Official Poll - 4th Quarter '05 (Oct/Nov/Dec) Book Selection

[Chris OConnor]

Official Book Selection Poll4th Quarter 2005 (October - November - December)This book poll will remain open from Friday, September 16th, until Sunday, September 25th. When the winner is announced on Sunday the 25th please support BookTalk by ordering your copy of the winning book through the Amazon.com links provided.We're paid a small referral fee for each order placed - the cost to you is the same whether you order through these links or not. I'm spending $1000 advertising BookTalk during the last months of 2005. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. You're also encouraged to donate directly by visiting the Support page. You'll be helping spread the freethinker message to the world, and hopefully you see the value in this.Please read this entire post before you cast your vote!1. Please do NOT vote if you have not made at least 10 total posts to our forums.Our polls stay up for more than a week, so you shouldn't have a difficult time getting your post-count to 10 if you're new to BookTalk. But be aware that we only accept quality contributions towards your post-count. Spam won't cut it. This rule insures that the books that win our polls won because active members wanted them to win. 2. And please do NOT cast a vote if you don't plan on reading and discussing the book.Even if you have over 10 posts, you shouldn't vote if you have no intention of being active in this 4th quarter discussion. How do I vote?If you are an active member, as per #1 above, and plan on participating in this discussion, as per #2 above, you are permitted to cast a total of 3 votes. You can use your three votes however you see fit, which could mean assigning all three votes to just one of the book choices, or distributing the three points over the book choices according to your own interest level for each book. You should make a brief post to this thread telling everyone how you wish to distribute your three votes. Nothing further needs to be said, but you're welcome to be as verbose as you like. Just make it crystal clear how you are voting.It is inevitable that some people will either forget to cast all three votes or will not have read this entire post. They will simply vote on one book. If this happens I will be assigning all three of their votes to the one book they selected. You are permitted to change your vote during the voting period, but not after I close the poll. The poll is closed on the last day of the polling period. I estimate the close date to be next Sunday, September 25, 2005.I'd sincerely appreciate if you didn't exercise this right unless you think you really made a mistake, however, as it makes the polling process much more messy. But you retain the right to do so. This thread can be used as an open discussion of the books on the poll. You're welcome to try to sell people on a particular book, or dissuade them from another. We have 3 choices in this poll. Please think hard about what book will be the most educational, entertaining, and worthy of discussion. No matter which book wins we will be asking the author to be our guest in the BookTalk chat room. In the event the authors schedule doesn't permit a live chat we'll request an email interview. NOTE:As always, we will need a discussion leader that is willing to be very active in the reading and discussion of the winning book. If you are up to the task please let us all know in this forum by making a post and stating your interest in the position.Please don't nominate yourself if you will not be active. Being active means checking the forum just about every day and making posts regularly. Regularly means a few times each week at the minimum.Being a discussion leader does not entail being an authority on the subject matter or defending the author's position. You simply need to attempt to stimulate discussion. And here are our book choices for 4th Quarter 2005. Please read about all three before casting your votes. Think hard about which book will be the most educational, entertaining, and worthy of discussion. May the best book win!Drum roll please...BOOK 1: The First Chimpanzee In Search of Human Origins by John Gribbin and Jeremy CherfasReviewer: A. J. CORNISH-BOWDEN (Marseilles, France) September 13, 2005Quote:In their earlier book The Monkey Puzzle (1982) John Gribbin and Jeremy Cherfas suggested that gorillas and chimpanzees are descended from human-like ancestors, an idea by no means as crazy as it might seem at first sight. The essential observation is that there are two well attested fossil species, Australopithecus robustus and Australopithecus gracilis, with no identifiable descendants, and two modern species, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, with no identifiable ancestors. The two fossil species appear to have been well on the way towards evolving human-like characteristics, and the two modern species are superficially no more human-like than, say, the orang utan. Traditional zoologists regarded humanity as the pinnacle of evolutionary achievement, and from that perspective it seemed difficult to imagine why two species well on the way towards humanity should have reversed direction and become more like their ancestors. However, all surviving species are well adapted and none is more "evolved" than any other, and if drastic climatic changes, such as those that marked the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch 3 million years ago, cause an advantage direction of change to become disadvantageous there is no reason to exclude the reappearance of ancestral characteristics. In The First Chimpanzee (with a name that echoes that of Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee), Gribbin and Cherfas return to the same theme, and two decades of further research have produced a great increase in the amount of evidence they can adduce, particularly in relation to the genomes of humans, gorillas and chimpanzees. Nothing of this new evidence contradicts their hypothesis, which, on the contrary, emerges strengthened. In 1982 there was still considerable resistance from palaeontologists to the idea that biochemical data could complement the study of fossils for elucidating phylogeny, but most of the resistance has now crumbled, as inevitably it had to, given the huge amount of biochemical data to set against the extreme sparseness of primate fossils. The authors quote Christine Janis as saying that "there are more people working on fossil primates than there are fossil primates". Gribbin was trained as an astrophysicist, and he contrasts strikingly with another astrophysicist, Fred Hoyle, who was more distinguished as an astrophysicist but vastly less distinguished as a popularizer of biology. Gribbin shows how valuable the skills and insights of physicists can be when they deign to make a serious study of biology before pontificating about it. His knowledge comes over very clearly in the chapter on the ice ages, where the explanation of the Milankovich Model of Ice Ages is as clear as any to be found in a popular science book. Reviewer: Duwayne Anderson (Saint Helens, Oregon) November 24, 2004Quote:This is a book about genetic dating and the role it has played in helping to shed light on human evolution. Most folks who are familiar with geology are also aware of a class of dating techniques ubiquitously lumped together under the label of radiometric dating. Carbon 14 is, perhaps, the most commonly known of these, but there are many other types as well. The authors explain relatively early in their book the basic idea behind radiometric dating, which is the quantum-mechanically observed fact that, in a group of unstable isotopes there is a particular percentage that, on average, will decay to their daughter products in any given period of time. Specifically, in the half-life of the isotope, half the atoms will decay. Radiometric dating provides a means of accurately determining the age since formation of many different types of materials. Carbon 14 is one isotope that is useful for dating samples that were once living, but are now dead. Other, longer-lived, isotopes can be used for dating various types of volcanic rocks. What Gribbin and Cherfas have done in "The first chimpanzee" is show how a similar technique can be applied to sequences in our genes. Early in the book the authors introduce the reader to DNA and the genetic code. They also have one of the best introductory explanations for what it actually means - in terms of laboratory testing and results - to say that this or that species share X amount of their genetic code. Wrapping up this discussion is the rather humbling, remarkable (and, upon reflection, expected) result that humans and chimpanzees have almost all their genetic material in common. As they carefully explain, genetic sequencing has reached the point where very specific statements can be made regarding the differences in the genetic makeup of different species. For example, according to Gribbin and Cherfas: "We now know from multiple lines of evidence that genetic similarity between us and chimpanzees is 98.4 per cent, and that's pretty exact. It's not 98.3, and it's not 98.5 but is 98.4 per cent." This means that chimps and humans are more closely related to each other than to any other species. We are their closest evolutionary relative, and they are ours. We are more closely related to chimps than rats are to mice. Indeed, we are as closely related to chimps as horses are to donkeys. Chimps are more related to us, than they are to gorillas. Upon laying this introductory groundwork, Gribbin and Cherfas proceed by showing that two species that descended from a common ancestor start out with identical DNA, which then (in the process of speciation) drifts divergently but at the same rate. This means that, once the rate of the molecular clock is determined, the genetic differences between species can be used to reliably date the point at which they diverged from their most recent common evolutionary ancestor. As they word it in their book: "The number of accumulated differences tells the time since the two species became evolutionarily distinct because mutation is a random process, as is the decay of a radioactive element, and while you can never say exactly which nucleotides will change, or when, you can say with some confidence how many of the millions of letters in the human genetic code will change in 1,000 years, 100,000 years, or a million years." This is really the crux of the book, and they deliver it on page 115. The rest of the book is aimed at illustrating additional details that highlight the application of the theory, especially regarding the relationship between humans and chimps. In the process they give examples and evidence that provide the scientific backup for the assumptions and data that go into the analysis, and the results that come out. They show, for example, several ways to calibrate the molecular clock, justifying assumptions for common rates of mutation in related species, and illustrating how the results from molecular dating are in nice agreement with the strict evidence from the fossil record (though not necessarily in agreement with assumptions made about the fossil record). Some of the material is a little specialized, and the authors clearly are speaking, at times, to skeptical colleagues. Just the same I was able to easily follow the text, and I personally found this book interesting, full of information, and possessing a significant "Ahhhh" factor. Their conclusion (found on page 283, but reiterated many other times in earlier parts of the text) is that: "The origin of the primates cannot have occurred more than 75 million years ago; the primates of the New and Old Worlds diverged no more than 35 million years ago (comfortably agreeing, by the way, with geophysical evidence for the break-up of the former super continent); Old World monkeys split from the hominoids no more than 20 million years ago, and the modern ape family began to radiate approximately 15 million years ago; gibbon and orangutan diverged 11 and 8 million years ago and finally (ignoring the more recent divergence into pygmy and modern chimp, mountain and lowland gorilla) there was the three-way split between man, chimp and gorilla no more than 4 million years ago. For anyone interested in evolution, and human evolution in particular, this book is essential reading. It's clearly written in a way that most non-scientists, with careful reading, should be able to follow, and it has sufficient detail to interest the scientific non-specialist as well. For me it was a wealth of new information and yet another reminder of our connectedness with nature. BOOK 2: Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom by Sean B. CarrollAmazon.comQuote:"Every animal form is the product of two processes--development from an egg and evolution from its ancestors," writes Sean B. Carroll in his introduction to Endless Forms Most Beautiful. The new science of "evo devo"--or evolutionary developmental biology--examines the relationships between those two processes, embryonic development and evolutionary changes, despite their radically different time scales. Carroll first offers a recap of how genes express themselves in a growing embryo, then peers into the life histories of real-life examples to explain how those genes have changed (or not changed) over millions of years of evolution. Paraphrasing Thomas Huxley, he asks us to consider evolution and development as two sides of the same coin. We may marvel at the process of an egg becoming an adult, but we accept it as an everyday fact. It is merely then a lack of imagination to fail to grasp how changes in this process that assimilated over long periods of time, far longer than the span of human experience, shape life's diversity. The book's second half is where Carroll really gets at the meat of evo devo, explaining how regulatory genes control such mysteries as individual and population changes in butterfly's spots, jaguar fur, and hominid skulls. Evo devo is one of the hottest areas of study in 21st-century biology, and Carroll's outline of the field is a great place to start understanding it. --Therese LittletonFrom Publishers WeeklyQuote:Cobb County textbook stickers aside, evolutionary natural selection offers a pretty straightforward explanation for the forward march of species through history; a mutation that better equips a given organism to survive is passed along to its heirs, becoming more common as successive generations flourish. The actual process by which mutations happen, however, was far more mysterious until scientists turned to the study of evolutionary development ( known by the somewhat unfortunate moniker "Evo Devo" ) . One such scientist is Carroll, a genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin

[Chris OConnor]

This is a hard decision. All three look enticing. I'm spending some time reading the Amazon reviews and hoping one of them leaps out at me as the best choice, but right now I'm perplexed.

[ginof]

three votes for ethical brain. this seems like a good follow up to the book we read by D'amasso (sp) several months ago. Frankly, the other two choices have no appeal to me (for what that's worth! )

[Chris OConnor]

Here is something that I'm noticing about the first choice of books. "The First Chimpanzee" was written years ago, yet it doesn't even have an image of the book cover on it's Amazon.com page. Why not? What makes this book not even worth a book cover image?The next worry I have is that there aren't even any book reviews for it other than by customers. Why doesn't Amazon.com or other sources have a review posted?I'm searching the web right now trying to find reviews, comments or references to the book. One thing I'm noticing is that the author is trained in "astrophysics," even though his book is clearly not on this subject.Edit...I just found and read the following Guardian article. I kinda like him.Apes who gaze at the starsJohn Gribbin tells Nicholas Wroe why we should take an interest in scienceSaturday April 14, 2001GuardianIt is now a commonplace that some time during the 19th century, the study of science became so complex and specialised that the interested general reader has been effectively excluded from its debates ever since. But no one seems to have told John Gribbin. In the last 30 years he has produced more than 50 books and thousands of articles on cutting-edge contemporary science, all written in a language that the fabled interested general reader has at least an even chance of understanding. While Gribbin does have a scientific background, he says: "I'm not a scientist who writes. I regard myself as a writer who happens to write about science." He takes the Isaac Asimov definition of an expert - "I'm an expert in only one thing: sounding like an expert" - and on this basis has plunged into the latest developments in the studies of climatic change, the search for extra-terrestrial life, quantum mechanics, string theory and the search for human origins. Books like Almost Everyone's Guide to Science and his Companion to the Cosmos have provided lucid overviews, while the likes of In Search of Schrodinger's Cat have dug pretty deeply into more specialised fields, in that case quantum physics. Gribbin says that the recent boom in science publishing was launched by the success of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time but might now have passed its peak. "I suspect history has taken over in the last year or so." But he knows there is still a large market out there keen for news from the lab, and he thanks the British education system for giving him the skills to be able to speak to it. "In the 1950s and 1960s you would learn a lot about some subject and then sit down and do an exam. I was very good at this sort of precis, and my writing career since has been similar in that I often write short things about other people's work and try to boil quite complex things down to their essence." After leaving school, his maths wasn't good enough for him to be a physicist, so he enrolled as one of the first students on the MSc astronomy course at Sussex university, where he is now a visiting fellow. "Astronomy is probably the most general area of science that it is possible to work in," he says. After completing his PhD at Cambridge, he hoped to get a job in the discipline, "but things were very tight at the beginning of the 1970s and I got into writing." A fellow PhD student had been writing for New Scientist and suggested Gribbin should do the same. "I ended up entirely funding the last year of my PhD from journalism, and so it was the obvious place to go as a second-choice career. I've never sat down and said 'I want to be a writer', but equally I can never remember a time when I wasn't one." As a journalist he wrote five or six science news stories a week, "on every topic under the sun", and then naturally gravitated into books. His most recent entirely new work was last year's Stardust , in which he dealt with the cosmic aspects of human origins. He points out that the four most common elements that actually react to anything in the universe - carbon, hydrogen , oxygen and nitrogen - are also the four most common elements of our bodies. "The analogy I use is that in the polar regions people make houses out of ice, and in warmer parts of the world they use mud because that is what is available. Life is made of these four elements because that is what is available, which leads me to say that it is very likely that life is common. Of course, that doesn't mean there is intelligent life elsewhere. That is another big step and is an unresolved question." While his work in this area is strictly scientifically accurate, he has also dabbled in science fiction. "I always preferred hard SF writers like Arthur Clarke and Asimov, who dealt with real science extrapolated to the future, rather than fantasy." His fiction career ended when "suddenly people stopped buying the books. So I thought: 'Sod that, I'll go back to what I know will sell.' My agent was delighted because he always thought it was a waste of time, but it was immensely valuable to my development as a non-fiction writer. I learned about characterisation and plot development and building to some sort of climax and all that. My non-fiction writing did improve." His latest book, The First Chimpanzee , is a good example of his approach to topical scientific developments. It is an update of his 1982 book, The Monkey Puzzle , written with Jeremy Cherfas. Gribbin was intrigued by research that implied our relationship to chimpanzees and gorillas was closer than had been previously thought. The scientific establishment was dismissive, but as time has gone on Gribbin says the new view, "while not exactly becoming respectable, did become less disreputable". Then, a couple of years ago, "some superb and very rigorous research was done in Australia which produced some rock-solid data. This time it got headlines, so it was time to bring the story up to date." Is there an evangelical impulse to his work? "I think so," he says. "I do care about people being informed and encouraged to take an interest in science. It's important. One of the really nice things about my career is that people who have done degrees have come to me and said that they started doing physics or something because they read one of my books. That is a fantastic sense of achievement." On a positive note I believe he is an atheist.Quote:Sir: Peter Chaplin has got his argument exactly backwards. It wasn't atheism that led Charles Darwin to develop the theory of natural selection. Rather, it was observing natural selection at work in the world that led him to become an atheist. Dr JOHN GRIBBIN Chris Edited by: Chris OConnor  at: 9/17/05 2:43 am

[Jeremy1952]

BOOK 3: The Ethical Brain by Michael S. Gazzaniga, Three votes.I met Chris in the Yahoo! "Religion" chat room, a favorite hangout of mine. The topic I find most interesting and productive is ethics and morality. I'm excited about reading and discussing this work! If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

[Mr. P]

Chris:The CHIMP book is actually a re-issue of an older book by the two authors...it was called the Monkey Puzzle. It was an old book indeed, but the ideas were so on themoney, after more research shed light on the subject, that the authors re-issued the book. Barnes and Noble was the publisher, which is why it might not get much play on Amazon.Gribbin has written a few science books. I think this is worth the read. As for the visibility of the book...I am sure the best science books to read and study aer not what would make a best seller!Mr. P. The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[Chris OConnor]

After reading some more about the book and the two authors my hesitation has waned. Looks to be a worthy read. Nick, so are you placing your votes for The First Chimpanzee?Chris

[Mr. P]

For once, I am going to wait a little before voting! The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

[disabledpublishing]

I vote for book 2.

[tarav]

2-The First Chimp...1- Endless Forms...