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Complexity: The Evolution of Earth's Biodiversity and the Future of Humanity
This very readable overview of natural history explores the dynamics that have made our planet so rich in biodiversity over time and supported the rise and dominance of our own species. Tracing the arc of evolutionary history, biologist William C. Burger shows that cooperation and symbiosis have played a critical role in the ever increasing complexity of life on earth. Life may have started from the evolution of cooperating organic molecules, which outpaced their noncooperating neighbors. A prime example of symbiosis was the early incorporation of mitochondria into the eukaryotic cell (through a process called "endosymbiosis"). This event gave these cells a powerful new source of energy. Later, cooperation was again key when millions to trillions of individual eukaryotic cells eventually came together to build the unitary structures of large plants and animals. And cooperation between individuals of the same species resulted in complex animal societies, such as ant colonies and bee hives. Turning to our own species, the author argues that our ability to cooperate, along with incessant inter-group conflict, has driven the advancement of cultures, the elaboration of our technologies, and made us the most "invasive" species on the planet. But our very success has now become a huge problem, as our world dominion threatens the future of the biosphere and confronts us with a very uncertain future.Thought-provoking and full of fascinating detail, this eloquently told story of life on earth and our place within it presents a grand perspective and raises many important questions.
370 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 8, 2017
The picture on the dust jacket of William C. Burger is almost a caricature of the grumpy old man, an impression which I think he does not wish to discourage. William Burger is a man who has spent decades studying nature, and the trends toward increasing industrialization and urbanization have a tendency to make such people grumpy, at least when they speak to the general public. But, the great majority of this book is not about catastrophic visions of where we are headed. Rather, it is about how we got here.
In some ways, this book's trajectory is similar to that of Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants"; it is a trend towards ever increasing information, in the technical sense of the word. The kind of "technology" that Burger is talking about, though, gets built from carbon, not silicon. Burger starts with pre-biotic Earth, and takes us through the long pre-history of our planet as it developed bacteria, multicellular life, animals on dry land, flowering plants, and finally us. At each stage, the complexity of the most complex lifeforms increased, and also the complexity of the interactions between them. He takes us through a tour around the world, explaining the term "biome" and the dozen or so types at the highest level (you can subdivide these into a virtually limitless number of biomes, if you want to distinguish North American tall-grass prairie from North American short-grass prairie and so on). We also look at every continent, in every epoch through the history of our planet, plus a fair amount of time in the oceans as well.
The book could well have been titled "A Tour of the Planet, through Time and Space". Burger covers a lot of ground here (literally), and the reader is occasionally left breathless by the amount. It achieves its purpose, though: we get a much better understanding of just how complex life on Earth really is, and how it got that way. Even dinosaur-ending meteoric catastrophes do not for long reduce the complexity of the planet's biosphere, whether measured in species count or information processing or chemical turnover of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. The Earth is a very busy place, and it's busy in a lot of different ways.
The end of the book has the almost inevitable "but now we're going to screw it all up" chapter, where we look at the impact of humanity on all of this unimaginable complexity of life. Which, you know, is quite possibly true. It hardly requires this book to tell me about it, however, and that's not where the strength of Burger's writing lies. Fortunately, more than 90% of the book is not the environmentalist neo-puritan "you're all going to a hell of your own making" kind of prose, and rather is taking on the much more useful task of telling us about just how much natural diversity is out there. It's rather like the book-reading equivalent of going on a safari with a grumpy old man, whose mood and expression light up when he starts to show you just how many plants and animals there are out there. I am happy to follow, and listening to 5% grousing about what a mess we're making is a small price to pay.
In some ways, this book's trajectory is similar to that of Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants"; it is a trend towards ever increasing information, in the technical sense of the word. The kind of "technology" that Burger is talking about, though, gets built from carbon, not silicon. Burger starts with pre-biotic Earth, and takes us through the long pre-history of our planet as it developed bacteria, multicellular life, animals on dry land, flowering plants, and finally us. At each stage, the complexity of the most complex lifeforms increased, and also the complexity of the interactions between them. He takes us through a tour around the world, explaining the term "biome" and the dozen or so types at the highest level (you can subdivide these into a virtually limitless number of biomes, if you want to distinguish North American tall-grass prairie from North American short-grass prairie and so on). We also look at every continent, in every epoch through the history of our planet, plus a fair amount of time in the oceans as well.
