| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
spiritually uplifting (THES )
The centerpiece of The Crucible of Creation is a descripion, authoritative and readable, of the animals themselves (New York Times Book Review )
New Scientist
We live on a wonderful planet that not only teems with life but shows a marvellous exuberance of form and variety. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
41 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful Life reassessed,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals (Paperback)
A decade on from the publication of Stephen Jay Gould's 'Wonderful Life' there is much new information to be told about the Burgess Shale and similar deposits around the world, and Conway Morris is in the best place to tell it as one of the leading researchers in this subject. He succeeds brilliantly in bringing the fossils to life by visiting them in a time travelling submersible to view their ecology.
Conway Morris does not agree with Gould's interminable arguments for contingency in 'Wonderful Life' and makes a very strong case for a degree of predictability in evolution, there being only a limited number of ways to scratch a living on planet earth. If you have read 'Wonderful Life' you really should read this. I can find no justification for the reviewer below complaining of excessive religious content - this is an objective, scientific account seeking to piece evidence together to address important questions, and there is no 'religious' material. Conway Morris does have a philosophical side, however, rightly condemning our current behaviour towards our environment as 'utterly reckless'. Unfortunately, the evolution of consciousness came with extraordinary capacities for greed and self-deception, linked traits that suggest the experiment will not last for very long.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you loved 'Wonderful Life', you just must read this!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of the Animals (Hardcover)
Conway Morris gives us his first-hand, expert point of view on what the fossil record tells us about Evolution. Not only the Burgess Shale, but other recent discoveries in the farthest places in the World, that complement former data, are taken into account. The main outcome following these new discoveries is the finding of right places to every bizarre animal that Wondeful life introduced to us, all of them fitting in the main present animal groups. All the questions you had raised when reading Gould's book are answered here. Some may think that Conway Morris has come back to Walcott's old shoehorn and that he is ungrateful to Gould for putting him on the map. This is untrue. Just he got more recent data than he (and Gould) had before. Thus he has changed his conclusions. I am a molecular biologist who was an unconditional follower to Gould's points of view, but Conway Morris' data have convinced me. Wise men know when to modify their opinions. So did Conway Morris and so do I, after having read The Crucible of Creation. Anyway, I will carry on reading Gould's wonderful books. Gould's fascinating prose has gained many converts. Conway Morris' writing is more scientific and less rhetoric. He is not such a good Science popularizer as Gould (who could be?). But he probably knows more about Cambrian fossils than no other person in the World. So you must give him a chance and read this book, It is a really worthwhile work.
22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Secrets in stones,
By Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Crucible of Creation: The Burgess Shale and the Rise of Animals (Paperback)
You have a choice in reading this book; take a senior course in evolutionary biology, or spend an hour carefully reviewing the introductory glossary. Don't be intimidated by this initial labour, however, there are great rewards awaiting you for the effort.Our present view of life's parade is unaccountably dominated by the parade of dinosaurs encountered in cartoons, advertising and poorly conceived cinema. Conway Morris brings to view the truly important period in evolution's pageant. Fossils of the Cambrian era were hidden from view until the 1909 discovery of a city-block-sized outcrop in the mountains of British Columbia. The Burgess Shale revealed fossils of a plethora of hitherto unknown soft- bodied creatures. Conway Morris recalls this find, and expands this initial discovery with other sites around the globe to give us a more intimate view of the creatures inhabiting that time. Reference to Stephen Gould's WONDERFUL LIFE is almost mandatory here. Conway Morris doesn't 'disparage' him, but shows that Gould's excited imagination and desire to support his invalid thesis of 'punctuated equilibrium' led him into fallacious assumptions. Conway Morris has brought hard science to point out the realities of the Cambrian record. Evolution's mechanics have been addressed from several angles. Conway Morris reviews these, offering sound critiques to each in developing his thesis. What caused the 'Cambrian explosion' of novel life forms? Predation. Animals that had scuffled along the sea bottom or waited for food to drift into reach were challenged by more ambitious life forms. Conway Morris has given us an engaging account of the development of life. There are few flaws in this account. It's amazingly complete for so brief a treatment. Conway Morris barely wastes a word [except an excruciating repetition of the phrase 'this remains controversial'] in his account. He covers the fossils, their form of life, and how these creatures led to the life forms we encounter today. This is not a 'specialist' book, but worth a purchase by anyone wishing to grasp the role of evolution in our lives.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > History > Archaeology > By Period > Prehistoric
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Animal Sciences > Invertebrates
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Evolution > Animal
- Books > Science & Nature > Earth Sciences & Geography > Palaeontology > Palaeozoology
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
