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The Superorganism
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Book Synopsis The Superorganism by : Bert Holldobler
Download or read book The Superorganism written by Bert Holldobler and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of "The Ants" render the extraordinary lives of the social insects--ants, bees, wasps, and termites--in this visually spectacular volume. 110 color and 100 black-and-white illustrations.
Book Synopsis The Human Superorganism by : Rodney Dietert, PhD
Download or read book The Human Superorganism written by Rodney Dietert, PhD and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Eyeopening... Fascinating... may presage a paradigm shift in medicine.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Teeming with information and big ideas... Outstanding.” —Booklist (starred review) The origin of asthma, autism, Alzheimer's, allergies, cancer, heart disease, obesity, and even some kinds of depression is now clear. Award-winning researcher on the microbiome, professor Rodney Dietert presents a new paradigm in human biology that has emerged in the midst of the ongoing global epidemic of noncommunicable diseases. The Human Superorganism makes a sweeping, paradigm-shifting argument. It demolishes two fundamental beliefs that have blinkered all medical thinking until very recently: 1) Humans are better off as pure organisms free of foreign microbes; and 2) the human genome is the key to future medical advances. The microorganisms that we have sought to eliminate have been there for centuries supporting our ancestors. They comprise as much as 90 percent of the cells in and on our bodies—a staggering percentage! More than a thousand species of them live inside us, on our skin, and on our very eyelashes. Yet we have now significantly reduced their power and in doing so have sparked an epidemic of noncommunicable diseases—which now account for 63 percent of all human deaths. Ultimately, this book is not just about microbes; it is about a different way to view humans. The story that Dietert tells of where the new biology comes from, how it works, and the ways in which it affects your life is fascinating, authoritative, and revolutionary. Dietert identifies foods that best serve you, the superorganism; not new fad foods but ancient foods that have made sense for millennia. He explains protective measures against unsafe chemicals and drugs. He offers an empowering self-care guide and the blueprint for a revolution in public health. We are not what we have been taught. Each of us is a superorganism. The best path to a healthy life is through recognizing that profound truth.
Book Synopsis The Economic Superorganism by : Carey W. King
Download or read book The Economic Superorganism written by Carey W. King and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Energy drives the economy, economics informs policy, and policy affects social outcomes. Since the oil crises of the 1970s, pundits have debated the validity of this sequence, but most economists and politicians still ignore it. Thus, they delude the public about the underlying influence of energy costs and constraints on economic policies that address such pressing contemporary issues as income inequality, growth, debt, and climate change. To understand why, Carey King explores the scientific and rhetorical basis of the competing narratives both within and between energy technology and economics. Energy and economic discourse seems to mirror Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion: For every narrative there is an equal and opposite counter-narrative. The competing energy narratives pit "drill, baby, drill!" against renewable technologies such as wind and solar. Both claim to provide secure, reliable, clean, and affordable energy to support economic growth with the most benefit to society, but how? To answer this question, we need to understand the competing economic narratives, techno-optimism and techno-realism. Techno-optimism claims that innovation overcomes any physical resource constraints and enables the social outcomes and economic growth we desire. Techno-realism, in contrast, states that no matter what energy technologies we use, feedbacks from physical growth on a finite planet constrain economic growth and create an uneven distribution of social impacts. In The Economic Superorganism, you will discover stories, data, science, and philosophy to guide you through the arguments from competing narratives on energy, growth, and policy. You will be able to distinguish the technically possible from the socially viable, and understand how our future depends on this distinction.
