Triumvirate of reason, history and evolution

My trips to the library begin with a scan of my Amazon.com wish list and/or my del.icio.us bookmarks as I attempt to find at least one book on my “to do” list that is available NOW at the library.

List in hand, I begin a strange trip at the library — zeroing in on books I want and typically satisficing with books the library has. Rarely does the online listing of what’s available correspond to what books are actually findable — Dewey Decimal be damned.

It’s with this oddly organized, rather vague goal that I found myself with the trio of books just completed.

1. Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan
2. Meet You in Hell, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America by Les Standiford
3. The Botany of Desire, A Plant’s-eye View of the World by Michael Pollan

The trip began with a desire to read Michael Pollan’s latest, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, a hunger that went unfilled as the book was checked out.

As with many other visits to the library, I was easily satisfied with an earlier work, Botany of Desire.

Leaving the library with only one book should be a red flag for the Feds to use the Patriot Act against me — it’s a rare feat for me to check out just one title, a feat that probably means mischief is afoot.

So, I also grabbed Demon-Haunted World, because now two of my friends have read it and I was starting to feel left out, and Meet You in Hell, it being one of the catchier titles in the “What’s new” economic section.

As already reviewed on this site, I read Sagan first. As I was reading Demon, I was sure it was the best book of the bunch.

Meet You in Hell came next. Again, as I dog-eared its pages, it struck me as a quicker, fresher work than Demon.

Finally, Botany had its chance to catch my eye. And, as I raced through 180 pages before putting the book down, I decided this must be the pick of the litter.

Well, which is the cream?

Meet You in Hell

Meet You in Hell is described by Dennis Lehane as “a muscular, enthralling read.” I should leave my pithy review at that, but here are some noteworthy thoughts from its pages:

Steel magnate Carnegie employed a Captain Jones “a down-to-earth sort” who followed Carnegie’s example of rigorously measuring everything that could be measured in a factory. One insight his measurements led to at The Edgar Thomson works — the eight-hour workday.

Men could maintain almost any pace for eight hours, Jones reasoned, and after sixteen hours of rest they would return refreshed, ready for more of anything. The company would thereby gain a greatly increased output while expending the very same amount on wages. Jones’s elegant notion was not only wildly popular with the men, it proved to be as effective in practice as it seemed on paper, and the eight-hour workday was born to steel.

Again and again, Standiford notes Carnegie’s interest on what it cost to produce goods.

Carnegie would repeat the mantra time and again: profits and prices were cyclical, subject to any number of transient forces of the marketplace. Costs, however, could be strictly controlled, and in Carnegie’s view, any savings achieved in the cost of goods were permanent. Carnegie rarely balked when his managers suggested improvements to the physical plants of his operations, not if the goal was greater efficiency in production

This overriding interest in controlling costs, coupled with Carnegie’s belief that:

survival of the fittest was not only the operating principle upon which the world order depended, but that Darwinism justified every action he would take in his own business life. The measuring stick was calibrated in dollars, and every tick that Carnegie marked off was a sign of progress toward the greater good.

led to the labor clash at the heart of Meet You in Hell, the deadly strike in 1892 at the Homestead works.

Driven by economic Darwinism, Carnegie’s partner Henry Clay Frick used Pinkerton guards in an attempt to literally crush the strike.

The Botany of Desire

A different type of labor is dissected in Botany of Desire, the work of humans as we coevolve four plants: apples, tulips, marijuana and potatoes.

Pollan’s striking thesis: Plants choose us just as we choose plants.

The ancient relationship between bees and flowers is a classic example of what is known as “coevolution.” In a coevolutionary bargain like the one struck by the bee and the apple tree, the two parties act on each other to advance their individual interest but wind up trading favors: food for the bee, transportation for the apple genes. consciousness needn’t enter into it on either side, and the traditional distinction between subject and object is meaningless.

With a colorful tone not unlike Eric Schlosser, Pollan deliciously traces the transformation of the wild Kazakhstan apple from the work of legendary John Chapman — Johnny Appleseed — to the PR campaign at the turn of the 20th Century that turned the apple into a fruit eaten, instead of pressed and imbibed as a hard cider.

The apple evolved uniquely in America. Chapman’s seedings were a true melting pot for apple genetics, creating unique varieties that, alas, are not available for today’s mechanized kitchen. Pollan gets back to this point at the end of this work, after stopping off with the coevolution of the tulip and marijuana.

On Marijuana: In 1988 it was discovered that the brain has a network of THC receptors. Humans create a form of cannabis, anandamide, or inner bliss. Why does marijuana produce THC? Could it be that this plant, coevolving with humans for more than 10,000 years, struck on one powerful reason for humans to spread it around the world, its psychoactive properties?

But now, let’s come down from our high and examine the foolish bargain struck by modern agriculture. By choosing to stick with a few apples, and one type of desirable potato, Pollan shows how unknowing our current monoculture farming is. Modern potatoes require an enormous amount of pesticide “input.” Monsanto sees a way around coating farms with blankets of toxic insecticides, et al: Genetically infuse the potato with Bacillus thuringiensis, or “Bt.”

Monsanto has created a potato that is resistant to the Colorado potato beetle. For now. Even the company admits, that within 30 years, the beetle will be resistant to Bt, and begin munching wholesale on potato farms anew.

Pollan’s argument that humans and plants coevolved comes to a head in looking at the potato because by ignoring diversity, by genetically altering the spud and fixing our hopes to one type of tater, we’re losing sight of the grand evolutionary game of chance that has propelled both plant life and the human society.

tie it all together, Dan

In a seemingly random fashion, I’ve come upon three strong books that deal with evolution from three perspectives.

Throwing caution to the wind, I’ll link these works in a paragraph:

The rational, market-driven success of Carnegie and Frick propelled America to a industrial, technical, science-based society that grew complacent, allowing Sagan to wisely note the disconnect between people and science that threatens to pull our culture further away from finding truth. Our dismissal of nature in what we eat is symptomatic of this disconnect — our evolutionary palate is being simplified in a dangerous way as we rely on too few types of food.

Let me know your thoughts on these works, or what I should attack next.