Customer Reviews:
Book review.......2007-09-28
Excellent product condition! No problems with seller - very straightforward purchase and will buy again!!
Decent, but had a lot of fluff.......2007-08-29
For me this book was required for a class. I guess it wasn't bad but I felt like I had to pick through all their example stories to find any of the real content. So much was case studies of one child or another. And most of the case studies were in themselves mostly fluff.
Packed with usefull information.......2007-02-18
I found this book very engaging, the topics were interesting and the graphics were very appropriate. I really liked how every other page had an interesting question that you could apply to everyday life and you got the answer in 2 pages. I would skip ahead to find out the answer. But after my developmental psychology class was over i wanted to keep this book. i love it.
Berger: Developing person through the life span.......2007-02-16
Great deal, the book was in excellent condition, like bran new and it
arrived in timely manner.
Excellent.......2006-11-07
Great book!! We are using this book for my developmental pyschology class. It has really provided me with a wealth of knowledge.
Book Description
You've probably seen it before: a human brain dramatically lit from the side, the camera circling it like a helicopter shot of Stonehenge, and a modulated baritone voice exalting the brain's elegant design in reverent tones.
To which this book says: Pure nonsense. In a work at once deeply learned and wonderfully accessible, the neuroscientist David Linden counters the widespread assumption that the brain is a paragon of design--and in its place gives us a compelling explanation of how the brain's serendipitous evolution has resulted in nothing short of our humanity. A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, The Accidental Mind shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history. Moreover, Linden tells us how the constraints of evolved brain design have ultimately led to almost every transcendent human foible: our long childhoods, our extensive memory capacity, our search for love and long-term relationships, our need to create compelling narrative, and, ultimately, the universal cultural impulse to create both religious and scientific explanations. With forays into evolutionary biology, this analysis of mental function answers some of our most common questions about how we've come to be who we are.
Customer Reviews:
Nicely done, accessible account of the human brain.......2007-08-08
David Linden's "The Accidental Mind" is a neat little book. He has two main purposes: (a) to write a readable introduction on brain science, accessible to nonspecialists; (b) to make the case that (page 6) `. . .the brain is an inelegant and inefficient agglomeration of stuff, which nonetheless works surprisingly well." As to the first point, this volume is a far cry from the magnificent work, Michael Gazzaniga's The Cognitive Neurosciences III: Third Edition. However, if one is not well steeped in knowledge and understanding of the neurosciences, Gazzaniga's edited work is close to impenetrable. This book is well and crisply written, explaining simply how neurons work the structure of the brain, how the brain develops, and so on.
As to the second point? He asserts that, quoting Francois Jacob (Page 6), "'Evolution is a tinkerer, not an engineer." That is, evolution operates on organisms as they are and then the process of change takes advantage of the material already existent to adapt to new conditions and challenges. Thus, the human brain is mounted on older, more primitive structures, in an ill fitting complex. As he says (page 21): "The brain is built like an ice cream cone (and you are the top scoop): Through evolutionary time, as higher functions were added, a new scoop was placed on top, but the lower scoops were left largely unchanged."
Thereafter, he speaks of the structure of the brain, how the fully mature human brain develops (with both nature and nurture having roles to play), how the brain is associated with all manner of emotions, learning, religion, and so on.
The Ninth chapter has a title that speaks directly to Linden's first theme--"The Unintelligent Design of the Brain." Here, he slyly critiques advocates of the "Intelligent Design" perspective by noting that the brain is hardly an exemplar of some great design. As noted already, he sees the brain as inefficient and "jury-rigged."
This is a book that provides plenty of insight into how neuroscientists study the structure and function of the brain--and presents some of the exciting possibilities for future research.
In sum, this is a work that ought to be attended to by those interested in the brain sciences, but who cannot readily read the technical literature.
Entertaining?.......2007-07-30
This is a great book for readers who are interested in an overview of the anatomical and physiological functions of the brain. If you have had any previous A+P, this book may give you flashbacks (and does a good job of explaining how those feelings were "created.") You may even recognise many of the examples and case studies right from classic lectures.
If you are approaching "The Accidental Mind" as pure entertainment, enjoy. If you are looking for juicier or more in depth case studies, keep browsing.
A Very Refreshing Book On Brain Science.......2007-07-18
The addition of this review is to fill in one gap in particular. Dr. Linden is the first scientific author I have read in quite a while that wasn't flip with schools of thought. He has distilled research with varied hypothesis and has enough respect for his field and the reader to frankly state when "We just don't know." My only regret is that Dr. Linden didn't make this book the "larger tomb" he mentions when wrapping up the research that didn't make it into the book. Highly recommended to anyone who is mystified by belief and dreams.
A Perspective-Changing Read about the Brain.......2007-07-04
Why do we sleep? What is love? What is happening when we dream? These questions seem so basic to our human experience, and yet the average person in at a complete loss to explain even the most common of our daily experiences. This is where the Accidental Mind comes in. Linden's book offers a refreshingly different perspective on the brain. After reading this book, you will have a much better understanding of how your brain shapes your experience, it's limitations, and what is going on "behind the curtain." Intelligence, gender identity, sexuality, are all covered with an eye to how these factors play out in the architecture of the brain.
This book also provides a great deal of information on the biological basis for issues that are being debated in our culture, which many people will find enlightening and necessary for making informed comments.
If you are considering picking up this book, read Chapter 7 on sleep, available for free from Linden's website:
[...]
While the book may sometimes goes into great detail on the biology, most readers will find plenty of compelling information in these pages. People who enjoy this book and are interested in some of the practical insights that new research is providing about humans, how we work, and practical advice for improving our lives should check out The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.
Happy reading!
For your thinking and reading friends...........2007-05-31
I found The Accidental Mind a well written, humorous and thought-provoking introduction to neuroscience and to some profound ideas about evolution and other topics. It's the kind of book that makes you interrupt your partner's reading every five minutes with "Hey, listen to this...." If Dr. Linden lectures as entertainingly and interestingly as he writes, his classes at Johns Hopkins University must be in great demand.
Amazon.com
Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.
Book Description
With a new chapter. The phenomenal bestseller—over 1.5 million copies sold—is now a major PBS special.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series.
Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide.
The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences.
