Customer Reviews (9)

Swim A Little Faster, I've Got Cramps
Elaine Morgan is a sprightly Welsh gem, that rare scientist who never went to school. She is not a doctor of any philosophy, holds no varsity chair, and I admire her more than the world for her accomplishments.

You see, I was present when Mrs. Morgan was booed by crowds everywhere. My wife and I watched with disgust as science and even the lunatic fringe of pseudo-science tried laughing her off the stage. Even my old friend Dr. Grover Krantz, may he rest in peace, hated Morgan, called her "stupid", and refused to even discuss her theory. Which, by the way, she has been forced by anthropologists to change to "aquatic ape hypothesis". Nice slap on the wrist, guys--I amN O Tproud to call you my colleagues!

Morgan is readable, logical, incredibly quizzical with passion, and has given us food for thought to last generations. So far, nothing has contravened her theory in the least, and if you study this amazing book carefully, you, too, may see more light than you ever thought possible. And that is why scientists hate her: she's threatening to show their emperor has no clothes. Also, she's a tad too feminist. In other words, science persists doing to her what the Church did to Galileo...but Morgan's not recanting. THAT is bravery and integrity!

If you think in new, penetrating ways, Mrs. Morgan would be so proud of you, and the world would (eventually) thank you. Mrs. Morgan offers one last caveat to the whole Future: "Get a better idea than mine, and I'll be the first to support it." [Paraphrase, not direct quote.]

Controversial theory of early ape-man evolution
People who don't believe in Darwin's theory of evolution have a simple answer to all questions about why humans are markedly different from all other animals - God created everything. To people who believe in Darwin's theory and are interested, the questions pertaining to human evolution are intriguing and controversial. The aquatic ape hypothesis id very controversial within the scientific community but, as the author explains, it deserves serious consideration.

Most of us who believe in Darwin accept that there was once a species of ape living in Africa from which all people are descended as well as all modern apes such as gorillas and chimpanzees. Looking at the modern apes, we can observe some similarities with ourselves but there are also many obvious differences. Those apes are much hairier than us and often spend their time in trees. When they walk on the ground, they generally do so on four legs rather than two. Apes use body language far more than we do, yet our faces are much more expressive than theirs. Our noses are also very different from theirs. There are less obvious but equally important differences such as the location of the larynx. Of course, there are noticeable differences between different species of apes, but they have more in common with each other than any of them do with us.

The author suggests that there may have been a time when our ancestors were forced to adapt to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. On that basis, the likeliest scenario is that we are descended from a group of apes then living in Africa near the Red Sea, maybe around six or seven million years ago. The author doesn't mention the Sahara desert but I know from other sources that it is of more recent origin, maybe three or four million years old, so the region was very different before that. Geological changes, perhaps of a catastrophic nature, isolated these apes from the African mainland for a million years or two. During that period, they became increasingly reliant on fish other aquatic food to supplement their diet. Initially, they navigated water simply by wading, hence the reason for walking on two legs, but they eventually learned to swim. The unusual noses they evolved, which we still have, enabled them to swim underwater for short periods. In deep water, the ability to use body language is limited (try jumping up and down in a swimming pool) so facial expressions developed.

Ultimately, whether due to further geological changes or the swimming ability that they'd acquired, the ape-men were able to return to the African mainland, eventually migrating down the Rift Valley to southern Africa. By that time, they looked very different from the apes that had been their ancestors although they didn't look exactly like us either, as more evolution of a less dramatic nature has taken place subsequently. Meanwhile, the mainland apes had followed their own evolutionary path and several different species had emerged. In the five million years plus that have elapsed since the ape-men returned to the mainland, our ancestors again adapted to a terrestrial existence but never quite lost the aquatic dimension. We may not spend much time in the water (except the minority who choose to do so) but we still eat fish and other aquatic food when we choose to.

Most of the book is taken up by an analysis of the various features of the human body that differentiate us from apes, looking at other species and noticing similarities with them. Our skin and its comparative lack of hair is more akin to whales, dolphins, elephants and domestic pigs than apes. Whales and dolphins both have terrestrial ancestors while elephants and pigs (like us) may once have had ancestors that adapted to a semi-aquatic life. The position of our larynx is comparable to that in a walrus. Our noses are not like anything found in any other creature but the nearest comparison is with a proboscis monkey, who also developed an unusual nose for use when wading. Sweat, tears and body fat all distinguish us from apes and all are discussed in detail. Walking on two legs draws comparison with some types of dinosaurs. After their mass extinction, no creatures except birds (who themselves evolved from dinosaurs beginning in the Jurassic period) ever walked primarily on two legs until our ancestors started doing so.

If the aquatic ape hypothesis is correct, it seems that our ancestors adapted quite well to a semi-aquatic life, but it must still have been very hard because they took the opportunity to return to terrestrial life when it eventually arose. After that, they musthave been at some disadvantage initially compared to those apes that had continued evolving on the mainland. Perhaps those disadvantages (slowness and reduced sense of smell among them) forced them to find other survival strategies that, developed over a few million years, enabled us to become the dominant species on the planet. Those later developments including speech are outside the scope of this book, although the author points out that we could not have developed speech if our larynx position were similar to other apes.

Critics of the aquatic ape hypothesis point to a lack of definitive proof. Most books tell us that our ancestors moved directly from the forests to the open plains but this theory, also unproven, cannot convincingly explain the way we look. I look forward to the emergence of a credible alternative to the aquatic ape hypothesis that explains this, or to proof that the aquatic ape hypothesis is correct. The author provides a strong case for it. Though this book was published in 1997, it is possible to keep track of the latest research findings by surfing the net for aquatic ape.

Thinking outside the academic feudalist dogmas...
A great departure from conventional academic 'black box' thinking that most likely will prove to be correct as more evidence mounts over the years. An invitation to expand thinking about human origins and life on Earth and not be confined by the taboos determined by the self-appointed 'elite' of university parasites that rule scientific establishments. To be read and re-read by anyone interested in alternative explanations to unresolved questions on the dawn of humankind.

A great learning tool for the classroom
This is a fabulous book, but not for the reasons you might think. I use this book in my comparative vertebrate anatomy class. It is a great example of cherry-picking information from the primary literature. At the time that this book was printed, there were many peer-reviewed articles that refuted much of her arguments for a secondarily aquatic human history but unfortunately you won't find them in her book. Good scientists put the best data forward that runs counter to the hypothesis and see if it holds up. This isn't done here. The aquatic ape "theory" contains much of the pseudo-science trappings of intelligent design-namely selectively pointing out "gaps" in the current theory of human evolution and then proclaiming that the alternative must therefore be true. For those that are aquatic ape enthusiasts, I suggest you read the primary literature for yourself.

Her other book, The Scars of Evolution, suffers from the same problems. Although it is an attempt to address her critics, it still contains much misinformation. For example she discusses fur seals as having primarily eccrine sweat glands on their flippers when the primary literature strongly suggests that such glands are apocrine in origin (and that otarids are really inefficient sweaters).

In summary, the book is a great way to get students interested in comparative anatomy and also shows how comparative anatomy can be applied to a particular question. Her book also provides a great exercise for students to critically evaluate ideas by comparing her statements to the direct primary literature. Unfortunately, as an important contribution to our evolutionary origins, it is best to look elsewhere.

Go Swimming with Elaine Morgan!
A thoroughly documented, dispassionate, and compelling argument that the reason we humans are so different from the other apes is because we led a semi-aquatic existence some millions of years ago. From our lack of fur, to our subcutaneous fat, to our descended larynx, there are just too many clues to ignore the Aquatic Ape hypothesis. If you are interested in human origins, or interested in the sea, read this book. Even if you don't agree with everything within, it'll get your neurons whizzing. ... Read more

Product Description
rfRANSLATOR'S NOTE. THE translator Yishes to express his indebtedness to Professor Lannor, [or kindly consenting to introduce the author of SC£ellce and IIypothesis to English readers; to Dr. F. S. )[acaulay and :'Ir. C. S. Jackson, 1L:., "ho have read the ,,"hole of the proofs and hu"e greatly belpcd by suggestions; also to Professor G. I-I. Brvan, F.R.S .. who J " has read the proofs of Chapler Vll1., and whose criticisrns have llcen lllost valuable. ~. J. G.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS; TRAXSLA TOR'S NOTE; IXTRODUCT lOX; AUTHOR'S PREFACE; PART I; JVU~J1BER AlVD il1AG'VIJ'UDE; CILPTER I; I'AGE; IX; Xl; XXI; ON THl:: NATURE OF lfATJTE)1:TICA L REASONl:G I; C H~'PTER II; PART II; SPACE; CH : PTER III; N' OX-ECCLlDE~ CEOJlKfRIES " ; ",); •; VI COXTE~T$; CHAPTER "V; SPACE A~D GEO],lKfRY; CHAPTER V; EXPERDIENT Ji' 1) GEO:lETR Y; PART III; FORCE; CHA PTER VI; THE CLSSlCAL ~lECH NICS; CHAPTER VII; RELATIVE A KD A BSOLUTE IIoTlo~ I I I; CHAPTER VIIT; E:;EK(jY AND THFR;IO-VYNAIIlC:-; ]2~; PART IV; ,VA TURE; CHcPTER IX; H VPOTHESES IN PlIVSICS; CONTE~TS Vll; CHAPTER X; THE THI':OJ
About the Publisher

Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.

Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the difficult to read text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Fine reproduction of a scientific classic
This book is a 1905 English translation of Poincare's "La Science et l'hypothèse" which was originally published in 1903.It is an excellent reproduction, obviouslyphotographic, with none of the contamination rife in books "re-created" by optical character recognition software.It is published by Forgotten Books ([...]), who say on their webpage: "We reprint classical literature and old books that have long been out of print."

A deeply insight book
This book does give a deep insight into science and hypothesis although sometimes the reading becomes uninteresting.

Although the book was written more than 100 years ago, I got some new concept, for example, in Chapter 2: Mathematical Magnitude and Experiment, it reads: "It has, for instance, been observed that a weight A of 10 grammes and a weight B of 11 grammes produced identical sensations, that the weight B could no longer be distinguished from a weight C of 12 grammes, but that the weight A was readily distinguished from the weight C. Thus the rough results of the experiments may be expressed by the following relations: A=B, B=C, A < C, which may be regarded as the formula of the physical continuum."

My understanding on our daily life is that we have no difference between today and yesterday, between tomorrow and today, but we might have difference between tomorrow and yesterday.

Also it is very insightful regarding where we should stop our so-called research, in Chapter 9: Hypotheses in Physics, it reads: "If we study the history of science we see produced two phenomena which are, so to speak, each the inverse of the other. Sometimes it is simplicity which is hidden under what is apparently complex; sometimes, on the contrary, it is simplicity which is apparent, and which conceals extremely complex realities. . . . We must stop somewhere, and for science to be possible we must stop where we have found simplicity."

My understanding on our daily life is that the analysis becomes more and more complex without sense, for example, we could not judge if the economics is good or not because there are too many indicators.

Still, regarding the hypothesis, in Chapter 9, it read: "Let us also notice that it is important not to multiply hypotheses indefinitely. If we construct a theory based upon multiple hypotheses, and if experiment condemns it, which of the premisses must be changed ? It is impossible to tell. Conversely, if the experiment succeeds, must we suppose that it has verified all these hypotheses at once ?"

My understanding on our daily life is how many missions are committed based upon multiple hypotheses?

Convention in geometry and science
Geometry and experience (IV). Changes in our sensory impressions attributable to geometrical change (change in position) are distinguished from other types of change in that they can be cancelled by an "internal" change on the part of the observer (moving his body). Corollary 1: an immobile being could not develop geometry. Corollary 2: if there were no solid bodies there would be no geometry.

No experiment can decide whether space is Euclidean or non-Euclidean (V). It does not suffice to measure the angle sum of a large triangle (V.3), for such experiments speak only of relations between specific triangles, meter sticks, etc., not space itself. Nor can the matter be decided by constructions that are impossible in one geometry but possible in the other, such as the non-existence in non-Euclidean geometry of regular hexagons with radius = side length (V.7), for the same reasons. For example, the experiment can come out the opposite way if the measuring sticks involved dilate with temperature.

The above is a special case of Poincaré's more general thesis of so-called structural realism (esp. X): only sensory impressions, not reality in itself, is accessible to us; relations (structures) among these impressions are the true content of scientific theories, not what the theory stipulates about mind-independend reality.

Newton's laws. The law of inertia is not an experimental fact (pp. 91-97). "Have there ever been experiments on bodies acted on by no forces? and, if so, how did we know that no forces were acting? The usual [empirical illustration] is that of a ball rolling for a very long time on a marble table; but why do we say that it is under the action of no force?" And conversely, let's say that the ball does deviate from its path, and that we cannot find any force to blame this on. Does that falsify the law of inertia? No, it only means that we do not understand the force in question. A force was acting on the ball by definition, since force is mass times acceleration. There is no way to define force independent of F=ma (pp. 97-101). Thus the law of inertia is true by definition, as is F=ma. But to define force as mass times acceleration we first need to know what mass is. For this we need to assume the law of equality of action and reaction so that we can define (ratios of) masses from ma=ma for two bodies acting on each other. "This would do very well if the two bodies were alone and could be abstracted from the action of the rest of the world; but this is by no means the case" (p. 101), a difficulty from which "there is no escape" except the following definition, "which is only a confession of failure: Masses are co-efficients which it is found convenient to introduce into calculation" (p. 103). Thus, analogous to the situation in geometry, the laws of mechanics amount to convention. "This convention, however, is not absolutely arbitrary; it is not the child of our caprice. We admit it because certain experiments have shown us that it will be convenient" (p. 136).

Personal view from a crucial era
Poincare wrote the essays in this book about a hundred years ago, in 1905. That was the landmark period after Maxwell and before special relativity. I was fascinated to read this snapshot from such an exciting era in scientific thought.

This first-person view is set in the era when the all-encompassing ether was still considered seriously. People had recent memory of debates about whether electrons were real. There was no unification of rays from uranium and radium with cathode rays, x-rays, and ultraviolet.

The intellectual seeds of modern science had been sown, though. Experiments with ultraviolet foretold Einstein's photoelectric effect. Lorentz had already stated some of the invariants that led to relativity. Probability was just entering mainstream scientific thought, preparatory to statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and Heisenberg.

As Poincare covers the science of his day, he does so in the style of his day. He is quite unashamed in describing the British scientific temperament as boldly intuitive, but informal and sometimes spotty. By contrast, he describes the French as rigorous and inclusive, although maybe a bit too staid. Not just the science, but the social attitudes of the day come through in the pleasant little book. If you study the history of science and are partial to primary sources, I recommend this highly.

great book---both pop sci& thought-provoking
it is philosophy,precisely it is positivism(with slightly revised)!people who like read Henri Poincare might compare his with Ernst Mach. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (10)

Where was the editor?
An interestingresponse to Gaia. But the book needs so much work... the key references are not included, and the graphs are unintelligible. Where was the editor?

A Seat-of-the-Pants Polemic
This polemic brings to the fore some provocative counterpoints to Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. However I got the feeling that I was looking at a hurried view of two sides of the same coin, not a new Paradigm.

The Medean point of view says that most mass extinctions were caused by the excesses of life itself, think"ecological overshoot and collapse" on a global scale. The Gaian point of view looks at the broad sweep of evolution on earth and says that earlier life forms helped create the conditions for subsequent life forms to thrive.

The most striking graph in the book shows a 500 million year decline in carbon dioxide to the present. This is when solar output has been increasing, so a greenhouse earth would be frying if high levels of CO2 had persisted.But when modern plant life took hold, increased weathering of continental rocks took more and more CO2 out of the atmosphere.This made the planet habitable for the likes of us - oops - this is the Gaia Hypothesis!

So to get to the Medea Hypothesis, Ward just extrapolates the decline of CO2 to the point where the higher plants cannot survive, ignoring a billion years of Gaia. Nor does Ward indicate just how speculative this extrapolation is, as predictions in hot fields of research are frequently overturned or modified.For example, will feedback mechanisms kick in to reverse the decline in carbon dioxide, which certainly happened during each previous snowball earth or ice age?

And if Ward is right about the expected death of higher life forms, he has missed out on an intriguing possibility.Maybe instead of burning most of the earth's accessible fossil fuels over the course of two or three centuries, humanity should extract them at a very slow rate and burn them over hundreds of millions of years. Instead of a catastrophic, but short lived, global warming episode, we'd become the agents of Gaia, keeping sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to keep plant life, and us, going.

Actually Ward does suggest "heating limestone" as speculative way to accomplish the same thing, so I conclude that Ward really wants to be a Gaian. He's really just trying to wean us from an oversimplified Gaian philosophy that if we just go back to nature, she will take care of us. Here he is dead right. We can't really go back to nature, with 5 to 10 billion people on the planet, and even if we dramatically reduce our numbers and carbon footprints, nature can do very nasty things, like mass extinctions, totally on its own.

In most respects Ward actually thinks like an environmentalist:When you play with nature in a big way, you're playing with fire.Where he differs from some environmentalists, is in saying that if you're going to effect the planet, then do so in an intelligent, engineered way.

Where Ward has missed out big time, is in the resource arena. No mention of Peak Oil or how such resource limits will hit hard long before rising sea levels drown coastal cities. Peter Ward would be well advised to take a more thorough look at the workings modern civilization and to look for the common ground that will be needed to take any intelligent action.

Absurd Argumnet, Utter Junk
Sloppily written, very poorly reasoned and argued, repetitive to a fault, and uncourageous when it comes to stating his convictions ("I'm going to tell you how things are. They may be this way and they may be that way, but I probably tend to think that they might be this way but I might be wrong but I doubt it."). Ward can't decide who his audience is--is this a book for the college freshman, for the everyman or for his peers?--and intermittently writes to all of them and the work sorely suffers for it's poverty of order and cohesion and it's failure to focus on and appreciate it's audience. What's more, he discusses life with a distinctly animal-centric bias, fails to examine the significance of coadaptative processes and contemporaneous biofeedback loops, and imposes a "death = bad!" morality on the whole of nature that is humanocentric, woefully short-sighted, lazy, and just plain retarded. The whole of living nature IS biocidal as he contends, but his articulation of the contention misses the point of the actuality: Everything that breathes and eats feeds on the wastes and death of something else. That feedlot cow had to die before it became my Big Mac, not to mention all the corn and wheat that had to croak for my Big Mac's special sauce and bun, and a whole lot of photosynthetic organisms had to fart out oxygen before I could take the next breath. The biocidality of life is self-evident, and it is not revolutionary for him to say so. Everything that lives will die, and everything that lives lives because it feeds on death. And, yes, whether you're a Christer Apocalypsiphile or a astrophysicist giving the sun a billion or two more years before it heats up too much to support live on the planet, the eventual course of life on earth is, inevitably death. Life's not forever. We get that. Big Whoop. We didn't need your book to point that out to us.

