Kirjahaku

Alfred Smee (1818-1877) was a doctor, scientist and inventor and also a businessman, campaigner and horticulturalist. His inventions led to his election at age 22 to a Fellowship of the Royal Society. He developed nonfading ink for the Bank of England and better techniques for printing banknotes. Some of his insights into the brain were echoed a century later in computational science. He was chairman of several companies, campaigned for better water and sewage services in London and stood for Parliament. His passion was plants and gardens, and he created a garden of eight acres which he stocked with plants he collected from far and wide. His wide-ranging, full and successful life has now been chronicled by hisgreat-great-grandson, John Odling-Smee.

How niche construction theory extends evolutionary theory beyond natural selection to a more general theory about the coevolution of organisms with their environments. In Niche Construction, John Odling-Smee, the leading authority on niche construction theory, extends evolutionary theory from an explanation of how populations of organisms respond to natural selection pressures in their environments, to a more general theory about the coevolution of organisms with their environments. Organisms, he shows, cause changes in their local external environments by interacting with them, thereby contributing in fundamental ways to their own and one another's evolution. This book applies niche construction theory to current problems such as human-induced global warming and suggests how humans might contribute positively to the future evolution of life on Earth. Odling-Smee explains how orthodox evolutionary theory falls short in two ways. First, it does not describe how organisms contribute to their own and one another's evolution through their environment-changing niche constructing activities. Second, it fails to explain how genetic evolution can give rise to supplementary knowledge-gaining processes in many species. These include certain developmental processes in individual organisms and socio-cultural processes in animals, including humans. Neo-Darwinism, the author writes, assesses the fitness of individual organisms in populations in terms of their capacity to survive and reproduce, but without attributing these capacities to the active, purposeful agency of organisms. He argues that the purposeful agency of individual organisms plays a central role in evolution. He also discusses the relationship of an organism's energy-consuming activities and the second law of thermodynamics.

The book is about economic developments and policies in the first decade or so after the independence of the fifteen countries that emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In those years, the countries were beginning the transition from the Soviet central planning system towards market economies. The book focuses on the role of the IMF in this transition. It explains what the IMF was trying to do and why. It discusses the many controversial issues that involved the IMF, including the collapse in living standards, the speed of economic reforms, the introduction of new currencies, the economic crisis in Russia in 1998 and the widespread corruption. The author had an inside seat as head of the department in the IMF responsible for its work in these countries. He knew the leaders and economic policymakers in all the countries. The style is calm and reasoned, not polemical. Personal anecdotes provide context and color.

Charles Theophilus Hahn, born into the English upper middle classes in 1870, was a cleric who worked in industrial towns in Yorkshire, in Southern Africa as a missionary and as an army chaplain in World War One. He loved adventure, travel and nature, and promised himself that he would have a jolly time. He left journals, sketches and watercolours which are the basis for his story, written by John Odling-Smee. The idioms and expressions in the journals recall the times in which he was writing. Many of the watercolours were inspired by the wildflowers and scenery of Africa. Taken together, his writings and paintings provide a fascinating picture of an interesting life in England and Southern Africa in turbulent times.