He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers. 32 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Very insightful, a worth while read.......2007-10-06
I highly recommend reading this book. Diamond provides compelling evidence for the disparity between civilizations. Any fan of history or just anyone curious about the rise of our current state will find a great read in Guns, Germs, and Steel.
guns,germs and steel.......2007-10-05
great perspective other than what we in western cultures traditionally have in in our relations with 3rd world countries
Dimly Focused.......2007-09-25
Though erudite and crammed with information, some of it a bit arcane, "Guns, Germs, and Steel"suffers somewhat from a blunted point of view. Is the author trying to tell us that some of our assumptions concerning the rise of cultural norms are over simplified? If so, he might have done so more forcefully with fewer words, more carefully selected facts, and perhaps a more lucid writing style. Do some societies prevail because their native tongue is more efficient and expressive than those employed by other cultures? Following that theme might have made for a more intriguing book. Are there some determinisms at work in every culture which inhibit the fulfillment of its destiny? Maybe the author thinks so, but the massive brush used to paint such a scenario causes the entire work to shimmy through a mass of frequently fascinating material without conclusions. The book's excessive length detracts from its compelling points: we live, some of the time, at the mercy of gigantic forces we do not control. Do genetics control our formation, or climate, or enormous economic systems? And who can give us convincing answers? Anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists of course come to mind. But what of poets, seers, artists, and theologians? Maybe Jared Diamond knows, but by the time he finishes inundating us with facts, some slightly pretentious, it's hard to tell for sure. I had hoped this book's scope and claim would give convincing guidance. But because it lacks definite focus, it did not.
Guns Germs and Steel review.......2007-09-24
This is an excellent book, the hypothesis is very compelling and interesting. I watched the DVD in addition to the book and I was not disappointed at all. Worth the read!
A modern, scientific "just so" story.......2007-09-23
One of the most important books of our time; it single-handedly wipes out every justification for racism, and gets to the roots of why humans groups are where they are presently. An amazing synthesis of disciplines into one very readable explanation of how it came to pass that Europeans happened to be the ones that colonized the rest of the planet instead of some other group. The most clear example I've ever seen of why archaeology, and all the social sciences are not only important but vital to modern people. The better our understanding of the past the more likely we are to be able to let go of the emotionality that keeps us at each other's throats. A modern "just so" story.
Book Description
By the author of the bestselling Moneyball: in football, as in life, the value we place on people changes with the rules of the games they play.
The young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school—such as, say, how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football.
What changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom they adopt. The second force is the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.
Customer Reviews:
Real, inspirational, and alarming.......2007-09-23
The storyline of this book is well known, so I won't review it.
I was highly entertained - the writing is excellent, the story compelling and true.
At the same time, the clear inequities in rescuing just one person from the millions in similar situations was laid bare. Even more troubling to me was the apparently delusional notions of the good Samaritan that he was driven to help the poor rather than the basketball and football teams of his high school and college. Ethical lapses were rampant - The father lied to the NCAA investigation about ignorance of details, he inflated grades with questionable correspondence courses, and generally compromised the academic standards of the high school. The mother lobbied teachers for special treatment, and they intervened with the Ole Miss administration to mitigate the potential criminal charges when Michael nearly badly injured someone just for some insulting comments, which resulted in injuries to a small child. The parent had a friend of Michael's offered scholarships so he could attend the same school, and were proud of their younger son for asking for his own personal favors from the visiting coaches during recruiting season.
The author was not immune, recounting the way the likable giant Michael dominated his high school games as though it was Hercules saving the day, when my impression was more of subverting into a cult of personality for the future pro an amateur contest in which many kids might otherwise get some recreation.
The saving grace is the author includes all the facts (so far as I can tell), and I wound up liking all the people involved despite their flaws, as well as being impressed by their accomplishments.
An enlightening and engaging book, which I highly recommend for people with at least a moderate interest in and knowledge of football.
A good story, but not very insightful.......2007-08-23
First and foremost: The Blind Side is not Moneyball for football, so if that is what you are hoping for look elsewhere.
There are two primary storylines. First, the inner-workings of modern professional football as told through the evolution of the left tackle (aka the "blind side"). Second, the lives of top high school football recruits, as told through the story of one impoverished high school student who happens to be a "freak of nature" football prospect.
I would have liked to have seen more of the first, Moneyball-esque, "inside look" storyline, and less of the second. Unfortunately for me, Lewis focuses on the second.
Great story & read!.......2007-08-11
Buy this book! I enjoyed it so much that, after reading it, I immediately went online and searched for more information about the main character and his current team. The author, Michael Lewis, also does a wonderful of job of weaving in pertinent background information about the history of the NFL passing game, and the importance of the left tackle position in football. If you're looking for a great read, look no further! Michael Oher's story is as inspiring as it gets!
Surely Michael Lewis' best storytelling to date.......2007-07-21
I've read all of Michael Lewis' books except "Coach" (as a friend recently commented, "let's leave those to Mitch Albom"). Lewis has made a career out of counter-intuition. "The Blind Side" fits well into the Lewis groove. The casual fan watches football and thinks quarterback, running back, wide receiver. But Lewis takes you through the game's evolution (with its increased reliance on precision passing) and shows you why the left tackle has become the game's second-highest-paid position. As Lewis notes, as the salaries of quarterbacks have risen, so has the cost of insurance. And, on the football field, quarterback insurance is personified by the left tackle...protector of the blind side.
As one reviewer notes here, 'The Blind Side' contains "many stories, all good." Exactly. While the incredible tale of Michael Oher consumes a good portion of the book, there are other great stories. For example, Lewis paints a brilliantly vivid picture of Lawrence Taylor's impact on the league; and I love the juxtaposition of Bill Walsh's brand of football (as personified by Joe Montana) vs. Bill Parcells' brand of football (as personified by LT).
I'm tempted to say this might be Lewis' finest work. The only reason I won't is because of the monster that is Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street, a book that people may well be referencing 50 years from now. I'm also a big fan of the under-appreciated "Trail Fever" (released as Losers: The Road to Everyplace but the White House - which I bet Lewis hated since the whole point of the book was that the so-called losers were life's real winners - in paperback). But "The Blind Side" is surely the author's best storytelling. I bet he'll agree to that.
A superbly written book.......2007-07-12
If you don't care a lick about football, you probably won't get much out of this book; but if you have even a glimmer of interest in football and enjoy books that are well written, then do yourself a favor and read Blind Side. Michael Lewis is someone who can develop a story--he writes stunningly well.
Book Description
Read it.
You're already living it.
Was diabetes evolution's response to the last Ice Age? Did a deadly genetic disease help our ancestors survive the bubonic plagues of Europe? Will a visit to the tanning salon help lower your cholesterol? Why do we age? Why are some people immune to HIV? Can your genes be turned on -- or off?
Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth, from plants and animals to insects and bacteria.
Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. When the option is a long life with a disease or a short one without it, evolution opts for disease almost every time.
Everything from the climate our ancestors lived in to the crops they planted and ate to their beverage of choice can be seen in our genetic inheritance. But Survival of the Sickest doesn't stop there. It goes on to demonstrate just how little modern medicine really understands about human health, and offers a new way of thinking that can help all of us live longer, healthier lives.
