Like the fruitless discussions about when life begins, discussions of the meaning of intelligence are best tabled. Let...
Anthropologist Narby plays the innocent abroad here, querying scientists around the world about intelligence—and finding it in everything that’s alive.
Borrowing from his experience with shamanism (Shamans Through Time, 2001, etc.), Narby begins with an account of how several scientists experienced changed perceptions of nature after consuming the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca, used by Peruvian shamans when they communicate with plants and animals. From there it’s on to labs in Europe and Asia to learn how smart other species are, from bacteria and slime molds to bees, butterflies, birds, and assorted plants and trees. Bacterial species cross-talk for mutual benefit in their complex colonies of “biofilm” (like the one that lines your teeth); slime molds can run mazes; bees can be conditioned; butterflies are superb visual perceivers; outsider birds can “cry wolf” to deceive a flock and capture prey. From the plant kingdom, there’s evidence that some species can essentially creep across the landscape to find the best sites to put down roots, as well as multiple ways to communicate within and among themselves. None of these accounts is exactly new to readers of Science or Nature, but they’re nicely summarized here, along with descriptions of nervous systems and extensive endnotes. What’s new, though, is Narby’s passion to rethink the meaning of intelligence as a human property and give up the reductionist/materialist view of Western science. In its place, he adopts the Japanese word “chi-sei,” roughly defined as a knowingness that allows for decision-making at all levels of life. Actually, such knowingness is perfectly in accord with concepts of adaptation and flexibility in evolution. There’s no need to mystify or invoke the wisdom of shamans. Indeed, Narby admits that science itself has changed, so that even cell-cell signaling and protein-protein interactions can be regarded as forms of decision-making.
Like the fruitless discussions about when life begins, discussions of the meaning of intelligence are best tabled. Let scientists get on with more of the interesting work reported here.Pub Date: March 3, 2005
ISBN: 1-58542-399-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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