That's not to mention his unsophisticated reading of Darwinian evolution, his utter failure to discuss the significance of episodic changes (which he calls "Medea events") as they impact evolutionary continuums, and his insecure anti-Gaian bias that leads him to make more attacks on the various Gaian theorists than actually do much constructive to support his own theory, and his overall laziness in concluding that theory ("More research is necessary." Right--because you couldn't find enough peer reviewed work to support it, couldn't make enough sense of what you did find to pull it together sensibly, and you weren't committed enough to your theory to do any research yourself.) He discusses CO2 in the environment without discussing contemporary human contributions to that. He chides environmentalists for advocating that all human being change their behavior to preserve the planet, but then concludes the work by suggesting that the only way humans are going to survive the "Medea effect" is for us to change our behavior and thus engineer the planet to ensure our survivability.

I actually don't understand the point of this book. The hypothesis itself is poorly reasoned, he doesn't articulate it clearly and with courage, and the examples he gives to support it and refute Gaians are insufficient to either task. And he repeats himself and ultimately contradicts his criticisms of environmentalists. So, what's the point here, exactly? Are Gaians really so threateningly wrong that they're interfering with the happy miracles of capitalism in Christendom? And why did the Princeton press feel this book was ready for publication?

His hypothesis may, indeed, have validity, but it's so poorly articulated and buried under such an avalanche of bias, poorly fleshed out examples, and unnecessary technical jargon that its credibility, to my mind, is utterly eroded. I have no doubt this work would've greatly benefited from an editor, and as a reader I'm insulted by the lack of respect shown me and others by the writer, publisher, and any editor who might've been involved in this work (which is why my tone in this review is so snide). I generally don't have any kind of problem with professors writing theory based on others' research, but in this instance I think Ward would've benefited greatly from doing some research of his own on this subject and perhaps publishing a few papers in peer reviewed journals and evaluating his work according to his peers' feedback--frankly, on his writing alone--before publishing this work. What's more, I found the Gaian hypotheses he rails against more fascinating and sensible, at least as he describes them and given that the evidence he provides to counter them does to little to actually counter them (and even supports it in some cases), and I plan to read the authors he derides next.

Dark, difficult and somewhat depressing
Ok I am a big fan of Peter Ward, and I read everything of his.But this book is very different than the others that are decorating the paleontology section of my bookshelf.Most of his books are Saganesque - they celebrate science and I always feel like I'm on an adventure in the life of the mind when I read his stuff.

This book is a polemic, much more so even than Rare Earth was.It is a direct attack on a certain modern myth - the Gaea hypothesis - that has been embraced by the international environmental movement.Evaluating this book therefore transcends simple science appreciation, and enters a very different realm - the world of power politics.While I don't think Peter Ward knows a tremendous amount about that world, certainly he is aware of his myth making role - hence the playful title.

Bobby Seale once told me that the functional definition of power was "the ability to define reality in such a way as to make it act in desired manner".If you accept this political truth, than it is more important to evaluate whether the Gaea hypothesis affects reality in a way you want, than it is to address its accuracy.

And this makes the topic very tricky.

Ward handles it with real skill however - and while this is a somewhat less accessible work than some others it is a lot of fun to read.It started a three day argument with my girlfriend that had us both scouring the internet for information to bolster our arguments.I recommend it - but it requires work on the part of us non-paleontologists...and it ain't pretty

Gaia vs. Medea: is either necessary?
Peter Ward attempts to debunk the Gaia Hypothesis by countering it with one of his own:the Medea Hypothesis. According to Ward's interpretation, the Gaia Hypothesis essentially says that life makes the Earth more habitable for life.Ward's Medea Hypothesis says that life makes the Earth less habitable for life. Having read the book, I don't think his hypothesis is any more compelling than [his version of] the Gaia Hypothesis.There are many examples historically where life of one sort or another has altered the environment in such a way as to make survival either easier or harder for other life forms. One example of both is the evolution of photosynthesis, which is what put oxygen into the atmosphere. Oxygen was deadly to some species, but then, it allowed the evolution of others, including higher animals. It seems unnecessary to posit that life is universally Gaian or Medean, in Ward's senses of the terms.Either theory runs the risk of associating intentionality with processes that can be explained without resorting to that.While naive dependency on the truth of the Gaia Hypothesis may lead some to a complacent attitude about the biosphere's ability to alter itself to adapt successfully to changing circumstances, replacing that theory with one that depends on the same type of thinking but is instead dystopian doesn't seem any better.

One of the most important threads in the book depends on the discovery that as the Sun increases its energy output over the next half billion years or more,more carbon will be removed from the atmosphere than released into it, to the point that eventually photosynthetic plants will not be able to survive. Yet this science is not well explained in the book, leaving the reader to wonder how well established it really is. This is Ward's main example of life being Medean, and life on Earth being in its senescence, having only half a billion years or so left. Since this is a physical effect caused by the Sun, I don't know why it says anything about life's inherent tendencies at all, but nonetheless, I wonder how much is really known for sure about how the atmosphere will develop as the Sun's output increases.And how do we know, really, what life-forms might possibly evolve that could take advantage of such changed conditions and thrive in them? Half a billion years is a long time.

I think it is also a little short-sighted to assume that over the next half billion years, should the human race survive even a small fraction of that, that we will not master biological engineering, nanotechnology, etc., to the point that we may have a large hand in designing our own evolutionary successors, who may be able to survive in environments that current life forms would be unable to live in. Much of this may happen in the next century or two let alone hundreds of millions, or even thousands, of years.

As other reviewers have also noted, the book is badly in need of an editor, or at least a proof-reader! Also, this is the first book I recall seeing where the same graphs are repeated as many as three times.

Nevertheless, it was mostly fun to read and definitely a worthwhile subject to think about.


... Read more

Product Description
"

Just as investors want the companies they hold equity in to do well, homeowners have a financial interest in the success of their communities. If neighborhood schools are good, if property taxes and crime rates are low, then the value of the homeowner's principal asset--his home--will rise. Thus, as William Fischel shows, homeowners become watchful citizens of local government, not merely to improve their quality of life, but also to counteract the risk to their largest asset, a risk that cannot be diversified. Meanwhile, their vigilance promotes a municipal governance that provides services more efficiently than do the state or national government.

Fischel has coined the portmanteau word ""homevoter"" to crystallize the connection between homeownership and political involvement. The link neatly explains several vexing puzzles, such as why displacement of local taxation by state funds reduces school quality and why local governments are more likely to be efficient providers of environmental amenities. The Homevoter Hypothesis thereby makes a strong case for decentralization of the fiscal and regulatory functions of government.

Customer Reviews (2)

Good supplemental text on local government and zoning
This makes a great required second book in a local government/administration course. As a matter of fact, it should be required reading for city councilmen all over America.

Fischel does a good job of proving the "people vote with their feet" hypothesis, but more importantly, he ties property values to virtually every local government action (and inaction). Virtually everything that city government does is capitalized into property values -- sometimes with negative effects and sometimes with positive effects. Americans are extremely mobile, moving every 4 years, so we really do vote with our feet to a greater extent than most city governments care to accept.

"I've Got Mine, Jack!"
There are scads of good books on state and Federal government, but few on local government. William Fischel's The Homevoter Hypothesis is an exception and is an apparent classic on local government.Fischel's book advances more than an "hypothesis."It is a "correlation" that convincingly describes from case studies and case law how real estate economics drives local government. Fischel reports that housing equity in the U.S. is eleven times as large as liquid assets among all homeowners. Home equity value is the largest asset of private wealth.But this equity value is constantly under threat from external forces ("externalities") beyond the control of property owners except by government intervention. Homes are an immovable asset whose value can't be insured against a wipeout of equity. Homeownerswill consent to the impositions of municipal and school district financing, zoning, growth controls, and environmental regulations only to the extent that they protect home values, or can be "capitalized" (converted) into higher property values. Fischel advances what he calls the "Tiebout Hypothesis" (from Charles Tiebout) that "people vote with their feet" by moving or shopping for a locality to maximize their wealth.Actually, because real estate is an immobile asset, Fischel's theorem might be more accurately restated as "people put their feet to the vote" or "stake their home value to the vote."
Fischel sometimes uses elegant terms ("homevoter," "unlovely land uses"), classical phrases ("people who buy houses are more careful about it than almost any other transaction, save perhaps getting married"), and even employs a reverse golden rule of sorts ("municipalities will foist disamenities on their neighbor that they would not do unto themselves"). Sometimes Fischel uses blunt summarization such as when he writes that the "Smart Growth Movement" and growth controls "seem to act more like a cartel for those already in possession of suburban homes than as a rationalizer of metropolitan development patterns."Fischel includes helpful subheadings in each chapter, reminiscent of Machiavelli's classic The Prince, that succinctly tell you what he is driving at.Unlike most economics texts, there are no obfuscating "supply and demand" tables in this book.
My only disappointment with the book is that Fischel did not go far enough. For instance, what just compensation is to be provided to landowners whose property has been downzoned for environmental preservation by local government, then acquired by a state or federal agency, or a non-government organization (NGO), for the same preservation use for which it was downzoned? When local government downzones a property to buy it on the cheap it is typically considered a confiscatory taking. What is the difference when two levels of government act in concert to accomplish the same thing, both in response to the same incumbent home voting constituency?Moreover, such interference with real estate markets often results in a situation where there no longer is available any land sales market data from which to determine the value of a property, except government and non-government organization sales that can not be considered under government real estate appraisal standards (see reviewer's "Valuing Nature Land in 'Extinct' Markets," Appraisal Journal, 1998).Another example would be toxic waste site cleanup policies that are less concerned with the "health effects" than "wealth effects" to surrounding property values (see reviewer's "But is it Market Value?" Appraisal Journal, 1999 and "The Externality Principle: Value Transfers from Toxic Waste Site Cleanups as a Basis for Regulatory Takings," Environmental Claims Journal, 2001). How can "people vote with their feet" when growth controls are meant to put one's feet in cement so to speak?Perhaps Fischel will follow up with a sequel that can address such dilemmas in greater depth?The Homevoter Hypothesis is an indispensable book for city managers, local politicians, zoning and school boards, and the legal and real estate professions.I give it an unqualified highest rating.
Wayne Lusvardi
The opinions expressed above are solely those of the reviewer. ... Read more