Survival of the Sickest is filled with fascinating insights and cutting-edge research, presented in a way that is both accessible and utterly absorbing. This is a book about the interconnectedness of all life on earth -- and, especially, what that means for us.
Customer Reviews:
Very,very, interesting.......2007-09-21
This is one of those books that is a delightful read, educating, interesting, and entertaining. The author puts forth his theories that many modern diseases are variations of evolutionary traits that were held by our ancestors that enabled them to survive the ice age and bubonic plague. He goes on to describe how viruses cause certain behavior in their carriers to help the viruses survival. The common cold leaves you well enough to stay moving and go to work so you can spread the virus to others, while the parasitic malaria wants you immobile and in bed because mosquitos can continue to carry it even better with you immobile.
The author also presents a case currently making head way in evolutionary science that is challenging the savannah theory. He proposes that we are evolved form aquatic apes as opposed to grassland dwellers, which would explain our hairlessness like other aquatic mammals and being bipedal. We also have fat stored at the skin like water dwellers and our infants have swimming instincts at birth that have been proven by water birthing that is very successful.
And finally I was really fascinated by the finding that what scientists have believed were "junk DNA" is slowly being shown to actually be a creative force that causes mutations in DNA for the benefit of survival of the species. I have always had trouble believing in the evolutionary theory because no mechanism could be created with causing it outside of God, and God would not need it. I also believed that the key was in DNA. Now I have a cause, the DNA itself creates and casues beneficial mutations.
I really can not do this book justice in a review with out making it far to long so buy the book if the above sounds interesting. The book presents an excellent case and has made me a believer.
Evolution in a way you never knew!.......2007-09-08
Everything out there is influencing the evolution of everything else. The bacteria and viruses and parasites that cause disease in us have affected our evolution as we have adapted in ways to cope with their effects. In response they have evolved in turn, and keep on doing so.
There are many dietary diseases that have had an evolutionary advantage in our ancestors but that today do more harm than good. In a person with hemochromatosis, for example, the body always thinks that it doesn't have enough iron and continues to absorb iron unabated. The excess iron can lead to liver failure, heart failure, diabetes, and even cancer.
Why would a disease so deadly be bred into our genetic code? Remember how natural selection works. If a given genetic trait makes you stronger--especially if it makes you stronger before you have children--then you're more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass that trait on. People with hemochromatosis have therefore an evolutionary advantage--protection against the bubonic plague!
On one set of experiments, macrophages from people who had hemochromatosis and macrophages from people who did not were matched against bacteria in separate dishes to test their killing ability. The hemochromatic macrophages crushed the bacteria. They are thought to be significantly better at combating bacteria by limiting the availability of iron than the nonhemochromatic macrophages. So though hemochromatosis will kill those inflicted with it decades later, they are much more likely than people without hemochromatosis to survive plagues, reproduce, and pass the mutation on to their children.
Diabetes also provided an evolutionary advantage to our ancestors by providing superior ability to withstand the cold by eliminating water and driving up sugar levels (like alcohol, sugar is a natural antifreeze). As a theory, it's hotly controversial, but diabetes may have helped our European ancestors survive the sudden cold, including the ice-age.
Malaria is an infectious disease that infects as many as 500 million people every year, killing more than 1 million of them. But not everyone who gets bit by malaria-carrying mosquitoes gets infected. And not everybody who gets infected dies. So what's helping the malaria survivors? People with a genetic tendency for sickle-cell anemia, another inherited blood disorder, had better natural resistance to malaria.
As you've seen with hemochromatosis, diabetes, and sickle-cell anemia, one generation's evolutionary solution is another generation's evolutionary problem.
At the end of the day, every living thing shares two hardwired imperatives: Survive. Reproduce. To achieve this, some organisms have inherited ingenious techniques to manipulate their hosts--the phenomenon that occurs when a parasite provokes its host to behave in a way that helps the parasite to survive and reproduce.
Orb weavers are a family of spiders that experience host manipulation. A wasp bites the spider, temporarily paralyzing it, then deposits its egg in its abdomen. The spider then goes on with his life oblivious to the egg in him. The egg then hatches, and the larva slowly feeds off the blood of the spider. When it is ready to cocoon, it injects chemicals into the spider's bloodstream to manipulate the spider into building a special web for it--instead of building circular webs, it goes back and forth building a rectangular web. Once the web is completed, the larva kills the spider by sucking off all its blood, and then throwing its carcass to the jungle floor below. It then uses the specially built web for it to cocoon by hanging on it.
A worm that infects ants is a classic example of another host manipulator. As the worms being carried by the ant develop, one of them makes its way to the ant's brain where it manipulates the ant's nervous system. Suddenly, the ant behaves in completely uncharacteristic fashion. At night, it leaves its colony and hangs on the tip of a grass, waiting to be eaten by a sheep. If it does not, it returns to its colony only to resume again its journey at night to the tip of a grass waiting to be eaten. Once eaten by a sheep, the worm would have succeeded in its manipulation, and would grow inside the sheep's stomach, its intended host.
The rabies Virus is another interesting host manipulator. It manipulates its host into becoming aggressive, which will make its host bite others and thus also infecting others.
Here is one amazing example of host manipulation: One researcher has discovered that women infected with T. gondii spend more money on clothes and are consistently rated as beings more attractive than women without the infection. Infected women were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends, and cared more about how they looked. However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men. Infected men, on the other hand, were less well groomed, more likely to be loners, and more willing to fight. They were also more likely to be suspicious and jealous and less willing to follow rules.
A normal sneeze occurs when the body's self-defense system senses a foreign invader trying to get in through your nasal passages and acts to repel the invasion by expelling it with a sneeze. But sneezing when you've got a cold? There's obviously no way to expel the cold virus which is already lodged in you. The cold virus has learned this reflex so it can infect your colleagues, family and your friends. Your body is actually being manipulated by the virus into sneezing!
The herpes virus may heighten sexual feeling, which will increase the probability of transmission. In other words, sometimes the herpes virus may want you to get some action in order for it to spread to other hosts.
