Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature (Sciencewriters) - Softcover

Enlightening, argumentative, and passionate reflections from a lifetime of debate about science, sex, and society. A fine personal summing up by mother and sonotwo of the finest creative thinkers and writers in the literature.--Greg Bear This is a ripsnorting intellectual barnstorm of a book, a sort of chimeric hybrid of mental genes from Dorion Sagan, his genius mother Lynn Margulis, and his dead father Carl Sagan--surely one of the smartest families on the planet. The result is a remarkably coherent and blazingly original proposal for the next grand narrative of our civilization (now that we have pretty much burned out the Cartesian one). --Frederick Turner, author of Natural Classicism and The Culture of Hope Brilliant and fascinating, Dazzle Gradually unrolls for us the scroll of life on earth. These essays show us the intricate complexities of microbes; an atmosphere that performs self-maintenance; our own minds. Margulis and Sagan do not blink at the big questions or hard answers, and their writing is lively, precise, entertaining, and provocative, their passion for science everywhere evident and persuasive. Anyone who has ever wondered where we came from, who we are, and where we may be headed will delight in this extraordinarily exciting book. --Kelly Cherry, author of Hazard and Prospect: New and Selected Poems In Dazzle Gradually we have one of the great iconoclastic biologists of our time and her son, both excellent writers, firing ideas at us, reflecting, asking questions, making connections. eTruthis superb surprisei is their gift to us n Roald Hoffman

At the crossroads of philosophy and science, the sometimes-dry topics of evolution and ecology come alive in this new collection of essays n many never before anthologized. Learn how technology may be a sort of second nature, how the systemic human fungus Candida albicans can lead to cravings for carrot cake and beer, how the presence of life may be why thereis water on Earth, and many other fascinating facts. The essay iMetametazoai presents perspectives on biology in a philosophical context, demonstrating how the intellectual librarian, pornographer, and political agitator Georges Bataille was influenced by Russian mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky and how this led to his notion of the absence of meaning in the face of the sun n which later influenced Jacques Derrida, thereby establishing a causal chain of influence from the hard sciences to topics as abstract as deconstruction and postmodernism.