Download or read book Loren Eiseley Collected Essays on Evolution Nature and the Cosmos Vol 1 LOA 285 written by Loren Eiseley and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eminent paleontologist with the soul and skill of a poet, Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) was among the twentieth century’s greatest inheritors of the literary tradition of Henry David Thoreau, Charles Darwin, and John Muir, and a precursor to such later writers as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Carl Sagan. After decades of fieldwork and discovery as a “bone-hunter” and professor, Eiseley turned late in life to the personal essay, and beginning with the surprise million-copy seller The Immense Journey (1957) he produced an astonishing succession of books that won acclaim both as science and as art. Now for the first time, the Library of America presents his landmark essay collections in a definitive two-volume set. This first volume begins with Eiseley’s debut collection, which displays his far-reaching knowledge and boundless curiosity about the mysteries of the natural world. Here are vivid accounts of prehistoric ecosystems, the origins of consciousness, the search for “living fossils” at the bottom of the sea, and the complexities of our evolutionary inheritance. Here too are literary qualities and aspirations that led many to hail Eiseley as a “modern Thoreau”: his quest for the ultimate meanings and cosmological significance of natural phenomena, along with his immense expressive gifts. The Firmament of Time (1960), a lyrical and meditative tour de force, looks back at the many ways in which the sciences have been shaped by the changing cultures in which they developed. Examining the role of metaphor in scientific thought, anticipations of scientific discoveries in the works of poets and novelists, and the “unconscious conformity” of scientific theory to prevailing orthodoxies, Eiseley argues provocatively for the ongoing relevance to scientific progress of dreams, the imagination, and the irrational. In his wide-ranging collection The Unexpected Universe (1969), Eiseley turns to the theme of the voyage of discovery: accounts of the mythical and historic journeys of Odysseus, Captain Cook, and Darwin frame his own more modest wanderings in the environs of Philadelphia. Sometimes he travels no farther than the local dump: and yet, like Homer’s hero or these great explorers, he continually finds a universe “not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” As an added feature, this volume presents a selection of Eiseley’s uncollected prose, including early autobiographical sketches, vivid and haunting entries from his private notebooks, and his 1957 lecture “Neanderthal Man and the Dawn of Human Paleontology.” A companion volume presents The Invisible Pyramid (1970), The Night Country (1971), and the essays gathered after his death in The Star Thrower (1978). LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Download or read book Collected Essays on Evolution Nature and the Cosmos written by Loren C. Eiseley and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A paleontologist with the spirit of a poet."--Publisher.
Download or read book The Immense Journey written by Loren Eiseley and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-07-13 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley blends scientific knowledge and imaginative vision in this story of man.
Download or read book The Firmament of Time written by Loren Eiseley and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lyrical and meditative tour de force that traces the evolution of man and science, including the rise of scientific inquiry In The Firmament of Time—nominated for a National Book Award—Loren Eiseley offers a series of brilliant, provocative excursions through the history of science. A paleontologist with the soul and skill of a poet, he reflects on the many ways in which the quest for knowledge has been shaped by the changing cultures in which it emerged and developed. Examining the role of metaphor in scientific thought, anticipations of scientific discoveries in the works of poets and novelists, and the “unconscious conformity” of scientific theory to prevailing orthodoxies, he argues for the ongoing relevance of dreams, the imagination, and the irrational to scientific progress.
Download or read book Marx s Ecology written by John Bellamy Foster and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Progress requires the conquest of nature. Or does it? This startling new account overturns conventional interpretations of Marx and in the process outlines a more rational approach to the current environmental crisis. Marx, it is often assumed, cared only about industrial growth and the development of economic forces. John Bellamy Foster examines Marx's neglected writings on capitalist agriculture and soil ecology, philosophical naturalism, and evolutionary theory. He shows that Marx, known as a powerful critic of capitalist society, was also deeply concerned with the changing human relationship to nature. Marx's Ecology covers many other thinkers, including Epicurus, Charles Darwin, Thomas Malthus, Ludwig Feuerbach, P. J. Proudhon, and William Paley. By reconstructing a materialist conception of nature and society, Marx's Ecology challenges the spiritualism prevalent in the modern Green movement, pointing toward a method that offers more lasting and sustainable solutions to the ecological crisis.
Download or read book The Unexpected Universe written by Loren C. Eiseley and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1969 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A naturalist deals informally with the way in which totally unexpected twists in the evolutionary process bring renewal of hope in the life of our planet.
Download or read book The Blank Slate written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-08-26 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." --Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Updated with a new afterword One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.
Download or read book Millennialism and Social Theory written by Gary North and published by Inst for Christian Economics. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Sacred Places North America written by and published by CCC Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compilation of 108 spiritual destinations around North America-- medicine wheels, rock art, modern pilgrimage routes, prehistoric earthen pyramids, ancient stone structures, monasteries, shrines, temples, and more.