So what if we made it easier for a given type of bacteria to survive in a healthy human than to survive in a sick human? Would this create evolutionary pressure against behavior that harms us? In fact there is an evolutionary advantage for the malaria parasite to push its hosts toward the brink of death. The more parasites swarming through our blood, the more parasites the mosquito is likely to ingest; the more parasites the mosquito ingests, the more likely it will cause an infection when it bites someone else. Cholera is similar--it doesn't need us moving around to find new hosts, so there's no reason for the bacteria to select against virulence. The bottom line is that if an infectious client has allies (such as mosquitoes) or good delivery systems (such as unprotected water supplies), peaceful coexistence with its host becomes a lot less important. In those cases evolution is likely to favor versions of the parasite that best exploit its host's resources, allowing the parasite to multiply as much as possible. Some researchers believe that we can use this understanding to influence the evolution of parasites away from virulence. The basic theory is this: shut down the modes of transmission that don't require human participation and suddenly all the evolutionary pressure is directed at allowing the human host to get up and get out. According to this theory, the virulence of a cholera outbreak in a given population should be directly related to the quality and safety of that population's water supply. If sewage flows easily into rivers that people wash in or drink from, then the cholera strain would evolve toward virulence--it can multiply freely, essentially using up its hosts, relying on its access to the water supply for transmission. But if the water supply is well protected, the organism should evolve away from virulence--the longer it remains in a more mobile host, the better its chance of transmission.
A series of cholera outbreaks that began in Peru in 1991 and spread across South and Central America over the next few years provide compelling evidence that this theory might actually work. The water supply systems from country to country ranged from relatively advanced to seriously rudimentary. Sure enough, when the bacteria invaded nations with poorly protected water supplies, such as Ecuador, the virus became more harmful as it spread. But in countries with safe water supplies, such as Chile, the bacteria evolved downward in virulence and killed fewer people. The implications of this are huge. Instead of challenging bacteria to become stronger and more dangerous through an antibiotic arms race (which we are currently losing), we could essentially challenge them to get along. If mosquitoes didn't have access to bedridden malaria patients, the microbe would be under evolutionary pressure to evolve in a way that allowed the infected person to remain mobile, increasing the opportunity for it to spread.
A series of groundbreaking research has shown that certain compounds can attach themselves to specific genes and suppress their expression. Let's take a look at a few examples. Depending upon the time of year the vole (a type of mouse) is due to give birth, baby voles are born with either a thick coat or a thin coat. The gene for a thick coat is always there--it's just turned on or off depending on the level of light the mother senses in her environment around the time of conception.
One species of lizard is born with a long tail and large body or a small tail and small body depending on one thing only--whether their mother smelled a lizard-eating snake while pregnant. When her babies are entering a snake-filled world, they are born with a long tail and big body, making them less likely to be snake food.
This is a fascinating book and I highly recommend it. I truly enjoyed reading it and I have learnt things I never imagined! Now that's what I call precious reading!
Understanding genetic disease from an evolutionary point of view.......2007-09-01
We really don't "need" disease. This is a bit misleading. It just so happens that some genetic disorders, such as sickle-cell anemia, favism, diabetes, hemochromatosis, the tendency to obesity, etc., confer on the afflicted compensatory advantages. Thus a predilection for getting fat is adaptive if a drought or a long winter beckons, or a person with a genetic tendency toward sickle-cell anemia is less likely to get malaria, and so on. Note that it is only diseases caused by genetic mutations that Dr. Moalem is talking about.
One of the techniques our bodies use when fighting infection is to reduce the amount of iron available to the invaders. Bacteria need iron to reproduce. If there is a lot of it available their numbers can grow quickly. Without iron they can't reproduce at all. Iron is a limiting factor for many kinds of life. Vast stretches of ocean support little in the way of life because the microorganisms that begin the food chain can't grow where there is so little iron. As Dr. Moalem reports in this wide-ranging and eyebrow-lifting book, sprinkle some iron onto those patches of ocean and they will quickly turn green with microorganisms.
So it is a bit of an irony that people who have hemochromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes them to retain large amounts of iron in their bodies, are able to survival infections like the plague. This is because they starve the invading microbes through "iron locking." They have a lot of iron in their bodies, but they keep it away from the bacteria. Other people who have low levels of iron in their bodies are able to withstand bacterial attacks because they also keep what little iron they have away from the germs. In fact, one of the body's initial responses to microbial invasion is to limit the amount of free iron in the system.
Genetic coding for levels of iron in the body is an example of evolutionary adaptation, part of the ongoing arms race between us and the microbes that live in and on our bodies. This is just one of several interesting and new ideas coming from the growing science of evolutionary medicine that I found in Survival of the Sickest. Incidentally, one way to manage hemochromatosis is through donating blood on a regular basis, which explains in part why physicians of old were sometimes successful when they bled their patients.
This got me to thinking about "only women bleed" which led me to think about hemorrhoids (which prove that it isn't only women who bleed). Perhaps bleeding instead of retaining blood, which seems like the more natural thing for our bodies to do, has adaptive value in some people in some environments.
Another interesting idea is this from page 58: "ACHOO syndrome--its full name is autosomal dominant compelling heliopthalmic outburst syndrome." It is a "disorder that causes uncontrolled sneezing when someone is exposed to bright light, usually sunlight, after being in the dark." Dr. Moalem suggests that "way back when our ancestors spent more time in caves, this reflex helped them to clear out any molds or microbes that might have lodged in their noses or upper respiratory tract." Now this may sound a bit far fetched, but I have suffered from low grade allergies all my life, and used to have asthmatic attacks. I came to believe that the buildup in my lungs and the sneezing were signals to me to move on! Of course now I clean and vacuum like a germaphobe, but the idea is the same. My symptoms were adaptive. They more or less forced me to reduce the level of potential irritants and microbes in my environment.
But there is more. I noticed long ago that sometimes the sun in the morning would cause me to sneeze. I never figured out why until I read the above from Dr. Moalem. I am just the kind of person who would need to sneeze those molds out.
Later on in the book Moalem returns to an evolutionary idea that has been kicking around for decades. Beginning with the work of Elaine Morgan from the 1970s the public became aware of the notion that we humans had an aquatic past. She got the idea from marine biologist Alister Hardy. Through such books as The Descent of Woman (1972) and The Aquatic Ape: A Theory of Human Evolution (1982) Morgan argued that some of our unusual adaptations came about because we had an aquatic past. Taking up the idea, Moalem writes, "Every hairless mammal is aquatic or at least plays in the mud--think of hippos, elephants and the African warthog. But there aren't any hairless primates." (p. 198) Furthermore we have fat directly under our skin to help keep us warm just as aquatic mammals do. Also, Moalem notes, "the ability to survive on land and sea" gives us adaptive flexibility. If "chased by a leopard, the semiaquatic ape could dive into the water; chased by a crocodile, it could run into the forest." (p. 199)
These ideas are familiar but what I didn't know was that an aquatic past could have figured in our evolution toward bipedalism. "[S]tanding upright in water allowed...[aquatic apes] to venture into deeper water and still breathe, and the water helped to support their upper bodies, making it easier to support them on two feet." (p. 199)
This is an easy to read book, aimed at a general readership. An earlier, slightly more technical book that covers some of the same territory is Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine (1994) by Randolph M. Nesse and George C. Williams, which I also recommend.