Product Description
Since 1859, when the shy German mathematician Bernhard Riemann wrote an eight-page article giving a possible answer to a problem that had tormented mathematical minds for centuries, the world's greatest mathematicians have been fascinated, infuriated, and obsessed with proving the Riemann hypothesis. They speak of it in awed terms and consider it to be an even more difficult problem than Fermat's last theorem, which was finally proven by Andrew Wiles in 1995.

In The Riemann Hypothesis, acclaimed author Karl Sabbagh interviews some of the world's finest mathematicians who have spent their lives working on the problem--and whose approaches to meeting the challenges thrown up by the hypothesis are as diverse as their personalities.

Wryly humorous, lively, accessible and comprehensive, The Riemann Hypothesis is a compelling exploration of the people who do math and the ideas that motivate them to the brink of obsession--and a profound meditation on the ultimate meaning of mathematics.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Others deserve learning about complexity too
Karl Sabbagh has done his job well. He never pretended to be a master at this topic. He pretended to give the layman as myself access to the intricate and complex mind of a genius. This is what divulgation is about.

I do not understand those hard ratings or much less comments like "which I could probably do here ultra-briefly if I had a charge number for a couple of hours". It is as if I buy a children's book on physics and complain about the depth of its concepts. Some wise pedagogue would say I was completely confused on what divulgation is about.

If you think you can enlighten our small minds on this matter dedicating a couple hours, I suggest you send a manuscript to the press. I shall be happy to buy it and rate it afterwards.

In scientific literature there ought to be room for books that can be understood by more than one hundred people. Sometimes complexity is an added feature that does not add value...

The fact that I am not an expert at math does not make me a conceptual handicapped. I think this book is a good entrance to the topic. In my case it has triggered the purchase of other deeper approaches.

Well done Karl!!!

Eh
There are a few mistakes:
1) p. 133 In the smallest n-digit primes sequence, there are incorrect 8th and 11th members.
2) p. 190 The values of the Mobius function are listed from one to ten, the 7th is incorrect (should be -1)
3) p. 206 The inline formula for the gamma function is incorrect. It reads "Gamma(n) = n * Gamma(n-1)" but should read "Gamma(n) = (n-1) * Gamma(n-1)".

There is also a fuzzy explanation which contradicts another explanation of T. H. White's "everything not forbidden is compulsory" (p. 185). Sabbagh claims that Gell-Mann says this is how the laws of physics work--that if something is predicted to exist by a theory, then it exists somewhere. Kip Thorne clearly explains in 'Black Holes & Time Warps' that this is not how the laws of physics work. From the book, "Many of the things permitted by the laws of physics are so highly improbable that in practice they will never happen." (p 137) It may be that I misunderstood Sabbagh's writing or that Sabbagh misunderstood Gell-Mann. Nevertheless there is something going on here that doesn't match up.

Other than that, the book was pretty good. It didn't quite give me the dose of mathematics I was looking for, but then again I always ask for more than I can handle. It was very readable.

Where's the Beef?
Nice to have a book to read on the mathematical history and personalities hooked on the search.Way too soft on what the search is for and actual progress in any direction.Has an appendix with some current effort at a proof but without any surrounding discussion it's hardly worth the effort.

The Riemann Hypothesis for non-mathematicians
The book is really about the search for solutions to the Riemann Hypothesis, and contains lots of stories about mathematicians, and mathematical topics. It also includes a wide variety of tangential topics, such as the resolution of previously unsolved problems: the Bierbach Conjecture and Fremat's Last Theorem.

While intended as an accessible account of the Riemann Zeta Function and the Riemann Hypothesis for the non-mathematician, it uses overly trite and simplistic descriptions of basic mathematical concepts such as prime numbers, complex numbers, and zeros of functions, while glossing over more advanced concepts, such as L-functions, Hilbert Spaces, and Random Matrices. Clearly, this was written by a mathematical novice.

YOU can understand the Riemann Hypothesis....after this commercial break.
I'm halfway through this book and am getting very frusturated.The beginning chapters did a very good job laying out the foundations of the RH.You begin to think you may, finally, be able to understand what the RH is about.However, I am realizing that less and less of the book is actually about the RH or the RZF the farther I progress.An entire chapter will waste space describing a mathematician (physical appearance, quirky behavorial traits), his unrelated contributions to math, and either a vague description of the work he is doing to prove the RH or some opinion on whether it will be solved or not. The book has devolved into irritating tangents unrelated to my understanding of the RH/RZF...clever math poems, crap about Fermats theorem, etc.I would even be forgiving if he was describing the life and times of Riemann himself.There are plenty of cute little math stories here, but I didnt waste $14.00 on a book about the RH to NOT read about the RH.I want every single chapter to build on the previous, start slow, explain the concepts, and raise the bar.If you get stuck, too bad...research the web and pick the book up later.Thats what I wanted here, and this book is turning out to be a letdown.
There is very good information for someone completely new to the concept of the RH or RZF, but this book is 4 chapters of useful material spread out into an entire book filled with math-related lore.I appreciate what Sabbagh is trying to do here, but lets be realistic.This is a very advanced mathematical concept; you can't hand-hold someone through this from start to finish.At some point he should challenge the reader and escalate the difficulty of the book, but this does not appear to happen.Instead we get a smoke-screen...a cliffhanger.Would I recommend this book?Only to those who have absolutely no understanding of what the RH/RZF is and want a springboard to something else. ... Read more

Product Description
Since 1859, when the shy German mathematician Bernhard Riemann wrote an eight-page article giving a possible answer to a problem that had tormented mathematical minds for centuries, the world's greatest mathematicians have been fascinated, infuriated, and obsessed with proving the Riemann hypothesis. They speak of it in awed terms and consider it to be an even more difficult problem than Fermat's last theorem, which was finally proven by Andrew Wiles in 1995.

In The Riemann Hypothesis, acclaimed author Karl Sabbagh interviews some of the world's finest mathematicians who have spent their lives working on the problem--and whose approaches to meeting the challenges thrown up by the hypothesis are as diverse as their personalities.

Wryly humorous, lively, accessible and comprehensive, The Riemann Hypothesis is a compelling exploration of the people who do math and the ideas that motivate them to the brink of obsession--and a profound meditation on the ultimate meaning of mathematics.
... Read more

Product Description
provides us with a fresh new look at the UFO and alien abduction phenomena. Using startling case studies from his own investigation Dr. Lewels makes a strong case for a broader and deeper explanation for the UFO mystery than is commonly accepted by the major researchers. His conclusions about the role of the beings (known by the ancients variously as custodians watchers guardians gods angels or demons) in human affairs will shock and jostle the reader's perceptions about the true nature of reality. His interdisciplinary approach crosses all boundaries ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

mindblowing
I bought this book in december 1997 and I immediately started reading it.
After several years I just felt the urge to re-read it.
Now, after some years of personal and spiritual growth, I find myself wondering if I can resist the temptation again.
I know I can not........
This book feels so right........
Thank you mr. Lewels........

Rational, Compelling and Thought Provoking
God Hypothesis : Extraterrestrial Life and Its Implications for Science and Religion (New Millenium Library)

By Joe Lewels, Ph.D Publisher: Granite Publishing, LLC; 2nd ed edition (February 8, 2005)
ISBN: 0926524534
Review by Dr. Colette M. Dowell, N.D.

For the past decade there has been a wave of books published about UFO enigmas ranging from benevolent beings interacting with humans in order to help us save our home planet Earth, to hard evidence of spacecraft technology being drafted and engineered into our modern-day Star Wars program. Physical abduction of humans by extraterrestrials was among some of the scariest phenomena ever reported. Many serious and non-serious researchers of UFOs and other related paranormal topics have accounted for actual videos, photographs, possible alien artifacts and also first-hand verbal accounts by witnesses or experiencers of paranormal events. God Hypothesis is one book covering varied studies of ufology and independent researchers' views. The researchers' views are reported from their own personal niches in the field . Joe Lewels, Ph.D., offers an accounting of mainstream ufology along with his own personal interpretation of who or what is doing whatever, when, how and why. Where does the heritage of aliens and spacecraft begin? How long have human abductions been taking place and why?