Download or read book All the Strange Hours written by Loren C. Eiseley and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Loren Eiseley began his lifelong exploration of nature in the salt flats and ponds around his hometown and in the mammoth bone collection hoarded in the old red brick museum at the University of Nebraska, where heøconducted his studies in anthropology. It was in pursuit of this interest, and in the expression of his natural curiosity and wonder, that Eiseley sprang to national fame with the publication of such works as The Immense Journey and The Firmament of Time. In All the Strange Hours, Eiseley turns his considerable powers of reflection and discovery on his own life to weave a compelling story, related with the modesty, grace, and keen eye for a telling anecdote that distinguish his work. His story begins with his childhood experiences as a sickly afterthought, weighed down by the loveless union of his parents. From there he traces the odyssey that led to his search for early postglacial man?and into inspiriting philosophical territory?culminating in his uneasy achievement of world renown. Eiseley crafts an absorbing self-portrait of a man who has thought deeply about his place in society as well as humanity?s place in the natural world.
Download or read book The Invisible Pyramid written by Loren Eiseley and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revered ecologist and conservationist examines the origins and possible futures of humankind within the context of the Space Age, masterfully “[communicating] the awesome spectacle of our environmental crisis” (New York Times Book Review) To read Loren Eiseley is to renew a sense of wonder at the miracles and paradoxes of evolution and the ever-changing diversity of life. In this brilliant collection, he considers the cosmological significance and ultimate meanings of our evolutionary history, offering a series of profound, lyrical meditations on the origins and possible futures of humankind against the backdrop of the Apollo landings. As Western civilization attains new heights of scientific awareness and technological skill, he asks, is it also blind to its own limits and destructive capacities? Always a fond observer of the natural world, Eiseley makes a newly urgent, environmentalist plea in The Invisible Pyramid: we must protect the fragile “world island” against our unchecked power to pollute and consume it. “A relentless, haunting, and haunted figure devils the man [Eiseley] and twists from him some of the best prose we have. . . . Eiseley is a master of significant anecdote. There is an unstated but real gothic terror prowling behind his vision.” —New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Wonder Education and Human Flourishing Theoretical Empirical and Practical Perspectives written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The premƯise that underlies this volume is that there are strong interconnections between wonder, education and human flourishing. And more specifically, that wonƯder can make a significant difference to how well one?s education progresses and how well one?s life goes. The contributors to this volume ? both senior, well-known and beginning researchers and students of wonder ? variously explore aspects of these connections from philosophical, empirical, theoretical and practical perspectives. The three chapters that comprise Part I of the book are devoted to the importance of wonder for education and for human flourishing. Part II contains four chapters offering conceptual analyses of wonder and perspectives from developmental psychology and philosophy (Spinoza, Wittgenstein, philosophy of religion). The seven chapters that form Part III contain a wealth of ideas and educational strategies to promote wonder in education and teacher education. This volume not only underlines and articulates the importance of wonder in education and in life but also offers fresh perspectives, allowing us to look with renewed wonder at wonder itself.
Download or read book The Star Thrower written by Loren C. Eiseley and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1979 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of the author's favorite essays and poems. This volume includes selections that span Eiseley's entire writing career and provide a sampling of the author as naturalist, poet, scientist, and humanist. "Loren Eiseley's work changed my life" (Ray Bradbury). Introduction by W. H. Auden.
Download or read book Making Mountains written by David Stradling and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences. Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water. The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation. In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.
Download or read book The Night Country written by Loren C. Eiseley and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of autobiographical essays in which the author, anthropologist Loren Eiseley, reflects on the mysteries of life and nature.
Download or read book The Night Country written by Loren Eiseley and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America’s most beloved naturalists reflects on the “fallibility of science, the mystery of evolution, and the surprise of life” in this fascinating essay collection (Time) Weaving together memoir, philosophical reflection, and his always keen observations of the natural world, Loren Eiseley’s essays in The Night Country explore those moments, often dark and unexpected, when chance encounters disturb our ordinary understandings of the universe. The naturalist here seeks neither “salvation in facts” nor solace in wild places: discovering an old bone or a nest of wasps, or remembering the haunted spaces of his lonely Nebraska childhood, Eiseley recognizes what he calls “the ghostliness of myself,” his own mortality, and the paradoxes of the evolution of consciousness.
Download or read book How to Read the American West written by William Wyckoff and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From deserts to ghost towns, from national forests to California bungalows, many of the features of the western American landscape are well known to residents and travelers alike. But in How to Read the American West, William Wyckoff introduces readers anew to these familiar landscapes. A geographer and an accomplished photographer, Wyckoff offers a fresh perspective on the natural and human history of the American West and encourages readers to discover that history has shaped the places where people live, work, and visit. This innovative field guide includes stories, photographs, maps, and diagrams on a hundred landscape features across the American West. Features are grouped according to type, such as natural landscapes, farms and ranches, places of special cultural identity, and cities and suburbs. Unlike the geographic organization of a traditional guidebook, Wyckoff's field guide draws attention to the connections and the differences between and among places. Emphasizing features that recur from one part of the region to another, the guide takes readers on an exploration of the eleven western states with trips into their natural and cultural character. How to Read the American West is an ideal traveling companion on the main roads and byways in the West, providing unexpected insights into the landscapes you see out your car window. It is also a wonderful source for armchair travelers and people who live in the West who want to learn more about the modern West, how it came to be, and how it may change in the years to come. Showcasing the everyday alongside the exceptional, Wyckoff demonstrates how asking new questions about the landscapes of the West can let us see our surroundings more clearly, helping us make informed and thoughtful decisions about their stewardship in the twenty-first century. Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYSmp5gZ4-I
