Roberts, Jason | EVERY LIVING THING : the great and deadly race to know all life

En utforskning av den vetenskapliga rivaliteten mellan Linnaeus och Buffon, som formade vår förståelse av liv och natur.

• En fascinerande berättelse om vetenskaplig rivalitet.

• Utforskar Linnaeus och Buffons liv och arv.

• I häftat band, 2025, på engelska.

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Bindning: Häftat band

Bokförlag: Penguin Random House USA
ISBN: 9781984855220

Omfång: 432 s.
Språk: Engelska
Utgivningsdatum: 2025-05-27

Förlagets information

Boken skildrar den vetenskapliga rivaliteten mellan Carl von Linné och Georges-Louis de Buffon på 1700-talet, där de båda strävade efter att katalogisera allt liv på jorden. Roberts utforskar deras motsatta synsätt på naturen och hur deras idéer har påverkat den moderna biologin och synen på mänskligheten.

An epic, extraordinary account of scientific rivalry and obsession in the quest to survey all of life on Earth—a competition “with continued repercussions for Western views of race. [This] vivid double biography is a passionate corrective” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice).

“[A] vibrant scientific saga . . . at once important, outrageous, enlightening, entertaining, enduring, and still evolving.”—Dava Sobel, author of Longitude

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?

Both fell far short of their goal, but in the process they articulated starkly divergent views on nature, the future of the Earth, and humanity itself. Linnaeus gave the world such concepts as mammal, primate, and Homo sapiens, but he also denied that species change and he promulgated racist pseudoscience. Buffon formulated early prototypes of evolution and genetics, warned of global climate change, and argued passionately against prejudice. The clash of their conflicting worldviews continued well after their deaths, as their successors contended for dominance in the emerging science that came to be called biology.

In Every Living Thing, Jason Roberts weaves a sweeping, unforgettable narrative spell, exploring the intertwined lives and legacies of Linnaeus and Buffon—as well as the groundbreaking, often fatal adventures of their acolytes—to trace an arc of insight and discovery that extends across three centuries into the present day.

Every living thing av Jason Roberts hittar du under Naturvetenskap: allmänt inom Biologi i huvudkategorin Vetenskap | Teknik.

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