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Life's Devices: The Physical World of Animals and Plants
This entertaining and informative book describes how living things bump up against non-biological reality. "My immodest aim," says the author, "is to change how you view your immediate surroundings." He asks us to wonder about the design of plants and animals around why a fish swims more rapidly than a duck can paddle, why healthy trees more commonly uproot than break, how a shark manages with such a flimsy skeleton, or how a mouse can easily survive a fall onto any surface from any height.
The book will not only fascinate the general reader but will also serve as an introductory survey of biomechanics. On one hand, organisms cannot alter the earth's gravity, the properties of water, the compressibility of air, or the behavior of diffusing molecules. On the other, such physical factors form both constraints with which the evolutionary process must contend and opportunities upon which it might capitalize. Life's Devices includes examples from every major group of animals and plants, with references to recent work, with illustrative problems, and with suggestions of experiments that need only common household materials.
The book will not only fascinate the general reader but will also serve as an introductory survey of biomechanics. On one hand, organisms cannot alter the earth's gravity, the properties of water, the compressibility of air, or the behavior of diffusing molecules. On the other, such physical factors form both constraints with which the evolutionary process must contend and opportunities upon which it might capitalize. Life's Devices includes examples from every major group of animals and plants, with references to recent work, with illustrative problems, and with suggestions of experiments that need only common household materials.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1988
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208 people want to read
About the author
Steven Vogel
25 books16 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Steven Vogel is James B. Duke Professor, Emeritus, in the Department of Biology at Duke University.
As it has turned out, my activities as a teacher and writer have extended well beyond the explication of the immediate results of research. The first two of my seven books, A Functional Bestiary: Laboratory Studies about Living Systems and A Model Menagerie: Laboratory Studies about Living Systems, provide eclectic material for teaching laboratories in introductory biology. The third, Life in Moving Fluids, finds most use as an entry point into fluid mechanics; it is now in its second (much enlarged) edition. The fourth, Life's Devices, takes comparative biomechanics as a paradigm for thinking about science, using the very mundanity of the subject to draw in non-scientists rather than presenting them with some system of revelation. The book was generated through a course given to adults in a non-specialist master's program and is now in use in a variety of undergraduate courses; it was selected by a science-oriented book club and has won a substantial award. Material in that book reappears in expanded and more sophisticated form in my recent undergraduate textbook, Comparative Biomechanics. The fifth, Vital Circuits, is of a deliberately less pedagogical character; it's about circulatory systems, whose disabilities are of widespread interest. But it uses them as a vehicle to talk in biological rather than pathological terms and to illustrate how a such a subject is viewed by a biological scientist in contrast to a journalist or a physician. Cats' Paws and Catapults, also aimed at the general reader, compares the mechanical technologies of nature with that of humans. Prime Mover, another trade book, tries to link the biomechanics and physiology of muscle to the role it has played in human activities. Finally, I've written for more popular publications, such as Natural History and Discover, attempting to create pieces that explain science rather than merely reporting on the current activities of scientists, and I've become involved with several science museums, again in activities aimed at explaining science as part of contemporary culture. Two additional books, both aimed at a general scientific readership, are currently in gestation.
Steven Vogel is James B. Duke Professor, Emeritus, in the Department of Biology at Duke University.
As it has turned out, my activities as a teacher and writer have extended well beyond the explication of the immediate results of research. The first two of my seven books, A Functional Bestiary: Laboratory Studies about Living Systems and A Model Menagerie: Laboratory Studies about Living Systems, provide eclectic material for teaching laboratories in introductory biology. The third, Life in Moving Fluids, finds most use as an entry point into fluid mechanics; it is now in its second (much enlarged) edition. The fourth, Life's Devices, takes comparative biomechanics as a paradigm for thinking about science, using the very mundanity of the subject to draw in non-scientists rather than presenting them with some system of revelation. The book was generated through a course given to adults in a non-specialist master's program and is now in use in a variety of undergraduate courses; it was selected by a science-oriented book club and has won a substantial award. Material in that book reappears in expanded and more sophisticated form in my recent undergraduate textbook, Comparative Biomechanics. The fifth, Vital Circuits, is of a deliberately less pedagogical character; it's about circulatory systems, whose disabilities are of widespread interest. But it uses them as a vehicle to talk in biological rather than pathological terms and to illustrate how a such a subject is viewed by a biological scientist in contrast to a journalist or a physician. Cats' Paws and Catapults, also aimed at the general reader, compares the mechanical technologies of nature with that of humans. Prime Mover, another trade book, tries to link the biomechanics and physiology of muscle to the role it has played in human activities. Finally, I've written for more popular publications, such as Natural History and Discover, attempting to create pieces that explain science rather than merely reporting on the current activities of scientists, and I've become involved with several science museums, again in activities aimed at explaining science as part of contemporary culture. Two additional books, both aimed at a general scientific readership, are currently in gestation.
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October 2, 2018
Usually the publisher's blurb for a book is just so much puffery. In this case, the blurb is totally honest. Vogel's dive into the interaction between physics and biomechanics is well-written, clever and fascinating.
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