Every Living Thing: Man's Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys
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Biologists and laypeople alike have repeatedly claimed victory over life. A thousand years ago we thought we knew almost everything, a hundred years ago, too. But even today, Rob Dunn argues, discoveries we can't yet imagine still await us. More is unknown than known, whether about our bodies or the bottom of the sea.In a series of vivid portraits of scientists as interesting as the mysteries they chase, Dunn introduces the reader to breakthroughs that have changed the world and others that might still. With poetry and humor, Dunn reminds readers how tough and exhilarating it is to study the natural world, and why it matters. Publishers Weekly Dunn, a biologist at North Carolina State University, does an admirable job of exploring the human drive to find and understand the manifold forms of life that surround them. With his light and enjoyable style, he also provides fascinating character sketches of some of the scientists ("often obsessive, usually brilliant, occasionally half-mad") who made the most important discoveries, with enough scientific context for readers to understand their significance. Dunn ranges from Antoine van Leeuwenhoek's amazing microscopic discoveries in the scientific backwater of 17th-century Delft to a major 20th-century undertaking to explore life near deep sea vents where the ocean floor is expanding. But Dunn has a deeper message: "life is more diverse and less like us than we had imagined." Indeed, he says, humans are far from central in the story of life's evolution on Earth; most life is microscopic, living in and deeply below the soil and likely comprising at least half of the planet's biomass. Finally, Dunn writes about scientific hubris: virtually every scientific prediction about conditions limiting life have been proven incorrect. (Jan.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Preface E. O. Wilson Wilson, E. O.Pt. I Beginnings1 What We All Used to Know 32 Common Names 233 The Invisible World 40Pt. II Fogging (The Tree of Life)4 The Apostles 595 Finding Everything 876 Finding an Ant-Riding Beetle 111Pt. III Roots7 Dividing the Cell 1338 Grafting the Tree of Life 1499 Symbiotic Cells on the Seafloor 16510 Origin Stories 181Pt. IV Other Worlds11 Looking Out 19312 To Squeeze Life from a Stone 20913 The Wrong Elephant? 22414 What Remains 246Endnotes 257Index 265
