How the Biosphere Works

Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers

Fred Spier author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Taylor & Francis Ltd

Published:6th May '22

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

This hardback is available in another edition too:

How the Biosphere Works cover

How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers offers a simple and novel theoretical approach to understanding the history of the biosphere, including humanity’s place within it. It also helps to clarify what the possibilities and limitations are for future action. This is a subject of wide interest because today we are facing a great many environmental issues, many of which may appear unconnected. Yet all these issues are part of our biosphere. For making plans for the future and addressing our long-term survival and well-being, an integrated knowledge of our biosphere and its history is therefore indispensable.

Key Features

  • Documents what the biosphere is, and what our position as humans within it is today.

  • Describes how the biosphere has become the way it is.

  • Summarizes the novel simple theoretical model proposed in the book, and thus, how the biosphere functions.

  • Predicts what the possibilities and limitations are for future human action

  • Emphasizes how simple but careful observations can lead to far-reaching theoretical implications.
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"Does growing a few pepper plants in an Amsterdam high-rise and a lifetime of study of universal development help explain the biosphere on which our lives depend? To answer this question, Professor Fred Spier draws on both his far-reaching personal intellectual journey and the work of a large range of pioneers. The book has emerged from an ongoing lifetime of studying history across many disciplines while questioning biases, explains emergent complexity, and integrates separate fields into a single coherent and convincing whole." - Lowell Gustafson, Villanova, University

"After introducing the central concept of "Goldilocks conditions" for Big history, Fred Spier now offers us a new innovative view of the whole biosphere as part of a more cosmic view in which humans are included. Spier highlights and proposes again key notions that must not be forgotten – concepts that are essential to understand the world that we live in as a whole and our role in it." - Dra. Olga Garcia Moreno, Departamento de Geologia Universidad de Oviedo

"Fred Spier takes us on a journey from the everyday business of growing pepper plants in a flowerpot to the very edge of human knowledge about the future of life on Earth. A bold book written in an approachable and accessible style that challenges our relationship with other species and shows the central importance of building a more mutually beneficial relationship between humans and the rest of the biosphere." - Dr. Mark Williams, University of Leicester

"Spier walks in the footsteps of Alexander von Humboldt, offering an account of the development of the biosphere and the human place within it that combines biology, chemistry, history, anthropology, sociology and a few other sciences as well. How the Biosphere Works ranges in scale from microbes to the Universe, mixing idiosyncratic observations on pepper plants with insightful analysis of large-scale social systems. It is a unique synthesis, clearly written and handsomely illustrated, a rewarding read for anyone." - J.R. McNeill, author of Something New under the Sun and The Great Acceleration

ISBN: 9781032230412

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 453g

256 pages