To Respect the Earth’s Limits — or Push Them?
The Wizard and the Prophet Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World By Charles C. Mann 640 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $28.95. In “The Wizard and the Prophet” Charles C. Mann tries something tricky: to illuminate contemporary debates about the environment by examining the lives and philosophies of two men, long dead and mostly forgotten thinkers who had competing visions for the Earth’s future. It’s an ambitious sort of book, one that, to be completely successful, requires two things. One is a command of sprawling detail, with the ability to see parallels among events across time and distance and to explain the complex with ease. The second is an analytical device that takes all those parts and molds them into something novel and useful.
2019-09-11 10:02
From: Ingo Fetzer