Razzle dazzle them.......2007-08-27
This book embodies much of what I dislike in popular cience books, while having few of the qualities I admire in such books. It relies more on sleigh of the hand and razzle dazzle, you-wouldn't-have-thought-of-it than on throughly thought out, well substantiated lines of thought.
Let's start with the subtitle: "A medical maverick discovers why we need disease". That is a clear case of fiction: nowhere in the book does the author "discover" anything; he merely retells the study of others. This, of course, is not a demerit, as many interesting scientists have difficulties in explaining their work in clear terms, acessible to the layman. However, the author must be hyped as the "discoverer", as the center figure in the tale.
Since James Burke's "Connections", it seems that popular science must explore all the crossroads, no matter how irrelevant. So Moalem goes on long tangents that have little to do with the theory he is trying to substantiate. In order to show how diabetes works to protect the body against cold, the reader is taken through the mechanism of an ice age, how ice core samples are removed and so on. If one were to remove all this "extra" material, this book would be thin indeed.
The book seems to revolve around this material and the author's use of jokes. Unfortunately, his sense of humour tends more towards ha-ha than funny, which helped to further fray my patience towards this book.
All of this is indeed a pity, as the subject is very interesting. If more pages had been dedicated to developing a central line of thought and substantiation and to showing the debate behind all these ideas (in a real light, instead of "the thickheaded traditionalists who won't accept new ideas"), it would be well worth the read.
Somewhat difficult subject matter for those lacking a background in science or medicine.........2007-07-08
From time to time I pick up a book on a subject I know virtually nothing about. Ordinarily I devour books about history or politics or current events. These are topics I am well versed in and comfortable with.
Dr. Sharon Moalem's "The Survival of the Sickest: sounded like a fascinating departure from my ordinary fare. So I thought I would give it a whirl. Unfortunately for me the results were somewhat mixed. Although Dr. Moalem and her co-author have written this book in fairly simple language that most should be able to follow pretty easily I found myself overwhelmed at times by the number of terms I was simply not familiar with at all. I'm afraid my lack of education in the sciences was showing. Blame me not the good doctor. Yet in spite of these difficulties I was still able to glean some important information from this book. I now have a somewhat better understanding of the whole business of why disease exists in the first place. I also discovered the important role viruses play in our ability to survive and reproduce. I also found out that the development of diabetes in human beings probably emerged as natures response to people having to cope with conditions in regions with extremely cold temperatures. This makes perfect sense and was interesting to me because a number of people in my family have battled this disease. Perhaps the most fascinating thing I learned in "Survival of the Sickest" is that exposure to the sunshine actually helps to convert the cholestorol in our bodies into the vitamin D we all need to ensure strong bones and help avoid osteoperosis. I had never heard this before and found this revelation to be quite interesting indeed!
For me, attempting to read "Survival of the Sickest" was a little like visiting a foreign country and not knowing the language. I was simply unprepared to get the most out of this book. As you can see, other reviewers continue to heap praise on Dr. Sharon Moalem for her book. I suspect their evaluation of this book is right on the money. In the end I found that reading "Survival of the Sickest" was time well spent anyway. After all, it is impossible to expand your horizons if you never make the attempt.
Book Description
This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent first step.......2007-07-26
This book is no beach read. It is dense, technical, and written in a rather stiff prose style. It is, however, absolutely the best book available on the evolutionary origin of religion.
Briefly, Atran defines religion as a community's costly and hard-to-fake commitments to nonexistent beings, commitments which help to assuage existential anxieties involving death, suffering, loneliness, and so on.
Atran uses an incredibly wide array of primary sources in biology, psychology, and religious studies to make his points, and the book brims with insights, both large and small, about how human minds manufacture religion. For example, psychologists and ethnologists have commonly argued that magic in many tribal cultures represents a primitive form of thought which children also have. Atran points out that children in such societies actually believe LESS in magical explanations than their elders. His discussion of divination is also quite insightful.
On the downside, this book is pitched at a rather general, ahistorical level. There is little discussion, for example, of the differences between tribal religions and religions which have had much longer written histories, such as Zen Buddhism and American Protestantism. This is perhaps unavoidable in a book on such a large topic, particularly when this book applies a relatively new sort of explanation to this topic.
Also nice would have been more on how prayer, meditation, and other techniques are used in religion, or about how and why different religions (e.g., Sufi mysticism, Church of Christ Protestantism, and shamanism) differ in the way that they do, but again, this may be expecting too much from a book that weighs less than I do.
On the whole, a superb first step on the road to explaining what human religiosity owes to our evolutionary ancestry, and a wonderful antidote to anti-religious screeds which ignore the universality and complexity of religion itself.
Defectors and norms?.......2007-04-11
Negative reviews are not popular in this venue, so I'll keep this short and sour.
I refer you to ch. 8, "Culture without mind."
I ask you to reconcile the sense of the following claims:
"There is no compelling psychological evidence for norms as packages of learned information, stored as discrete units, clustered into higher order knowledge structures, encoded as specific memory traces in neural tissue, or expressed in clearly recognized and denumerable bundels of behavior."p. 199.
"Perceived reciprocal altruism may result in a culturally stable strategy as long as defectors can be defected and excluded." p. 201
How does one define or recognize a "defector" without a clear notion of norms and their violation? But, it will be argued, the point is that the evidence used by those who identify "norms" as units of selection does not include the detail necessary to verify or falsity the the role of such norms. But the semantic nature of my objection simplify shifts focus to "defection": How can evidence insufficient to verify or falsify the role of norms do more to verify or falsify "defector detection"?
The argument of ch 8 also suggests that 'mind' is equivalent to 'computational architecture'. But current notions of computational architecture are totally inadequate to account for individual differences among any of the world's cultures. That the human mind has a "module" for organizing taxonomies of living things, suggests only that taxonomies always and everywhere are based on essences which do not change over a lifetime and which can be arranged as elements in a hierarchy of nested sets. This is true the world around. But so called modularity of mind does not enable us to distinguish the folk taxonomies of the Amazon basin from those of lowland Guatemala.
If we can't tell folk taxonomies apart, aren't we just being asked to put all the world's religions into one box labeled "minimally counter-intuitive" by-products of natural selection?
Why should that rate five stars?
Very sad.......2007-03-09
It is sad that so many in the world are saddled with the consequences of belief in gods; one hopes that this book will enlighten! It is fairly hard work but worth it.
