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Author: Timothy Sweet Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812298055 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
The Americas have been the site of two distinct waves of human migration, each associated with human-caused extinctions. The first occurred during the late Pleistocene era, some ten to thirty thousand years ago; the other began during the time of European settler-colonization and continues to this day. In Extinction and the Human Timothy Sweet ponders the realities of animal extinction and endangerment and the often divergent Native American and Euro-American narratives that surround them. He focuses especially on the force of human impact on megafauna—mammoths, whales, and the North American bison—beginning with the moments that these species' extinction or endangerment began to generate significant print archives: transcriptions of traditional Indigenous oral narratives, historical and scientific accounts, and literary narratives by Indigenous American and Euro-American authors. "If the Sixth Extinction is a hyperobject, an event so massively distributed in space and time that it cannot be experienced directly," he writes, "these cases of particular megafauna have nevertheless consistently commanded our focus and attention. They form a starting point for a coherent, approachable history." Reflecting on questions of agency, responsibility, and moral assessment, Sweet engages with the consequences of thinking of humans as fundamentally separate from the rest of the natural world. He investigates stories of a lost race of giants at the time of the first encounters between Europeans and Indigenous Americans; culturally distinct ways of understanding the extinction of the mammoths; the impact of the Euro-American whaling industry and the controversial revitalization of Native American whaling traditions; and the bison's near-extermination at the hands of white market hunters and today's Euro-American and Native American efforts on behalf of the animal's preservation. He reflects on humans' relations with animals through models of divine preservation, competitive extermination, evolutionary determination, biophilia, and treaties with animals. Ultimately, he argues, it is the critical assessment of ideas of human exceptionalism that provides a necessary counterpoint both to apologies for human mastery over nature and deep ecology's attempts to erase the human.
Author: Timothy Sweet Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN: 0812298055 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 201
Book Description
The Americas have been the site of two distinct waves of human migration, each associated with human-caused extinctions. The first occurred during the late Pleistocene era, some ten to thirty thousand years ago; the other began during the time of European settler-colonization and continues to this day. In Extinction and the Human Timothy Sweet ponders the realities of animal extinction and endangerment and the often divergent Native American and Euro-American narratives that surround them. He focuses especially on the force of human impact on megafauna—mammoths, whales, and the North American bison—beginning with the moments that these species' extinction or endangerment began to generate significant print archives: transcriptions of traditional Indigenous oral narratives, historical and scientific accounts, and literary narratives by Indigenous American and Euro-American authors. "If the Sixth Extinction is a hyperobject, an event so massively distributed in space and time that it cannot be experienced directly," he writes, "these cases of particular megafauna have nevertheless consistently commanded our focus and attention. They form a starting point for a coherent, approachable history." Reflecting on questions of agency, responsibility, and moral assessment, Sweet engages with the consequences of thinking of humans as fundamentally separate from the rest of the natural world. He investigates stories of a lost race of giants at the time of the first encounters between Europeans and Indigenous Americans; culturally distinct ways of understanding the extinction of the mammoths; the impact of the Euro-American whaling industry and the controversial revitalization of Native American whaling traditions; and the bison's near-extermination at the hands of white market hunters and today's Euro-American and Native American efforts on behalf of the animal's preservation. He reflects on humans' relations with animals through models of divine preservation, competitive extermination, evolutionary determination, biophilia, and treaties with animals. Ultimately, he argues, it is the critical assessment of ideas of human exceptionalism that provides a necessary counterpoint both to apologies for human mastery over nature and deep ecology's attempts to erase the human.
Author: Annalee Newitz Publisher: Anchor ISBN: 0385535929 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How? As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet’s turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or by human interference. It’s a frightening prospect, as each of the Earth’s past major disasters—from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation—resulted in a mass extinction, where more than 75 percent of the planet’s species died out. But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz, science journalist and editor of the science Web site io9.com explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Life on Earth has come close to annihilation—humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction just during the last million years—but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions. This brilliantly speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity’s long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come. Most important, it explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow. From simulating tsunamis to studying central Turkey’s ancient underground cities; from cultivating cyanobacteria for “living cities” to designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective; from using math to stop pandemics to studying the remarkable survival strategies of gray whales, scientists and researchers the world over are discovering the keys to long-term resilience and learning how humans can choose life over death. Newitz’s remarkable and fascinating journey through the science of mass extinctions is a powerful argument about human ingenuity and our ability to change. In a world populated by doomsday preppers and media commentators obsessively forecasting our demise, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is a compelling voice of hope. It leads us away from apocalyptic thinking into a future where we live to build a better world—on this planet and perhaps on others. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever the future holds.
Author: Thomas Moynihan Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 1913029840 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 481
Book Description
How humanity came to contemplate its possible extinction. From forecasts of disastrous climate change to prophecies of evil AI superintelligences and the impending perils of genome editing, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. With humanity's future on this planet seeming more insecure by the day, in the twenty-first century, existential risk has become the object of a growing field of serious scientific inquiry. But, as Thomas Moynihan shows in X-Risk, this preoccupation is not exclusive to the post-atomic age of global warming and synthetic biology. Our growing concern with human extinction itself has a history. Tracing this untold story, Moynihan revisits the pioneers who first contemplated the possibility of human extinction and stages the historical drama of this momentous discovery. He shows how, far from being a secular reprise of religious prophecies of apocalypse, existential risk is a thoroughly modern idea, made possible by the burgeoning sciences and philosophical tumult of the Enlightenment era. In recollecting how we first came to care for our extinction, Moynihan reveals how today's attempts to measure and mitigate existential threats are the continuation of a project initiated over two centuries ago, which concerns the very vocation of the human as a rational, responsible, and future-oriented being.