Book Synopsis Bees as Superorganisms by : Robin Moritz
Download or read book Bees as Superorganisms written by Robin Moritz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The honeybee (Apis melli/era L. ) is one of the better studied organisms on this planet. There are plenty of books on the biology of the honeybee for all, the scientist, the beekeeper, and the layman. In view of this flood of publications one is tempted to ask: why does it require another one? The answer is simple: a new one is not required and we do not intend to present a new book on "the honeybee". This would really just add some more inches to the already overloaded bookshelf without sub stantial new information. Instead, we intend to present a book on the honeybee colony. This of course immediately releases the next question: so what is the difference? Although the difference may look insignificant at first glance, we try to guide the reader with a fundamentally different approach through the biology of honeybees and eusocial insect societies in general. The biology of individual colony members is only addressed when it is necessary to explain colonial mechanisms, and the colony as a whole, as a biological unit, which is the main focus of this treatise. Both of us felt that all current textbooks on bee biology put too much emphasis on the individual worker, queen or drone in the colony. Often it is com pletely neglected that the colony is a very significant (if not the most significant) biological structure in bee biology.
Download or read book I, Superorganism written by Jon Turney and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2015-02-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every human body carries a secret cargo: a huge population of microorganisms living in the mouth, on the skin, in the gut. They help digest our food. They make essential vitamins. They break down toxins and metabolise drugs. They exert an invisible influence on our hormones, our immune systems, perhaps even our brains. This is the human microbiome – a living, shifting system of previously unimagined importance and complexity. In this first book-length account of this new realm of human biology, award-winning science writer Jon Turney explores the microbiome in detail, charting its birth and development, investigating how it works, and assessing its many implications for our health, including its potential to shed new light on conditions such as bowel diseases, cancer, allergies and asthma. He considers the potential impacts of our modern disinfectant and antibiotic obsessions, and ponders a future of designer microbiomes and mood-altering probiotics. This book will make you think again about your relationship with your body, your habits – even your sense of who and what you are – as it reveals what it means to be a 21st century superorganism.
Book Synopsis The Buzz about Bees by : Jürgen Tautz
Download or read book The Buzz about Bees written by Jürgen Tautz and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-04-30 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tis book, already translated into ten languages, may at frst sight appear to be just about honeybees and their biology. It c- tains, however, a number of deeper messages related to some of the most basic and important principles of modern biology. Te bees are merely the actors that take us into the realm of phys- ology, genetics, reproduction, biophysics and learning, and that introduce us to the principles of natural selection underlying the evolution of simple to complex life forms. Te book destroys the cute notion of bees as anthropomorphic icons of busy self-sacr -i fcing individuals and presents us with the reality of the colony as an integrated and independent being—a “superorganism”—with its own, almost eerie, emergent group intelligence. We are s- prised to learn that no single bee, from queen through drone to sterile worker, has the oversight or control over the colony. - stead, through a network of integrated control systems and fee- backs, and communication between individuals, the colony - rives at consensus decisions from the bottom up through a type of “swarm intelligence”. Indeed, there are remarkable parallels between the functional organization of a swarming honeybee colony and vertebrate brains.
Book Synopsis The Extended Organism by : J. Scott Turner
Download or read book The Extended Organism written by J. Scott Turner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can the structures that animals build--from the humble burrows of earthworms to towering termite mounds to the Great Barrier Reef--be said to live? However counterintuitive the idea might first seem, physiological ecologist Scott Turner demonstrates in this book that many animals construct and use structures to harness and control the flow of energy from their environment to their own advantage. Building on Richard Dawkins's classic, The Extended Phenotype, Turner shows why drawing the boundary of an organism's physiology at the skin of the animal is arbitrary. Since the structures animals build undoubtedly do physiological work, capturing and channeling chemical and physical energy, Turner argues that such structures are more properly regarded not as frozen behaviors but as external organs of physiology and even extensions of the animal's phenotype. By challenging dearly held assumptions, a fascinating new view of the living world is opened to us, with implications for our understanding of physiology, the environment, and the remarkable structures animals build.
Book Synopsis The Social Conquest of Earth by : Edward O. Wilson
Download or read book The Social Conquest of Earth written by Edward O. Wilson and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-04-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller and Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Book of the Year (Nonfiction) Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence (Nonfiction) From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career. Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution. In a work that James D. Watson calls “a monumental exploration of the biological origins of the human condition,” Wilson explains how our innate drive to belong to a group is both a “great blessing and a terrible curse” (Smithsonian). Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, the renowned Harvard University biologist presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.