Thoughtful analysis of the origin of religious beliefs.......2007-03-08
There have been a slew of recent books by scientists on religion which fall basically into two camps. The first, exemplified by Sam Harris' "The End of Faith," are essentially attacks on the logical plausibility of the major religious belief systems. For those who have already realized that these sorts of beliefs are absurd, such works are entertaining but are a bit like preaching to the choir, if you'll excuse the metaphor. The second camp, exemplified by Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained," are attempts at explaining WHY people believe in such absurdities, from the perspectives of cognitive neuropsychology and anthropology. Atran's book is in the latter camp, and in fact overlaps to some extent with Boyer's book, published at about the same time, although each author has unique insights. I especially liked Atran's analysis of the origin of beliefs in the supernatural as stemming from a cognitive module predisposed to interpret environmental stimuli as coming from a potential predator, and I also found his analysis of "meme theory" to be enlightening (he strongly discounts it). Atran's book is the harder to read of the two and is largely missing the dry sense of humor in Boyer's book, which is why I docked it one star. I also disagree with the pessimism in Atran's last chapter about why religions are likely to endure indefinitely; I believe the secular trends present especially since Darwin must ultimately prevail. But his book is certainly a valuable contribution to the discussion of the origins of religious thought and behavior, which is of paramount importance in understanding today's world of religious fanaticism.
Simply the best book on a charged and intricate topic.......2007-02-01
The topic of Atran's book has recently received a lot of attention, primarily because of the publication of Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell" and Richard Dawkins' bestselling "The God Delusion".
I have just finished teaching a graduate course on evolutionary perspectives on religion, and have fewer doubts than ever that Atran has written by far the best book on the topic. In terms of explanatory structure his theory is more detailed and precise than any of the competitors.
While Atran says openly that he is an atheist, he tries to keep his discussion neutral, and his book is devoid of the polemical tone of Dawkins and Dennett. Yet, paradoxically, his approach has interesting implications for dealing with religious fundamentalism on a political level.
Even though "In Gods we Trust" is an unabashedly scientific book, it is well written and accessible to informed lay-people. I also recommend viewing the interchanges of Atran and Sam Harris ("The End of Faith")during the recent "Beyond Belief" conference either on youtube or (written) on the "Edge" website.
Average customer rating:
- Easy Read
- Great Way to Lose Weight -- Best for Type O
- Eat Right 4 Your Type
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- Blood Type Diet is No More Than Silly Mumbo-Jumbo
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Eat Right 4 Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight
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Amazon.com
If you've ever wondered why the latest fad diet doesn't work for you... well, there are lots of reasons, mostly the fact that it's a fad diet. But it could also be that you're the wrong blood type for the kinds of foods the diet recommends. Peter D'Adamo makes a persuasive argument that your blood type is an evolutionary marker that tells you which foods you'll process best, and which will be useless calories. He covers the entire range for each of the four blood types, from entrées to condiments and seasonings, and also makes type-specific exercise and lifestyle recommendations.
Amazon.com Audiobook Review
This abridged audiobook introduces Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo's revolutionary approach to dieting based on the connection between blood type and health. Read by audio pro Polly Adams, D'Adamo's bestseller details how different foods affect specific blood types both positively and negatively. We learn that "pastas made from buckwheat are better tolerated for Type Os," and that type As should eliminate all meat from their diet to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer. Adams blends an efficient, no-nonsense delivery and warm tones that may remind some of a favorite talk-radio personality. And considering the important subject matter, listeners will appreciate all of these qualities. While some dieters may find the suggestions too progressive--it's recommended that women with a history of breast cancer in their family introduce snails into their diet--this is a beneficial three-hour investment for dieters seeking alternative nutritional plans. (Running time: three hours, two cassettes) --Cate Bick
Book Description
New York Times best seller
âI found the information in Eat Right For Your Type absolutely fascinating.â
- Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom
FINALLY, A DIET THAT'S JUST YOUR TYPE!
Noted naturopathic physician Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo introduces a revolutionary new way to eat - and to live. In Eat Right For Your Type, he explains his groundbreaking diet plan based upon blood type. Our blood type is a roadmap to our inner chemistry - and each blood type processes food, handles stress, and fights disease differently. Find out what you should be eating, and how you should be exercising in accord with your own type. For instance,
For Type O:Focus on higher protein, eliminate grains, and perform energetic aerobic exercise
For Type A:Go vegetarian, exercise more mildly, and ease tension through meditation
For Type B:Vary your diet with a diversity of food groups (including dairy), and exercise moderately by swimming or walking
For Type AB:You have most of the benefits and intolerances of Types A and B. Utilize relaxation exercises
From A to O, Eating Right For Your Type is as simple as A, B, C!
Read by Polly Adams.
Customer Reviews:
Easy Read.......2007-09-05
I found this book to be a very easy read. It gives very simple straight forward explanations and rationale for the diet and it's theories. It further reads like an instruction manual and very clearly explains what foods are beneficial, neutral, or an avoid. Pretty straight forward, if it's beneficial eat it, if it's an avoid, avoid it. And if it's a neutral it has little significance either way, so you can eat it but don't make it a diet staple.
Great Way to Lose Weight -- Best for Type O.......2007-08-24
I have followed the guidelines in this book loosely for 2 weeks and have lost over 8 pounds. Which is a 20% of the weight I want to lose by December. I am type O which is the best type to be on this diet because it allows for a larger range of foods. Type O's should definately try this diet, and its not hard to follow. The Other blood types should try this as well, but food options are more restricted. So if you have a hard time avoiding certain foods this may not be for you.
Eat Right 4 Your Type.......2007-08-11
Eat Right 4 Your Type: The Individualized Diet Solution to Staying Healthy, Living Longer & Achieving Your Ideal Weight
by Peter J. D'Adamo
I have gotten 5 or 6 of this book for friends, and have one in my libary.
I have found it to be the most moving and inlighting book I have read.
Having Diabetes I was not happy with my body, I did not like shots.
Now all I do is watch what I eat and when NO shots or Pills just diet.
I feal better then I ever have and my Doctor is amazed.
You have to try it it works.
diet .......2007-08-01
product in great shape and on time. content did not help, made worse. would recommend seller but not the book
Blood Type Diet is No More Than Silly Mumbo-Jumbo.......2007-07-30
In John Robbins new book, "Healthy At 100", he studies the Abkhasians of the Caucasus Mountains, the Vilcabambans of Ecuador and the Hunzans of Pakistan. These are probably the three healthiest populations in the world. None of them prepare special foods for different people of different blood types. Yet they are almost universally healthy and happy.
Weston Price traveled the world back in the 1930s and examined the healthiest tribes of people to be found. None of them prepared different foods for people of different blood types.