Lewels considers himself a 'common' man--a man whose childhood was filled with devout Christian faith and common sociological thoughts and typical mainstream consciousness. His journalism occupation led him to a Ph.D. journalism program at University of Missouri and to a position as Editor of the Freedom of Information Digest and Reports. He thought he had a really healthy, normal life, but something lurked in the back of his mind haunting him. Previously, while on an Army flight mission in 1969, somewhere in Alabama, Joe and his companion Army Colonel Bob Jones, both witnessed a glowing orange ball of light hovering at high altitude ahead of them. This was a night for Joe to ponder for many years, for what he saw was an unidentified flying object.

It wasn't until 1992 that Lewels' desire and sincere approach to ufology guided him to actually research the phenomena. His religious background targeted him towards theology within ufology by way of peculiar patterns of relationships he noticed between modern-day UFO-related happenings and early Christianity. Rev. Dr. Barry H. Downing's interpretation of the UFO phenomena and its curious parallels with theology coincides with Lewels' conclusion that our modern-day aliens are in fact history's ancient Gods as related in the Bible and other ancient sacred texts. Indeed, there are some quite stunning relationships between events, 'beings,' Gods and spiritual theme from ancient to modern day texts.

God Hypothesis: Extraterrestrial Life and Its Implications for Science and Religion, partly is Lewels' interpretation of his own personal spiritual transformation and ability to accept more than what is typified in mainstream consciousness. He describes his 'conscious' moments when he suddenly realizes there is something more out there than he had earlier perceived, and expresses his shock, joy and wonderment about the event. Lewels totally went through a positive transformation of his personal state of being, and his acceptance and tolerance of other realms--realms other than what he can perceive with his senses or rational mind. I am sure while on his earlier venture into the depths of ufology, and upon his startling realizations and memorable moments such as coming to terms with cattle mutilations and human abductions, he must have really freaked out. He speaks of aliens as possible angels to some, and to others, the Devil or Satan. He has a very strong religious scenario scoped out in his findings.

His overture is honest as he writes he reveals and shares his excitement and his naïve state of being as he reports on his newly found paradigm. I could picture him with compelling force running from UFO conference to conference and hanging out with 'select' speakers in hopes of hearing about the latest UFO happenings and related topics. In total fascination he details his search and writes about his understanding of the UFO phenomena and queer correlation's to specific biblical text and varied mythological legends.

Lewels presents images of ancient wisdom teachings and Bible stories to your mind. Who were the keepers of the tablets, and where were they really from? He discusses the problem with different modern languages translating the Bible and other Sacred Scrolls from the original ancient texts. He also presents important chronological historical theology and the differences between 'era'-related transcriptions and revisions of the Bible. I found this to be very interesting and it helped me understand certain changes within earlier civilizations' government and religious thoughts of the time. Lewels exposes the hypocrisy and manipulation of the sacred texts that induce major changes of consciousness and control of the majority of peoples throughout the world.

Lewels 'tracked' the UFO phenomenon accurately by passage of his own experience and understanding of it. His perspective is shared by many who pursue the obscure and mainstream UFO myths and beliefs. Like every true-blue UFO researcher, Lewels expanded his way of thinking into other possible realms of realities. He associated himself with the holographic-universe concept of Michael Talbot and recaptured moments of consciousness as related to modern-day quantum physics. He even goes into the Mars Mission, led by Richard Hoagland, which in earlier years investigated the notorious 'Face on Mars,' deemed by NASA as a "trick of light and shadow".

What impressed me most about Joe Lewels' God Hypothesis, was his strong conviction that 'we are all of the same reality.' I liked this idea for reasons of selflessness, goodness towards the whole and concern for future implications if 'humans can't get it together.' This is a very firm belief among many experiencers of 'worlds from beyond' and those who observe the holy phenomena daily amongst them.

God Hypothesis: Extraterrestrial Life and Its Implications for Science and Religion, is a very informative book encompassing many details about many synchronicities that relate to Biblical texts and modern UFO realities. Many readers who are new to this particular theory and diverse explanation of certain parts of human history will arrive at a newly found awareness of themselves and other realities. Dr. Lewels did a fine job of conveying his personal message. I consider The God Hypothesis good, inspirational and educational reading material.

Changing paradigms
I have recently re-read my copy of "The God Hypothesis". Ihave been fascinated with the ongoing debate of UFO's and their 'reality' or non-reality. It seems to me, that the whole point of non ordinary experience, is to question the edges of our perceived borders. I found Dr. Lewels investigation thorough, and extensive, and extremely mind awakening. People who tend to have non-ordinary experiences have opened the edges of all of the boxes we seem to think we exist in. Changes can be uncomfortable, but perhaps it is about time that we looked at all of the experiences as a whole and listen to what the people experiencing them have to say. UFO's, Out of Body states, NDE's andShamanic visions all share an equal and important theme. That we are part of a much larger 'reality' than we have accepted until now, and that we need to be connected in all ways to the beautiful Earth we live with, as well asworlds that are not as apparently visable. I highly recommend this book as part of library of thought which needs desperately to be considered if ,we as a race, will continue to exist.

Amusing, but one question remains.
Another in the growing universe of new age books proclaiming the aliensare gods, we are gods, everyone and their uncle Sydney is a god. Fine. It'san amusing and imaginative rendition of reality. But, as with all pseudoscience, science fiction and real science, we're left with one basicquestion: Where does it all begin?

If aliens seeded the planet, whoseeded the aliens? If a Big Bang created the Universe and all life in it,then how was the Big Bang created and what existed beforehand?

I canmake up stories, too. That doesn't mean I know what I'm talking about. Somethings are mysteries beyond human--and alien--imagination or the ability tocomprehend. Saying otherwise doesn't make it so.

It's a fun read if youlike science fiction, but given the option, I'll stick with God.

Paradigm Shocker
Very informative.The author inserts his ideas based on the facts he presents, but his conclusions are hardly debatable.He changed my life.I especially enjoyed reading the author's thoughts on God.. both the OldTestament/Punishing and Cruel God, and the New Testament/Kind, ForgivingGod.He made a very good case that the Old and New Testament Gods couldvery well have been different.This man started off as a curious reporterand wound up a changed man and an author.The book changed my paradigm, soI have to say it is a MUST READ. ... Read more

Product Description
This book represents a systematic and broadly based discussion and evaluation of the Gateway Hypothesis, according to which young people who progress in the use of drugs follow a specific sequence from the use of tobacco or alcohol to the use of illicit drugs to the use of illicit drugs other than marijuana. This volume evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the hypothesis from multiple disciplinary perspectives representing sociology, psychology, epidemiology, statistics, animal behavior, molecular biology and prevention. ... Read more

Product Description

Previous edition sold over 1400 copies worldwide.

This new edition includes many more real-world illustrations from biology, business, clinical trials, economics, geology, law, medicine, social science and engineering along with twice the number of exercises.

Customer Reviews (4)

good text and improved over first edition
This is the second edition of a popular text on permutation methods which just came out in February 2000. Dr. Good has been an expert on permutation tests for over 25 years. In the 1980s he was the editor of a journal called Randomization which dealt specifically with the latest developments in permutation methods. He has also contributed to the scholarly research on this subject with a number of useful publications. In addition through his company he has done a great deal of consulting and has written many reviews on statistical software. He brings all of this valuable experience to the table in this book which emphasizes the wide variety of practical applications for this powerful tool. Permutation methods are gaining increasing popularity along with other resampling methods because of the amazing improvement in speed of digital computers over the past 15 years. This is emphasized in the book which is written at an elementary level for practitioners. It also is filled with practical advice and applications from Dr. Good's many years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. The book has expanded from 228 to 270 pages with additional references and expansion of chapters 12 and 13 which incorporate computing advances over the 6 years since the publication of the first edition.

Synopsis of a JASA review
David Annnis reviews this book in JASA 472 (December 2005).He begins by quoting the author's preface, where Good says he aims to "replace, rather than supplement, existing graduate level texts on testing hypotheses and decision theory."

The key points Annis makes are

*This edition is considerably expanded, including a chapter on statistical distributions and a "measure theoretic appendix."

*There is a new inclusive bibliography.

*"The chapters stand alone."Topics include one-sample tests, multiple simultaneous tests, sequential procedures, testing categorical data, multivariate procedures, and even testing space-time data.

*"The author does an admirable job presenting alternative resampling methods, most notably the bootstrap ... and classical parametric tests."

Annis characterizes the book as readable, yet also as having mathematical rigor.He concludes that it "garners high marks for its scope and clarity," recommending it to graduate students (for "rigorous treatment of diverse topics and ample exercises") and also to scientists and statistical professionals as a good reference.

Disappointing overall
Good's book is a disappointment. His explanations are often opaque; he manages to make even basic things such as type I/II errors and power seem complicated. The few examples he offers are contrived; there is an almost complete lack of real-world examples. His discussion of software is hopelessly outdated and the code he provides is confined to very simple toy problems that any serious student of his book will have no problems attacking. Items cited in the book are missing in the references, and there is also a fair number of typos. Finally, (my personal pet pief), Good doesn't seem to know the distinction between "alternative" and "alternate" - he alternates between the two without realizing that one is not an alternative for the other... I highly recommend Rosenbaum's Observational Studies instead (at least for randomization inference); it is beautifully written, rigorous, and offers many real-world examples. Good does not even cite it.

