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Verk av Paul A. Colinvaux

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The Biology of War

This book is very interesting. It is a book on the ecological and environmental underpinnings of politics and war. Basically, this book is interested in how humanity's historical (and civilized) time has been shaped by Biology; that is, human reproduction. (I mean, of course, the political consequences of human reproduction.) Expanding population often (but not always) translates into expanding power.
...If this is true, looking at both postwar (WWII) population flows and postwar birthrates, one could argue today that it appears southern Europe is likely lost to Islam.

Now, an expanding power? What does that require?
1. Popular hope. Usually, a rising standard of living across all segments of the population that must be maintained.
2. A growing population, This is an almost inevitable consequence of rising hope.
3. Aggressive wars fought to support this rising standard. Ecologically, this is what is meant when people say they are fighting for 'Liberty'. That is, Liberty entails fighting to either maintain or expand a rising standard of living given a growing population.
4.Non-aggressive efforts to increase the standard of living have reached the point of diminishing returns.
5. Also, (of course) "there must be a suitable victim." Someone that is inferior in technology or organization is best.Think of ancient Romes expansion against her neighbors or Britains expansion into North America or Australia.
--Usually, things are no where near as easy as Britain had it.
6. And since things are most usually not that simple, one needs military superiority (in tactics, technology, weapons, etc.) of some sort.

This is a fascinating book that deserves to be on the shelf of anyone interested in understanding the deep structuring forces of World History. It is a shame that it is out of print.

Thoughts

Expanding populations (usually with rising living standards) need expanding resources (land, material, energy, food) and that will be the driver of the next world war. Looking at the map today, I would guess this means the Middle East / Europe. (This book was written forty years ago, long before the first Iraq war. And a bit before the Gulf War.) I think that much that is happening there today has to do with the upsetting of the historical trend of rising standards by the Iraq wars. -Remember, it is not simply rising standards that trigger conflict, it can also occur because one is fighting to maintain rising standards that are in jeopardy. And thanks to the American wars, and also the so-called Arab Spring, they are in jeopardy.
… (mer)
 
Flaggad
pomonomo2003 | Apr 21, 2019 |
My quest for the Ice-age Equator
 
Flaggad
jhawn | 1 annan recension | Jul 31, 2017 |
So, this cover misled me. I thought it would be a not too old book for ages 10 up. Well, ok, I guess kids could read it. And I suspect many of the essays have still-relevant info. in them. But the edition I'm reading (from our State Library and Archives) is so old the cover is not here on GR. And though it's an enjoyable read and I will keep on, I'll read lightly and look for something else on Ecology.

Green cover with animal tracks here: rel="nofollow" target="_top">http://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/978...

Is ecology even studied anymore? I did a keyword search in my library system and got nothing of value much newer than this.

Not all newcomers are invasive, apparently - Colinvaux reports that when the cottony-cushion scale, hitched in from Australia and threatened the citrus, an entomologist brought in Aussie ladybirds called vedalia, which did indeed prey upon them to the point where they live in a "peaceful coexistence" and are not any sort of problem.
____________________

Now I'm done. Overall, I love the book, and would have read it several times if I'd owned it when it was new & I was a teen. Now, I just don't know how much is still relevant, and what the current understanding of how nature works is compared to what it was back 4 decades ago. I do know I'm not convinced by the author's argument, in the last chapter, about how human animals live and human societies grow.

But it's a fairly easy read, and the author's voice is engaging and relatively light. And he keeps saying things in fresh way, in a way that helps us think, in an idiom that sticks. For example, consider herbivores as hunters of plants. As far as the genes of the plants can cope, cows etc. are predators.

Also, it's a great read because the author admits that science is a process. It looks for deeper answers and is not satisfied with intuitive understandings or data that doesn't fit popular theories. As he puts it at one point, "Ecologists are still inclined to argue about these things, but it does look as if we might have the general answer to these questions, all the same." Research is still needed, for example by wildlife management research scientists like my middle son.

But there's a lot in here that makes wonderful sense, just as it is, too. Things that I'm sure Colinvaux and his sources have figured out, things that educators and policy-makers have yet to learn. For example, did you know that the ocean is mostly an infertile 'desert' and that we're already getting pretty much as much sustenance as we can from it?

And did you know that there's less competition than peaceful coexistence in nature? Fighting takes a lot of energy that is better used towards reproduction, after all. If you read only one chapter from this book, read the chapter titled "Peaceful Coexistence." Here's some of it:

"Animals and plants in nature are not... engaged in endless debilitating struggle, as a loose reading of Darwin might suggest. Nature is arranged so that competitive struggles are avoided..... A species lives triumphant in its own special niche....

Natural selection is harsh only to the deviant aggressor who seeks to poach on the niche of another."

Now the above is about inter-species interaction. Consider something even more potentially relevant to discussions of humans' warlike nature: wolves cull the young, old, and sick large herbivores, because if the pack took on a healthy adult, "some of the wolves would get hurt, and a hurt wolf can hunt no more. Natural selection see to it that the strain of brave aggressiveness in wolves is purged from the wolf gene pool because such individuals would incur more than an average share of being fatally hurt. and thus would leave fewer descendants."

Now, the problem with humans is that we create new niches. Colinvaux, in his concluding chapter, says we "Change our niches without changing our breeding strategy." To a certain extent, and from the perspective of 1977, he's right. Fortunately, we've seen evidence that empowering and educating women has led to them choosing smaller families. I am more optimistic than the author that this trend will continue, and that we will somehow develop strategies to share a healthy planet with whales, wolves, frogs, and plankton.

But who is far-sighted, who is looking at the big picture? Ecology doesn't even seem to be a thing anymore - can anyone tell me who is following in Colinvaux's footsteps? Can anyone tell me what has been learned since about the topics he studied?

"… (mer)
 
Flaggad
Cheryl_in_CC_NV | 3 andra recensioner | Jun 6, 2016 |
A marvelous book on the way things work in the natural world. Wish I had a HC 1st!
 
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JNSelko | 3 andra recensioner | Jun 15, 2008 |

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Verk
8
Medlemmar
387
Popularitet
#62,499
Betyg
4.1
Recensioner
7
ISBN
22
Språk
3

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