expecting something so dark when I opened this book. I thought it would be about zombies and shotguns, but by the end I left with a heavy head and a heavy heart. This novel accentuates the negative in society, showing what could happen to any one of us if the gods frowned upon us or the law lost interest. It begs tough questions and blatantly throws about taboos while highlighting the hazards of stereotypes. Then zombies are thrown into the mix. They're bloody and mean and all that, but there's also a sense of subtlety to them. Less is more in this metaphorically skewed thriller.

Despite that, though, I still found myself vexed by its total disregard for accountability when it comes to religious matters. It shows every intention of making this zombie catastrophe an act of a higher power, but opts instead to show reason for doubt and hopelessness. Is it a story of faith, or does it defy spirituality? I was a little confused, but I think that was the point.

Great read.

Our world. Uncensored. .......2007-06-14

The halting of human evolution. Brought upon by ourselves or some higher being? After eons of evidence behind Darwinian theory, is today's man actually proving the exception to his rule? These ideas are front and center in this thought-provoking novel. Come to think of it, these same ideas are front and center every time I turn on my TV. Every time I read my newspaper. Every time I wake up. This book's disturbing dystopian themes displayed through vivid imagery and carefully-chosen symoblism make one realize that its "fiction" is really mirroring today's world. It's this very merging of the imaginary and the real, the mortal and the immortal, that make this a classic fictional piece. If you are at all worried about the status of our current society, this work has even more bad news for you; what rises to the top of the food chain has even that much further to fall.

An unexpected departure from the zombie genre.......2007-06-06

First off, I think it would be best to say what is bad about this book. For starters, the editing department overlooked some obvious typos, and I ran across one about every twenty pages. Also, the length of this novel seems quite extreme for a standard zombie story.

That being said, this is not a standard zombie story. When I read the description on the back of the book I was dizzied by how many topics it covers that seemingly have nothing to do with zombies. Indeed, at times it's difficult to figure out exactly how zombies figure into the story at all. Their presence frequently takes a backseat as the story focuses on very important social issues and the (in)actions of the human characters.

For zombie purists, that's not always a bad thing. It shows shades of 28 Days Later, with a military blockade being the setting for much of the book. And it also echoes some of the Romero stories, with the zombies often being used as metaphors more than anything else. Still, there is a lot of blood and a lot of violence. The story's ability to switch between horror, action, satire and political commentary is well done, but it's sometimes a bit much. Like I said, 251 pages is more than the average action/horror book.

Overall, I enjoyed it. The characters were memorable, the action was fast-paced & original, and the ending was phenomenal. There are parts of this book that made me think, some that made me cringe, and some that were absolutely haunting. The climax hits like freight train, and the reader will never see it coming. But it's definitely not for the kids, nor for anybody who is looking for a straightforward rock 'em sock 'em, mindless zombie yarn.

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Evolution of the Vampire
Grant Hetherington
Manufacturer: Xlibris Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0738801046

Book Description

Derek Poe is haunted by reccuring nightmares about a woman who steals mens souls at the height of orgasm. One of her victims escapes and Derek sets out to find this man and prove he is only a dream. What he discovers, destroys life as he knows it.

Ghost Man: Reflections on Evolution, Love, and Loss

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Ghost Man: Reflections on Evolution, Love, and Loss
Thomas Simmons
Manufacturer: 1st Books Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Emotions | Mental Health | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

General | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0759664293

Book Description

Drawing on personal meditation and a highly-readable blend of theology, animal biology, and paleoanthropology, Thomas Simmons looks at love as a post-evolutionary force whose dangers may diminish with the rediscovery of a human ?home range,? a primitive and ultimate refuge

Average customer rating:

A good book about one small dinosaur.

The Little Dinosaurs of Ghost Ranch
Edwin Harris Colbert
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Evolution | Science | Subjects | Books

General | History & Philosophy | Science | Subjects | Books

Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Life in the Triassic (Life of the Past)

ASIN: 0231082363

Customer Reviews:

A good book about one small dinosaur........1995-10-29

This is a well-written book that covers the discovery, excavation, and reconstruction of a dinosaur (coelophysis). Discussion centered on this small therapod incorporates broader material, so that the reader gets an understanding of the life and times of other prehistoric creatures in addition to a detailed account of coelophysis

Average customer rating:

My thirst for knowledge has finally been quenched!
Life, the universe and everything in a single volume!

The Science of Spirituality
Lee Bladon
Manufacturer: Lulu Enterprises, UK Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1847998933

Book Description

The Science of Spirituality is a ground-breaking book that integrates the individual systems of science, psychology, philosophy, spirituality and religion into a unified system that describes the multi-dimensional nature of man and the universe. It provides a more comprehensive description of reality than conventional science can offer and fully explains the mechanisms behind an array of paranormal phenomena that mainstream science chooses to ignore. It explains the science behind religious, spiritual and new-age belief systems, and sheds light on some common misconceptions. The Science of Spirituality systematically describes the mechanisms behind a diverse range of subject matter including: consciousness, sleep and dreams, reincarnation, religion, creation, evolution, space and time, higher dimensions, heaven and hell, ghosts, angels and demons, out of body experiences, near death experiences, clairvoyance, psychic abilities, personal development, meditation and the meaning of life.

Customer Reviews:

My thirst for knowledge has finally been quenched!.......2007-10-04

It isn't very often one comes across a book that is so refreshingly different to anything else out there, and The Science of Spirituality is just such a book. It is difficult to summarise the book in any way because the range of material covered is staggering. It is quite simply the most comprehensive yet concisely written book you are ever likely to read. The complexity and importance of the material is such that there is no substitute for reading it yourself. Considering the "deep" subject matter this book is very easy to read, and the numerous diagrams further enhance one's understanding. I felt a huge sense of relief when I finished this book, not because I had finished, but because I felt I had finally come to the end of my unrelenting search for the truth. Now I can move on to the next stage of my development - living the truth - integrating and applying everything I have learned over many years (and the past few days).

Life, the universe and everything in a single volume!.......2007-08-31

This fascinating and compelling book is a unique blend of science, philosophy and metaphysics.
Einstein said "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind", and this book cleverly unites these two very different perspectives. It identifies some striking similarities between modern science and ancient spiritual knowledge - sceptics can no longer say that religion and spirituality are just superstition! As the author says "There can be only one true reality, but we will never know the whole truth if we only look from one perspective and hold on to our preconceived ideas". This book provides a comprehensive, simple and unified description of how life, the universe and everything works, and is a must read book for anyone in search of the fundamental truth.

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