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a single scientific study demonstrating that people of different blood types have different nutritional needs.
Blood type diets are nothing more than silly mumbo-jumbo. Why do people embrace this kind of dietary cult? I'm not sure. Maybe because people feel a need to be segmented and divided in some way. This is MY special blood type diet! I eat this and you shouldn't. Maybe people embrace this stuff because it helps rationalize decisions that they have already made.
Amazon.com
Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.
Why are there miles and miles of "unused" DNA within each of our bodies? Why should a bee give up its own chance to reproduce to help raise her sisters and brothers? With a prophet's clarity, Dawkins told us the answers from the perspective of molecules competing for limited space and resources to produce more of their own kind. Drawing fascinating examples from every field of biology, he paved the way for a serious re-evaluation of evolution. He also introduced the concept of self-reproducing ideas, or memes, which (seemingly) use humans exclusively for their propagation. If we are puppets, he says, at least we can try to understand our strings. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
The million copy international bestseller, critically acclaimed and translated into over 25 languages. This 30th anniversary edition includes a new introduction from the author as well as the original prefaces and foreword, and extracts from early reviews. As relevant and influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only brought the insights of Neo-Darwinism to a wide audience, but galvanized the biology community, generating much debate and stimulating whole new areas of research.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent overview of evolution.......2007-10-08
Scholars pro-evolution can generally be divided into 1) those who believe in evolution at the group level (ie: The reason lions behave in a particular way is because they want to survive as a species) or 2) those who believe in evolution at an individual level (ie: The reason a particular bird behaves in a particular way is because he wants to survive as an individual bird). Dawkins' views are closer to the latter. In fact, he takes it a step further and argues for evolution at the gene level. I think he makes a very convincing case for his views. Of course nothing is certain (except uncertainty perhaps) so he does not prove his theory definitively.
The book can be hard to read at times and may be a bit slow for those with no background in biology or science. Nevertheless I think anyone with patience can read, enjoy and learn from this important book.
No matter what your views this is a very educational and important book. Highly recommended.
Fancifully Dark.......2007-09-21
In his play "Suddenly, Last Summer," Tennessee Williams writes of a young man who, on vacation at the seashore, watches newly hatched baby turtles struggling down to the safety of the water. Only a small percentage get there, though, because the gulls overhead scoop them up and eat them faster than they can crawl. The young man, observing this and already under great psychic tension, tells his cousin that now "I have seen God!" Later on, we realize the man is morally insane, and that perhaps this was the turning point; his descent into insanity.
Whether Williams himself thought of God the same way, I don't know. But certainly the example of the turtles and gulls had been chosen, out of thousands of other such biological observations, because the young man chose to find God - or truth - in it. He could, if he had been in a sunnier mood, chosen to look at nesting robins or a mare and her colt.
In "The Selfish Gene," Dr. Dawkins argues against the idea of altruism in nature: mothers take care of their young because they love them, etc. Dawkins says they do it because it's in their genes. But he takes it one step further: he says it's the genes themselves that are struggling to survive - not the whole animal. The analogy of genes "using" animal bodies for their own "selfish" ends, as if we were robots and the genes our drivers, is made over and over again.
Of course, Dawkins realizes this is not correct. Darwinism asserts that biological life came into existence blindly: cells and animals came (and continue to come) into being, not because they chose to, but because of natural selection. And the ones who survive do so because of serendipity.
This is a very hard concept, of course, to understand. I remember Sister Pauline laboring to explain to us girls in junior biology class that the white butterflies didn't decide to turn black; they turned black over generations, due to natural selection. She had a hard time of it. (Catholics are "allowed" to choose between a literal or analogous interpretation of the Bible, so she was not breaking any official rules!)
In other words, a "selfish" gene (or animal) makes no more sense in Darwinistic terms than an "altruistic" one.
Dawkins explicitly states this on page 196. But he uses the selfish gene analogy so many more times - hundreds of times - that, just from the sheer repetitiveness of the theme, it may sink in too deeply (and do some psychic damage) to people who are not currently living on the sunny side of the street, so to speak.
For those people, like the gentleman who wrote the touching review of how this book contributed to fits of depression, I'd say: This point of view has no more legitimacy than the altrustic point of view.
An additional (and, I think, unnecessary) weight on the sensitive reader's soul is the aspersions that Dr. Dawkins, an aggressive atheist, throws on the concept of God - limited mainly, I think, to his chapter on memes (he saves most of his vituperation on this issue for another book, "The God Delusion").
On that score, I'd say: please realize that scientists don't know everything. People in different professions develop different mental prejudices: lawyers think like lawyers, engineers like engineers, etc. And scientists, for whom scientific method is everything, tend to think that anything that's not measurable therefore doesn't exist. This is a logical fallacy. They also tend to think they are so intelligent, and the world outside science is so simple, that they can read a few survey books on religion, philosophy, or history and know all there is to know about the field. This leads them to made irresponsible, blanket statements, completely unaware of how little they know.
On page 201, he winds up a chapter by saying all is not gloomy; humans can still strive towards altruism; that "[w]e, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators." Then, in a long footnote, he writes that some of his colleagues disapproved of this passionate summation. "In some cases, the criticism came from doctrinaire sociobiologists jealously protective of genetic influence...." and in others, from "high priests of the left jealously protective of a favorite demonological icon!" (His exclamation point.) These latter, apparently, were objecting that he on the one hand implied a belief in free will while on the other hand talking like a genetic determinist. He objects to this, saying, if I understand it, that he's both, and ends the argument by saying, "We, that is our brains, are separate and independent enough from our genes to rebel against them. ...[W]e do so in a small way every time we use contraception."
Now, I don't pretend to have a handle on the philosophical and sociobiological arguments regarding whether or not humans have free will, or even what exactly free will is. But in the above I don't see that Dr. Dawkins really does, either: he treats it far too simply.
In sum, read the book, but don't let it get you down. After all, if the village priest doesn't have the right to bully people intellectually, than neither does the research scientist.
Mandatory reading for students/interested persons.......2007-09-17
This is an excellent primer to biological evolution and could also be a valuable co-text with a standard high school biology course. Written in British english, it is quite understandable though more academic than casual.
Dawkins' use of the 'gene's eye view' of the world permeates the text. It is very easy to follow. A great book to rebut any creationist's
viewpoint. This was Dawkins' first book in the field. It will not disappoint or talk down to you.
Enjoy.
a mixed bag.......2007-09-09
Parts of the book were utterly fascinating to me, such as the groundbreaking idea of the "meme" as a unit of cultural transmission. But the argument that species are survival machines for our "immortal genes" seems seriously flawed.
