Reviews and Comments

This book covers a very interesting, though not much explored, subject of the history of how humanity came to perceive plants and their roles. This, in some sense, is a history of botany, but taken in a much broader sense of how societies understand plants.

As the subtitle suggests, the book focus on the human perspective of plants, with many tales of discoveries and fascinations, fads, and the personalities behind such events. If you read it expecting to have plants as the main characters, this will be disappointed. But that you probably know. If this is a book about the forty thousand years of plant life and the human imagination, it comes with little surprise that this will focus on the human dealings with plants.

If you like plants; and if you like to discover how humans have changed their perceptions about these fascinating yet so strange living things, this book will definitely entertain you as well as enlighten you on this subject.

Birds are interesting creatures. But for many of us they are so far removed from our day to day experience, at least in terms of having any meaningful contact with their lives, that we do know know, or understand, much of what happens to them. And for many of us, there is also the unfortunate prejudice of taking birds for being creatures that lack that feature we so highly value—intelligence.

So this book tries to tackle this two difficulties by providing lots of meaningful facts and also factoids about birds that gives us a glimpse both of their colorful lives as well as their prowess in regards to their smartness. Since their world is so rife in challenges, be it from the many dangers they face as well as from the competition from their peers, birds have developed many tricks that make them unique creatures, endowed with a particular kind of intelligence that, in their own way, deserves our respect.

So, for those of us that know little of birds and would like to know a little bit more; that are culturally prejudiced against their many qualities, thus not giving them the proper respect they deserve; this book is sure worth of your time and attention.

It’s the end of the world and we’re already experiencing it. However, since the end of the world is an object that far transcends our ability to grasp it, it is a hyperobject.

Every object is a hyperobject in a sense. And since hyperobjects are so difficult to make sense, this book try, in a hyperobjective way, to hyperobjectify our understanding of hyperobjects, making it a bit hard to grasp its message. However, that is not the author’s fault. This is the nature of hyperobjects and reading this book, with all its faults, still makes you aware of these hyperdimensions where we inhabit and rarely give a thought about it.

This is not an easy book; but it is not an easy subject. Notwithstanding that, the author does a great job in giving you a sense of what he’s aiming at.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, if you’re interested in philosophy; moreso if you want to learn about a cutting edge approach to ontology. If you’re not into this, don’t waste your time. The message is: we are already there, but it is too big and too complex for us to understand its workings and implications.

In some sense, this is a difficult book. Its main theme is interesting in itself, but as the title points out, it’s a Galaxy, or a myriad of connections that are simply to great to properly grasp it fully. If we take the analogy of the galaxy even further, it becomes obvious that even McLuhan’s analysis of the Gutenberg influence in Western culture is somewhat doomed to failure: we are simply too close to its effects, too deep inside it, to understand it clearly — just like trying to understand the Milky Way from inside is also a baffling task.

Being a difficult subject is a kind of excuse for the somewhat opaqueness of this work. McLuhan, in the essay that ends the book, states that “[t]he present volume has employed a mosaic pattern of perception and observation up till now” (MCLUHAN, 1962). This mosaic pattern is an attempt to cover the vast subject with meaningful quotes from different areas of study, using the quotes to provide examples of how typography changed humankind’s perception of things, altering the relation with understanding and the world at large — making of the whole of humanity a uniform entity. However, even though we can understand the approach McLuhan chose to cover this subject, this mosaic technique is also very confusing at times and can often mislead from the author’s original intention.

My feeling is that at some point even McLuhan himself was confused as to where he was trying to go with the text he had produced thus far. However, I’m not trying to diminish his work or to state that it could be done in some other, more competent way. As stated before, the subject matter, being a galaxy of consequences, it’s simply too overwhelming to be completely grasped.

But, in the end, this book can provide some light to those who want to understand history’s movements and changes in a different light, one that focus on the technological changes of information sharing, thus showing a different perspective that takes away history from the hands of some enlightened individuals and places it in the domain of the accidents that simple inventions with huge penetration have had in society at large. This book is also good to direct your attention the work of Harold Innis that provides much more insight into this theme of information technology, media shaping and history making. As McLuhan himself states, “Harold Innis was the first person to hit upon the process of change as implicit in the forms of media technology. The present book is a footnote of explanation to his work.” (MCLUHAN, 1962).

So is it worth reading? As always, it depends. If you’re studying media, media development, media implications, and so on, probably yes; if you’re just want to gloss over some of the ideas herein contained, probably not — you’ll be better served if you read a summary or a thorough review of this work.

What do I think about such an epic, Iliad and Odyssey combined, in a 19th century leviathanic novel of such proportions? Would I dare to add something of my own to such a renowned work?

This is not the kind of book you would grasp at first reading; and this was my first. There’s simply too much content for a fly-by reading such as mine to take it fully. There is simply too much, way too much to even venture a justifiable review.

With all that out of the way, the only thing I can add is the personal remark about if reading a book of such a magnitude is worthy of the time and patience to delve into this almost unknown world of the past. Is it? Is this time well spent? I believe it is; that if you don’t mind coming up to the same conclusion as I did that one reading is not enough and one reading just gives you a glimpse of what’s underneath this mythical tale of man against nature.

When all else is considered; when you understand that only by taking it whole you can at least gain some reverence for the work and the genius behind it, you may come to the same conclusion that I did: it was worthy of my time; it was time well spent. Now I have to lay it dormant and hope the seeds I now planted may grow into something more insightful in the future. “There she blows!” (MELVILLE, 1851): maybe next time I'll give this whale a proper hunt.

If you are familiar with the works of the likes of Frans de Waal, Edward O. Wilson, Jane Goodall, [insert name of reputed ethologist/biologist], the subject matter of this book will not come to you as a surprise. In a way, its premisse, that of animals having a sense of justice, morality, fairness, all being evolved traits, is just a given. However, when you start to read the book, you know you are not the primary target audience of its message.

The book presents its case in defense of the notion of Wild Justice, a sense of justice, morality, fairness that some social animals have, thus blurring even more the lines that separate the human animal from all other non-human animals. The case is more philosophical, or theoretical, than practical; that is, the authors rely on the works of primatologists, ethologists, biologists, etc, to draw conclusions allowing them to question the long standing assumptions that morality is an exclusive human characteristic.

The text tends to be a bit repetitive, as if taking you through a revolving door with the same idea popping up again and again. Is it intentional? Or is this the outcome of having the text composed by two separate authors? Either way, it's not as bad as it sounds. If you're unfamiliar with its subject matter, the repetitions allow to give a second (or third, fourth, ...) thought about the issues at hand.


Now, does it deserve a reading? If you are familiar with the biology/ethology field, maybe not. But if you have a philosophical bent and like to explore the ethical dimensions open up by the current consensus on the animal behavior front, than this book is for you. For in it you’ll have a good summary of the observations, experiences, hypotheses and conclusions on animal behavior research.