A Different Nature

A Different Nature PDF Author: David Hancocks
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520236769
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
"A well-written and provocative, opinion-rich account of zoos, their history, and their goals and purposes. Hancocks has earned the right to speak authoritatively about these subjects, thanks to his tenure as director of two leading U. S. zoos. This book will appeal to general readers and to all persons interested in zoos and their role in conservation and education."—John Alcock, author of Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach "Giraffes, elephants, gorillas, snakes, and toucans respond poorly to the usual conventions of human architecture. Zoo architects usually respond no less poorly to the needs of animals. David Hancocks draws on a lifetime's experience working as a zoo director and zoo architect to explore this dilemma, and offers a compelling vision for the future. This is an important book for those interested in conservation as well as for zoo and museum buffs."—William Conway, former President and General Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Bronx Zoo "For over two decades David Hancocks has fervently tried to reform the fundamental character and mission of zoos. This book is his most thorough analysis of what is wrong with them and his most detailed and compelling plea for improvement. Every conscientious zoo administrator, curator, and keeper should read it from cover to cover with an open mind. Professionals in botanical gardens, museums, and nature parks should also consider this treatise because Hancocks advocates that a fusion of all of these institutions into a new entity better positioned to interpret the entire biosphere."-Mark A. Dimmitt, Director of Natural History, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

A Different Nature

A Different Nature PDF Author: David Hancocks
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520236769
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
"A well-written and provocative, opinion-rich account of zoos, their history, and their goals and purposes. Hancocks has earned the right to speak authoritatively about these subjects, thanks to his tenure as director of two leading U. S. zoos. This book will appeal to general readers and to all persons interested in zoos and their role in conservation and education."—John Alcock, author of Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach "Giraffes, elephants, gorillas, snakes, and toucans respond poorly to the usual conventions of human architecture. Zoo architects usually respond no less poorly to the needs of animals. David Hancocks draws on a lifetime's experience working as a zoo director and zoo architect to explore this dilemma, and offers a compelling vision for the future. This is an important book for those interested in conservation as well as for zoo and museum buffs."—William Conway, former President and General Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Bronx Zoo "For over two decades David Hancocks has fervently tried to reform the fundamental character and mission of zoos. This book is his most thorough analysis of what is wrong with them and his most detailed and compelling plea for improvement. Every conscientious zoo administrator, curator, and keeper should read it from cover to cover with an open mind. Professionals in botanical gardens, museums, and nature parks should also consider this treatise because Hancocks advocates that a fusion of all of these institutions into a new entity better positioned to interpret the entire biosphere."-Mark A. Dimmitt, Director of Natural History, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

Aspects of Nature

Aspects of Nature PDF Author: Alexander von Humboldt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Botany
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description


Not So Different

Not So Different PDF Author: Nathan H. Lents
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231178327
Category : Animal behavior
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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

Wrestling with Nature

Wrestling with Nature PDF Author: Peter Harrison
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226317838
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
When and where did science begin? Historians have offered different answers to these questions, some pointing to Babylonian observational astronomy, some to the speculations of natural philosophers of ancient Greece. Others have opted for early modern Europe, which saw the triumph of Copernicanism and the birth of experimental science, while yet another view is that the appearance of science was postponed until the nineteenth century. Rather than posit a modern definition of science and search for evidence of it in the past, the contributors to Wrestling with Nature examine how students of nature themselves, in various cultures and periods of history, have understood and represented their work. The aim of each chapter is to explain the content, goals, methods, practices, and institutions associated with the investigation of nature and to articulate the strengths, limitations, and boundaries of these efforts from the perspective of the researchers themselves. With contributions from experts representing different historical periods and different disciplinary specializations, this volume offers a fresh perspective on the history of science and on what it meant, in other times and places, to wrestle with nature.

After Nature

After Nature PDF Author: Jedediah Purdy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674368223
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic

Our Political Nature

Our Political Nature PDF Author: Avi Tuschman
Publisher:
ISBN: 1616148233
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
By blending serious research with relevant contemporary examples, Our Political Nature casts important light onto the ideological clashes that so dangerously divide and imperil our world today. It shows how political orientations arise from three clusters of measurable personality traits that entail opposing attitudes toward tribalism, inequality, and differing perceptions of human nature. Together, these traits are by far the most powerful cause of left-right voting, even leading people to regularly vote against their economic interests. Our political personalities also influence our likely choice of a mate, and shape society's larger reproductive patterns. This book tells the evolutionary stories of these crucial personality traits, which stem from epic biological conflicts. Based on dozens of exciting new insights from primatology, genetics, neuroscience, and anthropology, this groundbreaking work brings core concepts to life through current news stories and personalities.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

The Better Angels of Our Nature PDF Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 0143122010
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think this is the most violent age ever seen. Yet as bestselling author Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true.

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History PDF Author: Stephen Jay Gould
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245209
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
"[An] extraordinary book. . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."—James Gleick, New York Times Book Review High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.

Against Nature

Against Nature PDF Author: Lorraine Daston
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262353814
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
A pithy work of philosophical anthropology that explores why humans find moral orders in natural orders. Why have human beings, in many different cultures and epochs, looked to nature as a source of norms for human behavior? From ancient India and ancient Greece, medieval France and Enlightenment America, up to the latest controversies over gay marriage and cloning, natural orders have been enlisted to illustrate and buttress moral orders. Revolutionaries and reactionaries alike have appealed to nature to shore up their causes. No amount of philosophical argument or political critique deters the persistent and pervasive temptation to conflate the “is” of natural orders with the “ought” of moral orders. In this short, pithy work of philosophical anthropology, Lorraine Daston asks why we continually seek moral orders in natural orders, despite so much good counsel to the contrary. She outlines three specific forms of natural order in the Western philosophical tradition—specific natures, local natures, and universal natural laws—and describes how each of these three natural orders has been used to define and oppose a distinctive form of the unnatural. She argues that each of these forms of the unnatural triggers equally distinctive emotions: horror, terror, and wonder. Daston proposes that human reason practiced in human bodies should command the attention of philosophers, who have traditionally yearned for a transcendent reason, valid for all species, all epochs, even all planets.

The Fatal Gift of Beauty

The Fatal Gift of Beauty PDF Author: Nina Burleigh
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307588599
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A compelling true-crime tale” (Elle) from an award–winning journalist about a murder in Italy and the controversial prosecution, conviction, and twenty-six-year sentencing of Amanda Knox—featuring a new epilogue “Clear-eyed, sweeping, honest, and tough . . . This is what long-form journalism is all about.”—Tim Egan, author of The Worst Hard Time The sexually violent murder of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, became a media sensation when Kercher’s housemate, Seattle native Amanda Knox, and her Italian boyfriend were arrested and charged with the murder. The story drew an international cult obsessed with “Foxy Knoxy,” a pretty honor student on a junior year abroad, who either woke up one morning into a nightmare of superstition and misogyny—the dark side of Italy—or participated in something unspeakable. The Fatal Gift of Beauty is Nina Burleigh’s literary investigation of the murder, the prosecution, and the conviction and twenty-six-year sentence of Knox. But it is also a thoughtful, compelling examination of an enduring mystery, an ancient, storied place, and a disquieting facet of Italian culture: an obsession with female sexuality.