The book could well have been titled "A Tour of the Planet, through Time and Space". Burger covers a lot of ground here (literally), and the reader is occasionally left breathless by the amount. It achieves its purpose, though: we get a much better understanding of just how complex life on Earth really is, and how it got that way. Even dinosaur-ending meteoric catastrophes do not for long reduce the complexity of the planet's biosphere, whether measured in species count or information processing or chemical turnover of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. The Earth is a very busy place, and it's busy in a lot of different ways.
The end of the book has the almost inevitable "but now we're going to screw it all up" chapter, where we look at the impact of humanity on all of this unimaginable complexity of life. Which, you know, is quite possibly true. It hardly requires this book to tell me about it, however, and that's not where the strength of Burger's writing lies. Fortunately, more than 90% of the book is not the environmentalist neo-puritan "you're all going to a hell of your own making" kind of prose, and rather is taking on the much more useful task of telling us about just how much natural diversity is out there. It's rather like the book-reading equivalent of going on a safari with a grumpy old man, whose mood and expression light up when he starts to show you just how many plants and animals there are out there. I am happy to follow, and listening to 5% grousing about what a mess we're making is a small price to pay.
March 18, 2019
Great overview of evolutionary drivers towards more complexity in the ecosystem, but ends in a surprising final chapter, given the writer's general sense of wonder and excitement at the Earth's journey towards life and diversity.
Malthusian concerns and pessimism granted, the only possible flaw in reasoning in the conflating of population growth and the growth of resource consumption - while partially correlated, they are in fact separate variables, and our climate sins are also historical.
Our current inaction is also derived from past actions of corporations, economic ideologues, and political institutions. Correct diagnosis is what's needed to reverse the course of our civilizational ills.
Malthusian concerns and pessimism granted, the only possible flaw in reasoning in the conflating of population growth and the growth of resource consumption - while partially correlated, they are in fact separate variables, and our climate sins are also historical.
Our current inaction is also derived from past actions of corporations, economic ideologues, and political institutions. Correct diagnosis is what's needed to reverse the course of our civilizational ills.
February 19, 2024
A superb overview of life on our planet, both in space, with a discussion on biogeography and regional concentrations of biodiversity, but more so in time, from life's unicellular origins to the development and evolution of ever greater complexity with multicellular organisms, vertebrates, and culminating with humans. Burger unloads a lifetime of knowledge from his career as a biologist, and indeed this book felt like a very long series of lectures. Being a botanist, he uses plants as examples for many of the concepts, from the latitudinal biodiversity gradient to the detailed evolution of plant life.
I have mixed feelings about the last chapters on humans. Though I agree that we are obviously the most complex life form to have emerged from Earth's long history, the amount of material on human history and environmental issues seemed a little overboard. Burger went on a lengthy and repetitive rant in the final chapters, detailing the negative cumulative impacts of our expansion and success as a species. I do share his sentiments, but it was too much of a digression for a book of this nature, IMO. On the other hand, if one were to approach his book from a more general perspective, it does provide a great education on not just natural but human history and ecology, something more people should be learning about.
I have mixed feelings about the last chapters on humans. Though I agree that we are obviously the most complex life form to have emerged from Earth's long history, the amount of material on human history and environmental issues seemed a little overboard. Burger went on a lengthy and repetitive rant in the final chapters, detailing the negative cumulative impacts of our expansion and success as a species. I do share his sentiments, but it was too much of a digression for a book of this nature, IMO. On the other hand, if one were to approach his book from a more general perspective, it does provide a great education on not just natural but human history and ecology, something more people should be learning about.
April 24, 2021
Great intro to some of the mechanisms underlying evolution but reductionist in its definition of complexity compared to what I'm used to from Complex Systems research. Still a lot of fun to read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews