The Evolution of Power
A New Understanding of the History of Life
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- 25,99 €
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- 25,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A sweeping new account of the role of power in the evolution of all life on Earth
Power has many dimensions, from individual attributes such as strength and speed to the collective advantages of groups. The Evolution of Power takes readers on a breathtaking journey across history and the natural world, revealing how the concept of power unifies a vast range of phenomena in the evolution of life—and how natural selection has placed humanity and the planet itself on a trajectory of ever-increasing power.
Drawing on evidence from fossils, living organisms, and contemporary society, Geerat Vermeij documents increases in power at all scales, from body size, locomotor performance, and the use of force in competition to efficiency in production and consumption within ecosystems. He shows how power—which he defines as the rate at which organisms acquire and apply energy—is tied to the emergence of cooperation, and how the modern economy, which for the first time has established a monopoly over the biosphere by a single species, is a continuation of evolutionary trends stretching back to the dawn of life. Vermeij persuasively argues that we can find solutions to the many problems arising from this extreme concentration of power by broadening our exclusively human-centered perspective.
A masterful work by one of today’s most innovative and forward-thinking naturalists, The Evolution of Power offers a new understanding of our place in the grand sweep of evolutionary history.
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"The history of life on Earth can be meaningfully and informatively interpreted as a history of power," according to this thought-provoking study. Vermeij (A Natural History of Shells), an Earth and planetary sciences professor at UC Davis, argues that organisms' "power"—defined as "energy per unit time" and encompassing mobility, size, speed, and strength—drives natural selection, with more powerful organisms more effective at passing on their genes than the less powerful. Exploring how living things store and release energy for evolutionary advantage, he explains that the Pacific salmon's body mass is 60% swimming muscle, which enables it to swim six feet per second in short bursts to escape predators, and that the herb Cardamine hirsuta gradually accrues "potential energy" through the valved structure of its fruit, which eventually "springs open as the valves separate" and projects its seeds about two meters. Though Vermeij's thesis is more of a rebranding of "survival of the fittest" than a novel take on evolution, his framework offers intriguing new insights, as when he contends that ecosystems operate like self-regulating economies in their exchanges of power and energy as part of a competition for resources. This provides plenty to ponder.