3rd much enhanced edition is now available
3rd much enhanced edition is now available as a graduate text. ... Read more

Product Description
Robert Ardrey (b. October 16, 1908, Chicago, Illinois- d. January 14, 1980, South Africa) was an American Playwright and Screenwriter who returned to his academic training in Anthropology and the Behavioral Sciences during the 1950s. During the 1960s & 70s Ardrey's books challenged earlier anthropological assumptions and influenced science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke and filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick and his "2001: A Space Odyssey". In "The Hunting Hypothesis" Ardrey puts forth the hypothesis that human evolution was primarily influenced by the activity of hunting, and that the activity of hunting distinguished human ancestors from other primates. A hypothesis that was widely and heatedly discussed at the time. This was Ardrey's last project he died in 1980. ... Read more

Product Description
For 150 years the Riemann hypothesis has been the holy grail of mathematics. Now, at a moment when mathematicians are finally moving in on a proof, Dartmouth professor Dan Rockmore tells the riveting history of the hunt for a solution.

In 1859 German professor Bernhard Riemann postulated a law capable of describing with an amazing degree of accuracy the occurrence of the prime numbers. Rockmore takes us all the way from Euclid to the mysteries of quantum chaos to show how the Riemann hypothesis lies at the very heart of some of the most cutting-edge research going on today in physics and mathematics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

If God gave us the integers why were prime numbers included?
When Albert Einstein sought the mathematics to bring his general theory of relativity to life, he found his solution in the works of none other than Bernard Reimann.

And although Reimann died young (at 39) apparently the special math necessary for relativity was not Reimann's only masterstroke.

He also developed a theta function or formula for predicting the placement of prime numbers in the number line.As you may recall from elementary mathematics, prime numbers are those numbers only divisible by themselves and one.

Though casual thought on the matter may initially lead one to conclude that prime numbers would eventually be exhausted (indeed the higher you go the more rare they do become) mathematical proofs dating back to Euclid show that like the integer line they accompany they go on forever.

But again figuring out how they can be located algorithmically within that forever was long a mathematics holy grail until 1859 when Bernard Reimann posited a hypothesis for locating them.His hypothesis or zeta function involves incredibly complicated mathematics certainly beyond the scope of this book so if you want to understand it you may do better to read Reimann's Zeta Function.

However if you want the outlines of search that goes from ancient Greece all the way to modern times, this book makes quick accessible reading.

Lacks clarity and focus
I don't know what it is with the latest books trying to popularize certain branches of contemporary and modern science, but it seems to me that poetic and decorated language now sells better than scientific clarity and educational value. This book serves more as a general overview into a wide range of more or less related open and solved problems in mathematics and physics rather than an interesting introduction into the problem of prime number distribution and the Riemann hypothesis. The many analogies, which are often explained in too much detail, do not only distract from the main topic, but often lack a considerable amount of relevance. In several cases they don't even lead to any meaningful conclusion for the particular problem at hand. Near the end of the book, the author somewhat succeeds to "close the circle", but overall this work leaves much to be desired. In my opinion a great opportunity to explain the book's topic to a general audience was missed.

Not surprising to read other reviews here
How do you write a book about mathematics and numbers without any? I got lost in the sea of abstract forced analogies and ended up more confused, irritated, and lost than I had when I began reading the book. 80 pages into the book, I give up and will read Derbyshire's book, about which I have read good things.

Disclaimer: I am not a mathematician by training but have a science/engineering background. Even if I did not understand all the details, I had hoped the book would at least grip my attention and make me want to learn more.

What a contrast (and a frustrating one at that) attempting to read this book was...especially considering I just finished reading QED - The strange theory of light and matter by Richard Feynman. There couldn't be two contrasting writing styles!

A diverging book!
I felt very irritated by reading this book. Many analogies and side stories lead to loose the focused main subject. Stories always diverge, never converge to any meaningful understanding. Avoiding equations and narrative description of the content of equations rather makes even difficult to understand. Simply showing equations is much better. A very badly organized poor book

forget it
This wasn't any good as a hardback and reissuing it
in paperback doesn't change matters.
To get an idea of what you are in for, see the reviews
of the hardback version.
Bottom line: don't waste your money. ... Read more

Product Description
Describes how facts are proved at trial, examining the principal categories of rational and psychological evidence, which is the basis of trial "stories." How, at trial, does each party tell a story bolstering its own legal position and detracting from that of its adversary? What attributes of stories tend to make them persuasive? From these attributes, the authors derive a set of investigatory objectives that generally apply, regardless of the nature of the case. With objectives in place, turns to the thought processes that lawyers employ to analyze and develop evidence. ... Read more

Product Description
The God Hypothesis seeks to reverse the profound misunderstanding that science has disproved the existence of God. Drawing on the fairy tale of Goldilocks and The Three Bears, Michael A. Corey believes that the _just right_ conditions that created life on earth provide overwhelming evidence of an Intelligent Designer at work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

The argument from design stated well
Richard Dawkins wrote, "and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

This book strongly challenges such views. If it has been possible for most of the last century to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist on grounds of biology, then the discoveries in physics of the extreme precision of physical constants makes it much harder to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist in this one. The fact of a moment of creation, at big bang, at which space and time came into existence, and that the physical forces were immediately fine tuned to produce a universe capable of giving rise to life, is so remarkable and improbable that it demands an explanation.

Michael Corey writes this book well showing how evidence from many different areas of science is converging and leading to a view that the universe is so finely tuned that it is as Fred Hoyle put it, "a put up job." Corey references well, and distinguishes fact and measurements from interpretation. He disagrees with many materialist viewpoints but he does so respectfully, and explains where he thinks they go wrong. This book is in part a source book of examples of design in nature. Dawkins uses "the argument from personal incredulity" gambit when people see evidence of design. Dawkins claims that what appears to be designed is merely the appearance of design. Corey turns this round and shows that evidence of design is overwhelming, and that the basis for incredulity is that the numbers against chance processes bringing about our present universe fully justify our incredulity.

If Corey is right then the argument from design will gain great strength in coming years, and the search for a purely material explanation of our origins is doomed to fail. There is much in the universe that smacks of design. As Paul Davies (no relation to me)describes in "The Goldilocks Enigma" there is too much that is "just right" about our universe for it simply to be "just so." I'm not sure the multiverse theory gets us much further to an explanation- it's speculative, and an argument from design is actually simpler than multiple universes. Paul Davies describes the pros and cons of the multiverse idea well in the "Goldlilocks Enigma"

I recommend this book to readers. It sets out well the grounds for believing in Design, and an intelligent designer working to create and sustain our universe.

It will infuriate nontheistic materialists, such as Dawkins and Dennett, but the challenge to their views is growing in number, strength, and coherence at present. If the God Delusion was an attempt to convert believers to atheism, then this book is a challenge the other way- to attempt to show materialists the evidence of design in the universe.

In Christian terms the God revealed in this book would be more a Deistic God (he started the processes rolling and then withdrew)than a traditional Theistic God.

This book is a useful contribution to the debate and I recommend it to readers on both sides of the debate.

Michael Corey is a fat loser.
This is an awful book.The arguments he puts forth make it seem as if he has never read any literature on the same subjects.His "arguments" have been debunked by Richard Dawkins and many others.This is not a book for an intellectual.This is a book for the "common man," whose academic interest is only predicated on his desire to defend his irrational and preposterous believes.And, as the saying goes, "God must have hated the common man, because he made them all so common."

Evolution is Anti-knowlege - Self Organization is non causual reasoning - Big Bang, a mathematic singularity
1. Collin Patterson said, "Last year I had a sudden realization.For over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way.One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night; and it struck me that I had be working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing that I knew about it.That's quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long...Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing... that is true?All I got was silence."The doctrine of evolution is anti-knowledge meaning it does not convey knowledge.Evolution is a false faith endorsed by academia and sponsored by strong political and economic pressure to accept.Evolution does not create beauty, harmony, nor cooperative systems and at best natural selection yields unstable, chaotic, and competitive networks. The idea of gradual change over billions of years producing a tree of life can not be proven. Evolution proof is impossible because it has no reversible pattern or algorithm.Evolution is the product of "Self-sufficient" thinkers who ignore any role that God had in the creation.Evolution is the ultimate excuse to ignore God.Preachers of evolution argue, "our behavioral freedom would necessarily be short-circuited by our direct perception of God's Great glory, and this something that is generally deemed to be incompatible with our existence as free-will beings."We are agents of a Divine God and God's creations are designed for beauty and the benefit of man."The whole idea here is to infuse some much needed ambiguity into the creation, so that human freedom can be preserved as a result."The universe is far more surprising that any one could ever image.God is central and important part of explaining cosmological and biological theories.
2. "We also know that the finite property of self-organization couldn't possibly have been responsible for its own origin, because there was a definite point in the past before it ever existed."Self-organization would need a reason or explaining power for existence, causal or otherwise, other than itself.The only way out of the bind is to suggest that self-organization is "eternal in nature".The phenomenon of self-organization is not eternal in nature.
3. Fundamental laws and constants of nature do not gradually evolve into their present life-supporting character.Natural selection and Darwinism fail.
4. "Where did the universe get this seemingly self-sufficient character to begin with?"Jesus Christ is the power by which the Universe is powered and remains in order.Accepting this fact brings certainty and faith in the purpose of man.We don't need to fear cosmological destruction by random events.
5. The Universe is expanding or inflating, at approximately 4 millions per hour. The Universe is not expanding at a constant rate suggested by Einstein's cosmological constant. Einstein called the cosmological constant a mistake. Einstein believed in "Spinoza God," and impersonal Deity who only revealed himself in the orderly workings of nature."In Einstein's mind, such an impersonal Creator could conceivable have allow these worldly evils to happen, either because he wouldn't have known about them, or else because he wouldn't have cared about them."Einstein was reluctant to accept the big bang bringing him to the acceptance of a personal creator. The secondlaw of thermodynamics says that the total amount of disorder in the universe can never decrease.A winding down suggest their must have been a winding up.George Gamow big bang calculations predicted 25 percent of the matter in the universe will be helium and the other 75 percent, hydrogen.Penrose and Hawkings proof of the big bang was found in the peculiar properties of black holes."Sufficiently dense stars that exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit, the inward pull of gravity will eventually be able to overwhelm the outward push by the Pauli Exclusion Principle (force to accelerating a particle to the speed of light), with the result that the star will begin a calamitous period of runaway contraction."The singularity is a state of zero size and infinity density.
6. The amount of matter produced by the big bang is exact. Any more matter and gravitational contraction would occur and not enough and galaxies would not form.The cosmic initial conditions are very fine tuned to support life.A veil of mystery will always prevent science from understanding the initial condition.At 10 minus 43 power seconds, Planks Wall is the temperature point where temperatures are so high that the four fundamental forces of physics dissolve.Limitations include limits to human intellect, measuring apparatus, and the intrinsic uncertainty of quantum reality.
7. The notion of oscillating universes that move back and forth between contraction and expansion are not feasible. The universe is expanding with not force strong enough to cause contraction, the universe will not collapse because there isn't enough matter to cause the collapse.Each cycle of expansion and contraction in an oscillating universe must produce an increase in cosmic disorder, or entropy.The increase in entropy would reveal itself in an increase of photons and nuclear particles.The universe does not seem to be the product of an infinite number of cycles.There is no known physical mechanism that is capable of reversing a cosmic contraction.