Author: Michal H. Hall Publisher: Independently Published ISBN: 9781796964370 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 112
Book Description
After pointing out that there are threats to our extinction of which most people are aware, this book looks at a very big threat that is being totally ignored. It has a chapter talking about why it is being ignored. However before that, in recognition of the fact that most people know nothing about overpopulation, there is a chapter explaining what overpopulation is and why we are ignoring it. The book then addresses our fixation on our escapes and childish diversions. It becomes obvious that we have become a people of escape that are diverting our thoughts and attention into trivia. The book follows this by discussing all of the things that will happen if we keep on ignoring overpopulation. This provides a gruesome picture of how our species will eventually die-out. This involves the ecosystems collapse leaving us with nothing such as food, water, air we can breathe, marine life, trees for oxygen or plants and animals. All of this will cause our species to turn on itself in fear, panic and chaotic violence that will soon lead to extinction. However the next chapter is positive, because it maps out what will happen if we don't ignore it and do address it. That is because this would mean that our great grandchildren would live and live a life that would be much more pleasant. Of course, this would demand some things that would be very hard to sell. For instance every couple in the world would need to have no more than one child, and they would also be encouraged to have no child at all. Only then would we reduce our population on the Earth to a point where the Earth and its ecosystems could sustain us. The book also addresses all of the things that would vehemently fight having one child to make it very hard to achieve. However it also offers us some hope that it will be done and our future will be secure.
Author: Elizabeth Kolbert Publisher: Henry Holt and Company ISBN: 0805099794 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
Author: John Leslie Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134668546 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
Are we in imminent danger of extinction? Yes, we probably are, argues John Leslie in his chilling account of the dangers facing the human race as we approach the second millenium. The End of the World is a sobering assessment of the many disasters that scientists have predicted and speculated on as leading to apocalypse. In the first comprehensive survey, potential catastrophes - ranging from deadly diseases to high-energy physics experiments - are explored to help us understand the risks. One of the greatest threats facing humankind, however, is the insurmountable fact that we are a relatively young species, a risk which is at the heart of the 'Doomsday Argument'. This argument, if correct, makes the dangers we face more serious than we could have ever imagined. This more than anything makes the arrogance and ignorance of politicians, and indeed philosophers, so disturbing as they continue to ignore the manifest dangers facing future generations.
Author: Gerardo Ceballos Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 1421417189 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 208
Book Description
"This book shows us the face of Earth’s sixth great mass extinction, revealing that this century is a time of darkness for the world’s birds and mammals. In The Annihilation of Nature, three of today’s most distinguished conservationists tell the stories of the birds and mammals we have lost and those that are now on the road to extinction. These tragic tales, coupled with eighty-three color photographs from the world’s leading nature photographers, display the beauty and biodiversity that humans are squandering."--Book jacket.
Author: Christos Lynteris Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000698882 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 205
Book Description
This book develops an examination and critique of human extinction as a result of the ‘next pandemic’ and turns attention towards the role of pandemic catastrophe in the renegotiation of what it means to be human. Nested in debates in anthropology, philosophy, social theory and global health, the book argues that fear of and fascination with the ‘next pandemic’ stem not so much from an anticipation of a biological extinction of the human species, as from an expectation of the loss of mastery over human/non-humanl relations. Christos Lynteris employs the notion of the ‘pandemic imaginary’ in order to understand the way in which pandemic-borne human extinction refashions our understanding of humanity and its place in the world. The book challenges us to think how cosmological, aesthetic, ontological and political aspects of pandemic catastrophe are intertwined. The chapters examine the vital entanglement of epidemiological studies, popular culture, modes of scientific visualisation, and pandemic preparedness campaigns. This volume will be relevant for scholars and advanced students of anthropology as well as global health, and for many others interested in catastrophe, the ‘end of the world’ and the (post)apocalyptic.
Author: Jeffrey Kluger Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1594486115 Category : Family & Relationships Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
A provocative and surprising exploration of the longest sustained relationships we have in life—those we have with our siblings. Nobody affects us as deeply as our brothers and sisters. Our siblings are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales. They teach us how to resolve conflicts and how not to, how to conduct friendships and when to walk away. Our siblings are the only people we know who truly qualify as partners for life. In this perceptive and groundbreaking book, Jeffrey Kluger explores the complex world of siblings in equal parts science, psychology, sociology, and memoir. Based on cutting-edge research, he examines birth order, twins, genetic encoding of behavioral traits, emotional disorders and their effects on sibling relationships, and much more. With his signature insight and humor, Kluger takes science’s provocative new ideas about the subject and transforms them into smart, accessible insights that will help everyone understand the importance of siblings in our lives.
Author: Émile P. Torres Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000904059 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 528
Book Description
This volume traces the origins and evolution of the idea of human extinction, from the ancient Presocratics through contemporary work on "existential risks." Many leading intellectuals agree that the risk of human extinction this century may be higher than at any point in our 300,000-year history as a species. This book provides insight on the key questions that inform this discussion, including when humans began to worry about their own extinction and how the debate has changed over time. It establishes a new theoretical foundation for thinking about the ethics of our extinction, arguing that extinction would be very bad under most circumstances, although the outcome might be, on balance, good. Throughout the book, graphs, tables, and images further illustrate how human choices and attitudes about extinction have evolved in Western history. In its thorough examination of humanity’s past, this book also provides a starting point for understanding our future. Although accessible enough to be read by undergraduates, Human Extinction contains new and thought-provoking research that will benefit even established academic philosophers and historians.
Author: Timothy Sweet
Author: Timothy Sweet
Author: Annalee Newitz
Author: Thomas Moynihan
Author: Michal H. Hall
Author: Elizabeth Kolbert
Author: John Leslie
Author: Gerardo Ceballos
Author: Christos Lynteris
Author: Jeffrey Kluger
Author: Émile P. Torres