-
A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans
- With a Theory of Meaning (Posthumanities)
- Narrated by: Darren Roebuck
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
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Publisher's summary
Is the tick a machine or a machine operator? Is it a mere object or a subject? With these questions, the pioneering biophilosopher Jakob von Uexküll embarks on a remarkable exploration of the unique social and physical environments that individual animal species, as well as individuals within species, build and inhabit. This concept of the umwelt has become enormously important within posthumanist philosophy, influencing such figures as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze and Guattari, and, most recently, Giorgio Agamben, who has called Uexküll "a high point of modern antihumanism."
A key document in the genealogy of posthumanist thought, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans advances Uexküll's revolutionary belief that nonhuman perceptions must be accounted for in any biology worth its name; it also contains his arguments against natural selection as an adequate explanation for the present orientation of a species' morphology and behavior. A Theory of Meaning extends his thinking on the umwelt, while also identifying an overarching and perceptible unity in nature. Those coming to Uexküll's work for the first time will find that his concept of the umwelt holds out new possibilities for the terms of animality, life, and the whole framework of biopolitics itself.
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- Unabridged
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Nobody wakes up in the morning and decides to shut down their senses and stumble through each day in an oblivious bubble, and yet some people end up having much richer experiences than others. In this guidebook, natural navigator Tristan Gooley strives to reawaken our senses to help us understand and deepen our personal experience of nature. His message is to connect - however we can and to whatever draws us in.
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A fool sees not the same tree a wise man sees
- By Mark A Bleakley on 08-07-18
By: Tristan Gooley
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The Complete (Short) Guide to Absolutely Everything
- Adventures in Math and Science
- By: Adam Rutherford, Hannah Fry
- Narrated by: Hannah Fry, Adam Rutherford
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.
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Humour and understandability.
- By Chris B on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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The Cabaret of Plants
- Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
- By: Richard Mabey
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A rich, sweeping, and compelling work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Richard Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death.
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Can't wait to listen to again!
- By hyacinthgirl on 12-27-16
By: Richard Mabey
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Letters to a Young Scientist
- By: Edward O. Wilxon
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 4 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career - both his successes and his failures - and his motivations for becoming a biologist.
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Long on biography, short on advice
- By A. Mandelin on 08-02-18
By: Edward O. Wilxon
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I, Mammal
- By: Liam Drew
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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A list of the attributes that define a mammal is a ragbag of things - fur, live birth, three bones in the middle ear, a brain whose two halves are robustly joined together.... But this curious collection of features contain the roots of all the biology that makes us what we are: monkeys with massive brains who parent extensively, enjoy sport and think lots. Which is to say, what makes us mammals makes us human.
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Who knew?
- By Fitmen on 04-25-18
By: Liam Drew
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The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
- By: Elisabeth Tova Bailey
- Narrated by: Renee Raudman
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the intimate and inspiring story of her year-long encounter with a snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, she becomes an astute and amused observer of the snail's surprising nocturnal adventures as it lives in a flowerpot on her nightstand. Intrigued by the snail’s clear decision making abilities, hydraulic locomotion, mysterious courtship, and molluscan anatomy, Bailey takes the listener deep into the life of this tiny amazing animal. With wit and grace, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating recounts a remarkable journey of human and gastropod survival and resilience, and shows how the natural world illuminates our own human existence. Winner of the William Saroyan International Prize for Nonfiction, the John Burrough Medal Award for Natural History, and a National Outdoor Book Award. If you enjoyed Wesley the Owl, The Guest Cat, and Marley & Me, you'll enjoy this unique interspecies audiobook listen.
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This is an unexpected wonder. The quiet virtues of the snail reflect the quiet voyage of the author.