Oops. (Reckless, but slightly better than 2 stars)
At about the same time I received this book, I read a similarly titled book whose thesis is the exact counter-argument to Corey's; that volume being "God: the Failed Hypothesis," by Victor Stenger. Both books are --intensely-- flawed. Stenger presents an easily rebutted collection of arguments that he claims to be 'science' putting God to the gallows once and for all. By his own modest admission, Stenger's interpretations of certain physical theories depart substantially from the understandings of most physicists, and many of Stenger's offbeat "interpretations" are simply silly. Unfortunately, the present volume, "The God Hypothesis," by Michael Corey, is argued almost as badly.

Corey does present enough 'expert testimony' to make the case that "our 'just right' goldilocks universe" is outrageously unlikely, impossible by any reasonable standard, unless it has been intended by a Super-intellect having some conceptual 'likeness' to Anaxagoras' 'primordial Mind' and Aristotle's 'First Mover'. Support is cited from the recent work of many well-known physicists: Gribbin, Davies, Hawking, Penrose, Rees, Barrow, Gingerich, Dyson, Jastrow, Smoot, and many more, as well as many biologists. If Corey had been a great deal more cautious in his interpretations and comments regarding the citations he makes, the book could have been both shorter and more powerfully argued. But when Corey throws his own 'scientific' understandings into the mix, he often succeeds only in muddling the topic at hand. Corey's defective spin on physical theory will have informed readers (perhaps especially those who might otherwise be inclined to agree with his thesis) gritting their teeth and wincing. Some examples of Corey's poor understanding of physics:

1) He says that the "flatness" of the universe refers to the fact that it can be accurately described with Euclidean geometry, that space-time is fortuitously not curved, and that life can only exist in a universe consistent with Euclidean geometry. Ouch! There is just no salvaging this kind of tangential blunder.

2) He says that most stars are like ours because they are "main sequence" stars. This seems to demonstrate a poor understanding. The main sequence is the long, 'star-like' phase typical of several classes of stars. Our star (the sun) is actually UNLIKE the vast majority of stars; as a Class G star, only about 8% of other stars are 'similar'. By far most stars are Class M and are decidedly different from our sun (they cannot have systems that host life as we know it).

3) He calls 10 to the negative 39th power a "huge number." Perhaps he means "huge" as in its largeness of extreme smallness??

At any rate, Corey too frequently 'shoots himself in the foot' with erroneous 'scientific' commentary. His book could have been much better if he could have stayed out of his own way. The book's slightly redeeming value is that the scientifically uniformed reader will not notice the author's interpretational gaffes (which are generally tangential and superfluous to his central thesis). The book is also a pretty good bibliographical source for more serious study. In short, the book's potential merits are conspicuously sullied by its author's careless commentary.

Just make sure you read "The God Delusion" as well
Every single one of Corey's points is debunked in Dawkins' book.

Of course, if you find the placebo effect of believing in a Supreme Being provides you comfort, and truth is relatively unimportant, avoid Dawkins' book and believe what you want to believe. ... Read more

Product Description
Linguistic diversity is one of the most puzzling and challenging features of humankind. Why are there some six thousand different languages spoken in the world today? Why are some, like Chinese or English, spoken by millions over vast territories, while others are restricted to just a few thousand speakers in a limited area? The farming/language dispersal hypothesis makes the radical and controversial proposal that the present-day distributions of many of the world's languages and language families can be traced back to the early developments and dispersals of farming from the several nuclear areas where animal and plant domestication emerged. For instance, the Indo-European and Austronesian language families may owe their current vast distributions to the spread of food plants and of farmers (speaking the relevant proto-language) following the Neolithic revolutions which took place in the Near East and in Eastern Asia respectively, thousands of years ago. In this challenging book, international experts in historical linguistics, prehistoric archaeology, molecular genetics and human ecology bring their specialisms to bear upon this intractable problem, using a range of interdisciplinary approaches. There are signs that a new synthesis between these fields may now be emerging. This path-breaking volume opens new perspectives and indicates some of the directions which future research is likely to follow. ... Read more

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PIE in the Sky
Off and on over the years, anthropologists have mooted a theory (not really a "hypothesis") that farming spreads through rapid demographic and spatial expansion of the populations that invented agriculture.The main counter-theory holds that farming spreads by copying: local people, previously non-farmers, picked up farming from neighbors, who had in turn picked it up from neighbors, and so on back to the origin point.Ethnographic records abound for farming-as-demographic-expansion (Anglo-Americans in the western US and Canada, Australia, etc.) and, less often, farming-by-copying (some groups in India and Siberia, etc.).
If farming spread by demic expansion, is that the reason for the vast spreads of some language families?The claim has been made especially for Austronesian (AN) and Indo-European (IE), and is identified with this book's two editors, Austronesianist Bellwood and Europeanist Renfrew.This book results from a conference where defenders and critics of the theory met and hashed it out.
The case is certain for Austronesian in at least part of its range.Austronesians introduced agriculture to Micronesia and Polynesia--in fact, they were the first people there.They probably introduced ag to Taiwan, the Philippines, and other islands.New Guinea already had its own, and Austronesian languages did not prevail there (instead, Trans-New-Guinea languages may have spread with local ag).However, the dramatic Austronesian spread (from a South Chinese or just possibly Southeast Asian base) did not come with early agriculture, but with the development of complex, sophisticated, boat-savvy cultures, millennia after agriculture was invented in central China.China's ag began about 8000 BC, and is believably associated with no fewer than six independent linguistic phyla, all of which spread in historic times.One could make a case for any or all of them as having spread with initial ag, and indeed several different authors in this book argue for different phyla being first!(Oddly enough, no one argues strongly for Thai-Kadai, by far the likeliest on geographic grounds.) Moreover, it turns out that the expansion of Austronesian languages and their agriculture did not go with a clear demic expansion.Genetic researches reported in this volume show that the Austronesians mixed happily along the way, picking up and leaving genes at every port, as sailors do.
The case for Indo-European is much worse.Leaving aside the question of whether there really were "Proto-Indo-European (PIE)" speakers (many doubt this, and think the "PIE" words were borrowed back and forth among several languages), IE is clearly too young a phylum to date back to the origin of ag in the Near East (9500 BC at the latest). Moreover, the Mediterranean shows some of the best evidence for demic expansion with early ag--but the best-kept secret in this book is that the Mediterranean was not IE till late.Spain was non-IE (NIE) till Celts and Romans invaded in historic times!Italy had Etruscan, and Latin shows a mass of NIE loanwords from presumed other NIE languages.Greeks invaded a NIE Greece fairly late, and their countless NIE loanwords for high-culture items show it (one recalls they first got writing only around 1400 BC, from NIE Minoans). Meanwhile, it seems that the Germanic languages are the result of NIE people picking up IE languages from the neighbors (and, some would say, making an awful mess of it...Just kidding).(See Zvelebil, this volume.)I am aware of pretty convincing evidence that Gaelic developed the same way--NIE people picking up Celtic.All these shifts are too late for the demic-expansion hypothesis, and in any case the archaeology shows a long period of mixing and borrowing.Moreover, the genetic clines in Europe from northwest to southeast clearly have something to do with the original settlement of Europe by modern humans ca. 40,000 years ago; with later historic flows, such as the Arab explosion into the Mediterranean in the 700s AD; and with natural selection, possibly via smallpox (introduced with cattle-keeping) and malaria (made commoner by field agriculture and irrigation). They certainly do not result solely from IE invasion.And ag in the Near East may have been invented by Sumerians, speakers of "Caucasus languages," Afroasiatics (as argued-very speculatively-by Militarev in this volume), or now-long-extinct peoples.
In the New World, Mexican agriculture seems to have fueled the spread of at least four linguistic phyla, and the two most obviously involved with early ag (Oto-Manguean and Mixe-Zoque) did not spread far.No vast demic expansion here.The other two, Uto-Aztekan and Mayan, did spread far as language groups, but probably got their agriculture later, and did not spread as demic units.By contrast, the really huge linguistic expansions in North America--Inuit, Algonkian, Athapaskan, Penutian, etc.--took place in totally non-agricultural contexts.Lyle Campbell's article pointing this out is probably the most significant article in the book, at least for born skeptics.
This volume shows that agriculture and language sometimes spread together and sometimes don't.When they spread together, there is genetic mixing with locals along the way, not a sudden dramatic replacement of one group by another.The modern New World/Australia situation was exceptional; disease and gunfire conveniently wiped out almost all the locals, allowing demographic expansion of European settlers to go unchecked.Such things did not normally happen in the ancient world.
In short, we can abandon the idea of a single wave of farmers marching shoulder-to-shoulder out of the Near East, singing "Stout Hearted Men" in PIE.IE language spread seems to have had something to do with agricultural introduction and demic spread, but the picture is complex and confusing, and needs more research.The same applies, mutatis mutandis, for other spreads hypothesized here, which range from very well supported (Austronesian by far the best) to wildly speculative (the ag-spread component of the papers on Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic).So defenders and critics converge at the end on an intermediate picture.
What is wonderful about this book is the unbelievable amount of data brought together to test and evaluate a really interesting theory.This is science at its best.No resolution yet, but, much better, a stimulus and guide to further research. ... Read more

