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9780198502715

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For all its detailed ramblings, a breezily erudite exploration of how our planet works (or at least the current thinking thereon, which, like Earth itself, undergoes periodic cataclysmic changes), from British geologist Drury (Open Univ.). He fashions here a sumptuous brocade of earth science, one that works many threads into its complex finish. Start with quantum theory, as everything is in flux, changing, giving and taking energy, on the move; otherwise, even if such a state existed, we would not know, simply because there would be no signal of any kind. Understand that you will need a smattering of organic and inorganic chemistry to entertain notions of life's origin, when information-rich molecules assembled themselves and began to reproduce. And as chaos and long odds have played so critical a role in Earth's progress - convulsive punctuations out of the blue, like meteors, or from deep within, like flood basalts - Drury suggests that an open mind is a necessity for entertaining dangerous and exciting ideas, like the complexity-theory model on the origins of life. His unfurling of theories is sensible, if rapid, and mostly painless. There's a reason why he introduces the Stefan-Boltzmann law, which states that the baroque architecture of biological molecules hangs on a scaffold of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen, and that clay may have mediated the building of proto-RNA. The reason is that understanding, as Drury sees it, is a mad and quite beautiful jig of fielding knotty ideas thrown at you with increasing velocity from many fronts, and seeing if and how they fit in the big picture. And winningly, he displays an activist's urge to share his knowledge, particularly in those venues where political and economic repression squelches learning and threatens the stability of our environmental processes. A geological text of the accessibly rarified sort - ranging, undogmatic, diverting - with a light-handed infusion of ethics thrown into the bargain. (Kirkus Reviews)

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Stephen Drury teaches in the Department of Earth Sciences in The Open University. The author of Images of the Earth: A Guide to Remote Sensing, he lives in the United Kingdom.

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