Richard Conniff -- The species seekers: heroes, fools, and the mad pursuit of life on earth
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This is a book that deals with many of the details about discovering
species, classifying species, preserving species, displaying
specimens of species, etc. But, it's also a book about a
revolution in thought and knowledge, about the birth of scientific
knowledge and scientific methodology.  It's also about the effects
and conflicts of the people of the time as they adjust to the
notion of geological time scales, the position of humans within the
natural order, etc.

Some remarkable things from the book: (1) The passion and excitement
of both those who actively participated in collecting new species
and those who came to view these new collections.  (2) The hard work
done to regularize this new knowledge and the methods with which it
was collected.  This was the beginnings of the scientific method
that we know today.  (3) How driven the collectors were, and how
their extreme motivations led them to, sometimes, stretch the truth.
But, their high level of motivation also enabled some of them to
endure the hardships and dangers that they faced while collecting
specimens.  By the way, I was interested to learn that some of these
collectors, especially those who were not independently wealthy,
supported themselves by sending back and receiving payment for
specimens, *lots* of specimens.

Conniff also gives the reader some appreciation of the just how
revolutionary ideas about evolution were, how threatening and
upsetting those ideas were to some, especially to those of the
Christian religion, and how difficult the battle was for the
acceptance of those ideas.  The idea of dislodging man (humans) from
his/her special relation to god and the idea of placing man as a
part of nature and as just another creature among many in a natural
world and process was not an easy idea for some to accept.  Finding
"monsters", i.e. fossils of large prehistoric beasts that no one had
evidence of having seen alive, was important to this process of 
gaining acceptance for these revolutionary ideas.

One idea especially helps me appreciate just how radical this work
was.  It was during this period, that naturalists learned that
fossils, in particular shells, could be used to date the geological
strata in rocks.  It's hard now for us to understand the thinking of
the naturalists and theorists of this period (1840's say) if we do
not know that the idea of geologic time and some reliable, credible
way of gaging it was so new.

There are discussions in this book that helped to gain an
appreciation for and to feel some of the excitement of the new ideas
and understanding as these ideas were taking shape in the minds of
naturalists who were discovering them.  For example: (1) Classifying
an individual or species based on a set of features, and not just by
one significant anatomical feature.  (2) Local variations: that
individuals and species could exhibit unique features when they are
separated geographically, sometimes by a distance of only a few
miles or less. (3) natural selection: how selective pressure can
cause species drift, for example when a predator selectively
eliminates individuals from the population of a species because of
certain features of those individuals.

One detail that was especially interesting to me is the insight by
Alfred Russel Wallace, who came up with the idea of natural
selection at about the same time as Charles Darwin, came to see that
nature is not "in balance".  Species, or more correctly, populations
of species, exhibit wild swings in size.  And, those fluctuations in
population size have heavy effects on the populations of nearby
species.  An important implication of this is that populations in
nature can be viewed as dynamic and possibly chaotic systems.
Therefore, changes in the size of populations across time can be a
subject of systems theory.

So many species -- The book ends by emphasizing at least two
important points. (1) The number of existing species is huge.
Currently, we have close to 2 million identified species, a
questionable number, no doubt, but since researchers are discovering
species almost everywhere, being exact does not matter much.  And,
we are likely nowhere near the end of finding all currently existing
species.  But, still more, new species are evolving (being created)
all the time. The "mechanism" of evolution not only *has* been
creative; it *will be* creative.  (2) We have to "look" in other
ways if we are to find new species.  Some different species look
exactly the same, that is, they are the same as far as external
appearance to an observer with human eyes, about human height and
size, relatively normal color vision, etc.  I have moderate color
"blindness", so I might be able to see and distinguish species that
you can't.  And, of course, two different individuals might appear
different to a possible mate or competing species: lots of ants look
the same to me, but to ants, differences in behavior and odor that I
can't see and perhaps even differences that can be detected by a
sense of perception that I don't have really do matter.  If you are
interested in learning about the theory of evolution through an
understanding of those who developed it, then this is a great read.

For an entirely different perspective on the battle between religion
and evolution, read Matthew Chapman: "40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin,
Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in
Pennsylvania".  It's a delight.

04/18/2011

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