Product Description
Exploring Animal Behavior in Laboratory and Field is designed to provide a variety of exercises that engage students actively in all phases of scientific investigation, from formulating research questions through interpreting and presenting final results.It attempts to share the collective teaching expertise and experience of members of the Animal Behavior Society with all who are willing to benefit from their wisdom.Four types of exercises are presented: (1) traditional exercises in which students follow a pre-determined protocol to test particular hypotheses explicitly stated in the exercise, (2) traditional exercises that can easily be adapted to inquiry-based approaches, (3) combined pedagogy exercises that involve both traditional and inquiry approaches, and (4) inquiry exercises in which students first brainstorm to generate their own hypotheses, then design their own experiements to test their hypotheses.

*Supports a range of pedagogical styles and texts in animal behavior with active learning experiences that engage students
* Students and instructors benefit from knowledge and experience of members of the Animal Behavior Society
* Flexibility of design enables students and instrucotrs to tailor the exercises to their needs
* Can be used to support lab courses that are completely inquiry based as well as independent student research projects in animal behavior
* Consideration of animal care guidelines provides an excellent way to address and discuss concerns about the use of animals in teaching and research
* Emphasizes the hypothetico-deductive approach that students have difficulty understanding and implementing
* Supporting materials make additional required texts unnecessary and link study design considerations with real studies ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent resource for those teaching behavior labs
This is a fantastic and much-needed book. As a resource for someone setting up a laboratory course in animal behavior, this book is full of excellent ideas, and I would advise anyone to get a copy of this book. The problem with adopting it as a lab book for students is that there are over 30 labs presented here. As many are multiweek projects, the most that could reasonably be done in a semester is 7-10 labs. Anyone who has taught students knows that having them purchase a book ... for which they will only use 1/4 or 1/3 of the chapters is only inviting a tremendous amount of griping. This is my only complaint with this book, which the publisher was pushing as a lab manual for students, instead of a resource for instructors.

An assemblage of studious, college-level essays
Collaboratively assembled and edited by Bonnie J. Ploger (Hamline University) and Ken Yasukawa (Beloit College), Exploring Animal Behavior In Laboratory And Field is a scholarly compendium offering a variety of diverse approaches to the development, function, and evolution of animal behavior, with contribution each being grounded in the creation and careful testing of scientific hypotheses. An assemblage of studious, college-level essays on select topics ranging from the response of tree squirrels to different types of alarm calls, to human nonverbal communications, to chemoreception in lizards, and a great deal more, Exploring Animal Behavior In Laboratory And Field would make an especially welcome addition to Zoological Studies reference collections and Wildlife Studies reading lists. ... Read more

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The complete guide to practical work in the biological sciences: from conception of the investigation, through data collection, data analysis and finally presentation.

Customer Reviews (1)

Asking questions
Probably the best book of its kind available for biology students with no statistical background. Starts with the conversion of informal questions into testable hypotheses and then shows how a variety of basic statistical techniques can be used to test hypotheses. Then gives sensible advice on presenting the results. ... Read more

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Noted for its accessible approach, this bestseller applies power analysis to both null hypothesis and minimum-effect testing using the same basic model. Through the use of a few relatively simple procedures and examples from the behavioral and social sciences, the authors show readers with little expertise in statistical analysis how to quickly obtain the values needed to carry out the power analysis for their research. Illustrations of how these analyses work and how they can be used to understand problems of study design, to evaluate research, and to choose the appropriate criterion for defining "statistically significant" outcomes are sprinkled throughout. The book presents a simple and general model for statistical power analysis that is based on the F statistic.

Statistical Power Analysis reviews how to determine:

• The sample size needed to achieve desired levels of power
• The level of power needed in a study
• The size of effect that can be reliably detected by a study
• Sensible criteria for statistical significance.

The third edition features:

• Re-designed, user-friendly software at www.psypress.com/statistical-power-analysis that allows users to perform all of the book's analyses on a wider range of tests and conduct significance tests, power analyses, and assessments of N and alpha
• A new chapter on Complex ANOVA Designs that demonstrates the use of power analysis in split-plot and randomized block factorial designs
• New boxed sections that provide examples of power analysis in action and unique issues that arise when applying power analyses
• Expanded coverage of minimum-effect tests, the fundamentals of power analysis and the application of these concepts to correlational studies.

Ideal for students and researchers in the social, behavioral, and health sciences, business, and education, this valuable resource helps readers apply methods of power analysis to their research. PV and F tables serve as a quick reference.

More details - plus a link to download the One Stop F Calculator - can be found at http://www.psypress.com/statistical-power-analysis/ .

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The Originary Hypothesis:A Minimal Proposal for Humanistic Inquiry brings together a series of new essays by collaborators of Eric Gans and Gans himself, that demonstrate the sophistication and applicability of Gans' originary hypothesis as well as its ability to transcend formalistic and narrowly disciplinary approaches to the arts and social sciences. Along with essays reconsidering the origins of Romanticism and its consequences for contemporary politics and popular culture, originary accounts of materialism and Christianity, the book, in a timely manner, addresses the relevance of the originary hypothesis to our post-9/11 world. Perhaps alone among contemporary discourses in critical theory, originary thinking eschews fashionable victimary nihilism, enabling us to reconsider our relation to the sacred center and the modern marketplace. ... Read more

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Katz's volume showcases original research on "The Originary Hypothesis"
Since its "invention" in the early 1980s, virtually all published material on Generative Anthropology--and the minimalist human model from which it operates, the "Originary Hypothesis"--came from the man who first proposed the theory, Eric Gans.With the publication of Adam Katz's _The Originary Hypothesis: A Minimal Proposal for Humanistic Inquiry_ (Davies Group Publishers, 2007), however, we finally have a collective volume showcasing a sampling of the original research that uses GA as a heuristic model to explain human desires, institutions and esthetic pursuits.The contributors constituting a veritable "Who's Who" of GA studies, each previously publishing articles in Gans's on-line journal _Anthropoetics_ and participating in the annual GATE (Generative Anthropology Thinking Event), what is impressive in the volume is the breadth of scholarship to which GA lends itself.While both Richard van Oort and Peter Goldman approach Shakespeare from a position of anthropological inquiry, Christopher Morrissey examines GA and the originary model in terms of evolution and "Intelligent Design".Matthew Schneider explains the "Romantic Poetics" of Wordsworth, Dickens and Arnold in Gansian terms and, at the same time, Andrew Bartlett explores hot topics of cloning, genetic engineering and bioethics, turning to GA in response to modern "accusations of `playing God'."Also included in this volume is a concise treatment of the structure of the hypothesis by scholar Chris Fleming, who recently published a similar monograph, critiquing the ideas of René Girard (_René Girard: Violence and Mimesis_, Polity, 2004).And, besides his photo gracing the cover of the book, Gans himself provides two original articles to the volume, the first offering an anthropo-historical explanation of "Firstness" and the second an intimate auto-portrait of the inventor of GA, who frames himself as a "Bronx Romantic."Presenting an interesting and varied spectrum of contemporary analysis with GA as a focal point, Katz's work is an important (and highly-recommended) testament to the widespread advances of the Originary Hypothesis in the past three decades.

GA speaks of Eric Gans' Originary Hypothesis
The face on half the cover hides the intellect behind the Originary Hypothesis Dr. Eric Gans.All things begin with an originary sign that defers violence and is the precurser of those words and signs that serve the same purpose in today's world.Gans' Generative Anthropology is put forth in his web blog GA with parables of current happenings which key the generative regression to the simplest form reductable. This book of contributions by renoun educators and Gans himself endeavors to explain this version of humanistic inquiry. It is excellently done for the sophisticated reader seeking a new outlook into the difficult quandries of todays world. ... Read more