Download or read book The Ants written by Bert Hölldobler and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Arctic to South Africa - one finds them everywhere: Ants. Making up nearly 15% of the entire terrestrial animal biomass, ants are impressive not only in quantitative terms, they also fascinate by their highly organized and complex social system. Their caste system, the division of labor, the origin of altruistic behavior and the complex forms of chemical communication makes them the most interesting group of social organisms and the main subject for sociobiologists. Not least is their ecological importance: Ants are the premier soil turners, channelers of energy and dominatrices of the insect fauna. TOC:The importance of ants.- Classification and origins.- The colony life cycle.- Altruism and the origin of the worker caste.- Colony odor and kin recognition.- Queen numbers and domination.- Communication.- Caste and division of labor.- Social homeostasis and flexibility.- Foraging and territorial strategies.- The organization of species communities.- Symbioses among ant species.- Symbioses with other animals.- Interaction with plants.- The specialized predators.- The army ants.- The fungus growers.- The harvesters.- The weaver ants.- Collecting and culturing ants.- Glossary.- Bibliography.- Index.
Download or read book Metaman written by Gregory Stock and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exciting, challenging book argues that man and machine have merged into a new global superorganism that is just now entering its prime and that promises a positive and prosperous future. A controversial book from the author of The Book of Questions. Photos and line drawings throughout.
Book Synopsis The Lucifer Principle by : Howard Bloom
Download or read book The Lucifer Principle written by Howard Bloom and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A philosophical look at the history of our species which alternated between fascinating and frightening . . . like reading Dean Koontz or Stephen King.” —Rocky Mountain News The Lucifer Principle is a revolutionary work that explores the intricate relationships among genetics, human behavior, and culture to put forth the thesis that “evil” is a by-product of nature’s strategies for creation and that it is woven into our most basic biological fabric. In a sweeping narrative that moves lucidly among sophisticated scientific disciplines and covers the entire span of the earth’s—as well as mankind’s—history, Howard Bloom challenges some of our most popular scientific assumptions. Drawing on evidence from studies of the most primitive organisms to those on ants, apes, and humankind, the author makes a persuasive case that it is the group, or “superorganism,” rather than the lone individual that really matters in the evolutionary struggle. But biology is not destiny, and human culture is not always the buffer to our most primitive instincts we would like to think it is. In these complex threads of thought lies the Lucifer Principle, and only through understanding its mandates will we able to avoid the nuclear crusades that await us in the twenty-first century. “A revolutionary vision of the relationship between psychology and history, The Lucifer Principle will have a profound impact on our concepts of human nature. It is astonishing that a book of such importance could be such a pleasure to read.”—Elizabeth F. Loftus, author of Memory
Book Synopsis The Neighborhood Project by : David Sloan Wilson
Download or read book The Neighborhood Project written by David Sloan Wilson and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2011-08-24 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After decades studying creatures great and small, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson had an epiphany: Darwin's theory won't fully prove itself until it improves the quality of human life in a practical sense. And what better place to begin than his hometown of Binghamton, New York? Making a difference in his own city would provide a model for cities everywhere, which have become the habitat for over half of the people on earth. Inspired to become an agent of change, Wilson descended on Binghamton with a scientist's eye and looked at its toughest questions, such as how to empower neighborhoods and how best to teach our children. He combined the latest research methods from experimental economics with studies of holiday decorations and garage sales. Drawing upon examples from nature as diverse as water striders, wasps, and crows, Wilson's scientific odyssey took him around the world, from a cave in southern Africa that preserved the dawn of human culture to the Vatican in Rome. Along the way, he spoke with dozens of fellow scientists, whose stories he relates along with his own. Wilson's remarkable findings help us to understand how we must become wise managers of evolutionary processes to accomplish positive change at all scales, from effective therapies for individuals, to empowering neighborhoods, to regulating the worldwide economy. With an ambitious scope that spans biology, sociology, religion, and economics, The Neighborhood Project is a memoir, a practical handbook for improving the quality of life, and an exploration of the big questions long pondered by religious sages, philosophers, and storytellers. Approaching the same questions from an evolutionary perspective shows, as never before, how places define us.