- By Frances on 08-03-15
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Feathers
- The Evolution of a Natural Miracle
- By: Thor Hanson
- Narrated by: Andy Ingalls
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: Aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told. In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
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Fantastic Science and Fun
- By Chris Reich on 12-28-14
By: Thor Hanson
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The Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
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What a Fish Knows
- The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins
- By: Jonathan Balcombe
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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An underwater exploration that overturns myths about fishes and reveals their complex lives, from tool use to social behavior. There are more than 30,000 species of fish - more than all mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined. But for all their breathtaking diversity and beauty, we rarely consider how fish think, feel, and behave.
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Title misled me
- By Margaret Weidemann on 08-12-17
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Gifts of the Crow
- How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans
- By: John Marzluff, Tony Angell
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
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New research indicates that crows are among the brightest animals in the world. And professor of Wildlife Science at the University of Washington John Marzluff has done some of the most extraordinary research on crows, which has been featured in the New York Times, National Geographic, and the Chicago Tribune, as well as on NPR and PBS. Now he teams up with artist and fellow naturalist Tony Angell to offer an in-depth look at these incredible creatures - in a book that is brimming with surprises.
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You Will Never Look At A Crow The Same Way Again
- By Diane on 06-30-12
By: John Marzluff, and others
What listeners say about A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- wbiro
- 01-01-17
20th Century Philosophical Mumbo-Jumbo - But...
The author made philosophical points, but far too quickly (and listening, you will miss most), where he then lengthily digresses, leaving you lost as to what point he was trying to make, and leaving you with the impression that the book is nothing more than philosophical mumbo-jumbo.
So is it? Yes and no. 'Yes', in that presenting mumbo-jumbo as 'truth' was the philosophical paradigm of the entire 20th century, and it still reigns today, and this author is guilty of it. 'No' in that what the mountains of 'mumbo-jumbo' really are, are potentially-useful perspectives, or 'tools of perception' as I like to call them - certain potentially-useful ways of looking at objects and processes.
What 'potentially-useful perspectives' did this philosopher offer in this book? He offered a poetically analogous way of classifying the structure and processes of the mind - equating the mind to elements of music. He speaks of 'self-tones' - that is, subjective factors, and of 'melodies' - or how a subjective individual processes reality, and he uses the term 'symphony' as a holistic term (and here you will be thinking 'OK, this sounds like a German philosopher who never gives examples, and it refers to the glory of German symphonies). All poetic, and potentially useful, but as you might guess, it is not the whole truth, and it is not wise to only have that perception tool in your toolbox. As for the analogy proper, it only 'kind of' works, he had to stretch things at times. He also explores a 'house' analogy, which only partially worked, but was interesting.
The upside to analogies is that they are tools of perception, the downside is they avoid communicating reality proper. The ancient world thought almost entirely in analogies, but they had an excuse - they didn't know diddly about the natural world (and, an added note, everything was 'magical' - giving the world an overall Christmas-like 'wonder' that we're losing as our verified knowledge increases, which is not all a bad thing). Modern thinkers, however, no longer have that excuse with the mountains of Verified Knowledge that now exist.
The digressions were the bulk of the book, and I found them worthwhile - most were descriptions of scientific experiments that I had not heard of in my wide readings (listenings) , which are not the usual experiments that I've run across in popular science fare, and it appears to be because of two factors - culture (German vs. English), and date (the book was written in the first half of the 20th century); so you will be treated to experiments that you have not heard of yet, and though they were conducted decades ago, they have stood the test of time, being well-designed experiments.
What I liked about the author was that he was well-read, drawing from many scientific disciplines, which is what I did in creating the Philosophy of Broader Survival (which will guide future scientists and engineers), but he does play the IS GAME, pretending that a speculation IS fact, when it is not known yet.
So the book was interesting in a historic sense, and it gave me the opportunity to shed light on the 'tools of perception' and 'Is Game' issues, which are still problems in the philosophical world.
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- Eduardo Bellani
- 10-17-15
deep book. lots of insights.
book contains the genesis of semiotics mixed with a kind of vitalistic philosophy. highly recommended.
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