First and foremost in my mind, it is hard for me to swallow that organisms practice altruism because the gene or genes that are responsible for this altruism have a probability of existing in the recipient of the altruism, the probability increasing with the closeness of familial relatedness. How, then, to explain altruism beyond the family, or even beyond the species? The author mentions that there is at least one well-documented case of a dolphin rescuing a drowning human being. In the book this was suggested to be a mistake. One of Earth's most intelligent animals has a gene for rescuing long, narrow objects and cannot tell the difference between a human and its own species. I got doubtful when contradictory evidence was explained as a mistake. And what about organisms' adopting children originating from other parents? Always a mistake? Highly expensive practice for when the real deal arises?
I do not understand why there must be *a* unit of natural selection. Can't there be more than one, sometimes at odds with each other, sometimes in tandem? I do believe genes are selected over other genes, but I believe groups can be selected over other groups, too. Perhaps other units, both larger and smaller than genes (Why not the selfish base pair?), are also naturally selected.
Finally, especially considering recent discoveries in genomics that have downsized the number of estimated human genes, there cannot be one gene behind any behavioral trait you can think of, a gene for being nice to your cousin, for example. I get that a gene can have many functions and can have a net effect of being nice to your cousin, and in its absence you would be less nice to your cousin, but this makes for a complicated web which would get torn apart as succeeding generations inherit just part of the web. The influences of biology, environment, and history get harder to ignore.
a new way to look at the world.......2007-08-29
Dawkins challenges us to look at old ideas (Darwinian) in a new light. At times I found his mathematical calculations tedious to follow, however when I bothered to think them through, they did make sense. I esepcially enjoyed the chapter on game theory because it helped to explain why humans do not usually behave in blatantly exploitive ways in spite of our "selfish genes". I recommend the book to anyone who wonders how the world works.
Book Description
Genetics: From Genes to Genomes is a cutting-edge, introductory genetics text authored by an unparalleled author team, including Nobel Prize winner, Leland Hartwell. The Third Edition continues to build upon the integration of Mendelian and molecular principles, providing students with the links between early genetics understanding and the new molecular discoveries that have changed the way the field of genetics is viewed.
Customer Reviews:
Not for the uninitiated.......2007-07-07
This is a good book if you already have a foundation in genetics. Oddly, the book is marketed as your basic undergrad genetics text. Yet instead of just explaining the concepts, it leads you on the path of discovery of how researchers figured all this stuff out. If you are still learning the subject, you may do better with Klug/Cummings/Spencer. If you are going into higher levels of biology and want to learn some research methods, this is a good book.
Genetics: From Genes to Genomes.......2007-03-09
The book came in very quickly and I am very happy with the purchase.
Book Description
Bestselling author Geoffrey Moore shows companies how to rise to the challenge of natural selection—and master their own evolution
Geoffrey Moore is one of the most respected and bestselling names in business books. In his widely quoted Crossing the Chasm, he identified and addressed the greatest challenge facing new ventures. Now he's back with a book for established businesses that need to learn how to adapt—or suffer the slow declines into marginalized performance that have characterized so many Fortune 500 icons in recent years.
Deregulation, globalization, and e-commerce are exerting unprecedented pressures on company profits. In this new economic ecosystem, companies must dramatically differentiate from their direct competitors—or risk declining performance and eventual extinction. But how do companies choose the right innovation strategy? Or overcome internal inertia that resists the kind of radical commitments needed to truly set the company's offers apart?
Illustrating his arguments with more than one hundred examples and a full-length case study based on his unprecedented access to Cisco Systems, Moore shows businesses how to meet today's Darwinian challenges, whether they're producing commodity products or customized services. For companies whose competitive differentiation to the marketplace is still effective, he demonstrates how innovations in execution can help boost productivity, whether a company is competing in a growth market, a mature market, or even a declining market. For companies in danger of succumbing to competitive pressures, he shows how to overcome inertia by engaging the entire corporate community in an unceasing commitment to innovate and evolve.
For any business competing in today's eat-or-be-eaten economic jungle, this groundbreaking guide shows not only how to survive, but also thrive.
Customer Reviews:
A cogent survival guide for the evolution of business.......2006-09-13
In a competitive, capitalist economy, nothing is more prized than the whiz-bang invention, the why-didn't-I-think-of-that product or service that defines a market, delights consumers and gushes profits. Yet for all the ink spilled over innovation, remarkably few businesspeople understand exactly how to mint revolutionary new products. Innovation expert Geoffrey A. Moore delves under the hood of the new economy to create this roadmap to creative thinking. Although the text at times bogs down in jargon and a dizzying degree of detail, he cites plenty of sharp real-world examples, including an inside view of Cisco Systems. We recommend this user's manual to innovation to anyone who thinks that survival is not an end goal, but just a place to get started.
A must read for technology companies .......2006-08-28
I have been an avid consumer of Geoffrey's books for many years and Dealing with Darwin provides a framework to organize an enterprise portfolio planning process. It takes the concepts in the "Discpline of Market Leaders" to a whole new level that can be used in planning and strategy execution. We use Geoff's ideas in many ways in the Stanford University Advanced Project Managment program. He is a gifted writer and thinker!
Exceeded My Expectations.......2006-07-24
This book provides a very useful model for evaluating a portfolio, identifying what's core and recommending strategies for how to balance resources between core and non-core projects and activities. Once you have identified your core projects and activities, the book also provides a framework for determining the best innovation strategy for maximum differentiation. These are extremely useful concepts and frameworks, especially for more established businesses that have diverse portfolios, are facing increased competitive headwinds and are looking for ways to compete more effectively.
The big picture.......2006-07-03
This is a good big picture review of where the marketplace is today. After several decades of new product and new category introductions (especially in the high-tech area) we've reached a point where there aren't a lot of new new things. This is especially true in enterprise software where I make a living (www.beagleresearch.com). So the question begs to be asked, "What's next?" meaning if we aren't introducing new categories, how do we get customers interested in what we have to offer. Moore brilliantly answers the question with an array of innovation strategies which, while not as definitive as disruptive innovation, are nevertheless important. Our understanding of how and why product lines are extended, for example, is improved and with that Moore brings to close a circle that started with "Crossing the Chasm". Definitely worth reading if you are in business and have responsibility for charting what's next or if you are a customer and want to understand the next moves by your favorite vendor.
Geared to "broad view" corporate managers .......2006-05-30
Because I work with marketing and PR professionals, I was hoping for more insight on these topics. The discussion on "managing innovations in mature markets" has some value for marketers. Otherwise, this book is targeted to executive-level managers who must address company-wide issues and strategies and want ideas from a range of industries.
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Books Index
Books Home
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