Every Living Thing
The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
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4.5 • 16 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • An epic, extraordinary account of scientific rivalry and obsession in the quest to survey all of life on Earth
“[An] engaging and thought-provoking book, one focused on the theatrical politics and often deeply troubling science that shape our definitions of life on Earth.”—The New York Times
“A fluent and engaging account of the eighteenth-century origins of Darwinism before Darwin.”—The Wall Street Journal
WINNER OF THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?
Both fell far short of their goal, but in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, the future of the Earth, and humanity itself. Linnaeus gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens, but he also denied that species change and he promulgated racist pseudoscience. Buffon formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, warned of global climate change, and argued passionately against prejudice. The clash of their conflicting worldviews continued well after their deaths, as their successors contended for dominance in the emerging science that came to be called biology.
In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts weaves a sweeping, unforgettable narrative spell, exploring the intertwined lives and legacies of Linnaeus and Buffon—as well as the groundbreaking, often fatal adventures of their acolytes—to trace an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This enlightening history by science writer Roberts (A Sense of the World) explores research conducted by 18th-century naturalists Carl Linnaeus and George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, who competed against "each other to complete a comprehensive accounting of life on Earth." Roberts skillfully describes the methodological, philosophical, and political differences between the two, explaining that Linnaeus's Christian faith led him to believe that species were fixed and created divinely, while Buffon embraced more heretical ideas, which led him to propose a rudimentary understanding of evolution and face "formal charges of blasphemy for suggesting the Earth might be older than Scripture indicated." Despite the subtitle, there's not much in the way of swashbuckling adventures to distant lands in search of unknown species (Linnaeus and Buffon acquired their specimens largely by purchasing them from other collectors or dispatching to foreign countries acolytes who sometimes died of disease). Instead, Roberts provides a thorough accounting of the divergent outlooks of his dual subjects and offers illuminating insight into how politics secured Linnaeus's legacy while consigning Buffon to relative obscurity. (During the French Revolution, followers of Linnaeus took advantage of Buffon's inherited status as a count and connections to King Louis XVI, who contributed funding to Buffon's research, to pillory the naturalist as part of the ancíen régíme.) The result is an enthralling look at a pivotal period in the history of biology. Photos.