Book Synopsis Metaphysics and the Origin of Species by : Michael T. Ghiselin
Download or read book Metaphysics and the Origin of Species written by Michael T. Ghiselin and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In explaining his individuality thesis, Michael T. Ghiselin provides extended discussions of such philosophical topics as definition, the reality of various kinds of groups, and how we classify traits and processes. He develops and applies the implications for general biology and other sciences and makes the case that a better understanding of species and of classification in general puts biologists and paleontologists in a much better position to understand nature in general, and such processes as extinction in particular.
Book Synopsis The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct by : Bert Hölldobler
Download or read book The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct written by Bert Hölldobler and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants comes this dynamic and visually spectacular portrait of Earth's ultimate superorganism. The Leafcutter Ants is the most detailed and authoritative description of any ant species ever produced. With a text suitable for both a lay and a scientific audience, the book provides an unforgettable tour of Earth's most evolved animal societies. Each colony of leafcutters contains as many as five million workers, all the daughters of a single queen that can live over a decade. A gigantic nest can stretch thirty feet across, rise five feet or more above the ground, and consist of hundreds of chambers that reach twenty-five feet below the ground surface. Indeed, the leafcutters have parlayed their instinctive civilization into a virtual domination of forest, grassland, and cropland—from Louisiana to Patagonia. Inspired by a section of the authors' acclaimed The Superorganism, this brilliantly illustrated work provides the ultimate explanation of what a social order with a half-billion years of animal evolution has achieved.
Book Synopsis Organization of Insect Societies by : Jürgen Gadau
Download or read book Organization of Insect Societies written by Jürgen Gadau and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-28 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this landmark volume, an international group of scientists has synthesized their collective expertise and insight into a newly unified vision of insect societies and what they can reveal about how sociality has arisen as an evolutionary strategy. Jürgen Gadau and Jennifer Fewell have assembled leading researchers from the fields of molecular biology, evolutionary genetics, neurophysiology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary theory to reexamine the question of sociality in insects. Recent advances in social complexity theory and the sequencing of the honeybee genome ensure that this book will be valued by anyone working on sociality in insects. At the same time, the theoretical ideas presented will be of broad-ranging significance to those interested in social evolution and complex systems.
Author :Lisa Margonelli Publisher :Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 13 :0374712387 Total Pages :320 pages Book Rating :4.3/5 (747 download)
Download or read book Underbug written by Lisa Margonelli and published by Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli, national bestselling author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank, investigates the environmental and economic impact termites inflict on human societies in this fascinating examination of one of nature’s most misunderstood insects. Are we more like termites than we ever imagined? In Underbug, the award-winning journalist Lisa Margonelli introduces us to the enigmatic creatures that collectively outweigh human beings ten to one and consume $40 billion worth of valuable stuff annually—and yet, in Margonelli’s telling, seem weirdly familiar. Over the course of a decade-long obsession with the little bugs, Margonelli pokes around termite mounds and high-tech research facilities, closely watching biologists, roboticists, and geneticists. Her globe-trotting journey veers into uncharted territory, from evolutionary theory to Edwardian science literature to the military industrial complex. What begins as a natural history of the termite becomes a personal exploration of the unnatural future we’re building, with darker observations on power, technology, historical trauma, and the limits of human cognition. Whether in Namibia or Cambridge, Arizona or Australia, Margonelli turns up astounding facts and raises provocative questions. Is a termite an individual or a unit of a superorganism? Can we harness the termite’s properties to change the world? If we build termite-like swarming robots, will they inevitably destroy us? Is it possible to think without having a mind? Underbug burrows into these questions and many others—unearthing disquieting answers about the world’s most underrated insect and what it means to be human.
Download or read book SuperCooperators written by Martin Nowak and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at the importance of cooperation in human beings and in nature, arguing that this social tool is as important an aspect of evolution as mutation and natural selection.
