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In Celebrations of Life, René Dubos, world-renowned
scientist, humanist, and Pulitzer-prizewinning author, presents with extraordinary
clarity and breadth his ideas about human life and our relationship to the earth
that he has spent a lifetime advancing. Using examples from microbes to mammals
to Manhattan, Dubos supports his profoundly optimistic view of humankind as individuals,
as societies, and as a species. We see how Homo sapiens
becomes human through social contact (and fails to do so without it). Biological
evolution is irreversible, but social evolution, says Dr. Dubos, consists of chosen
change -- even chosen reverses, for humans alone can anticipate the future. Dubos
forcefully counters the doomsday sayers with his conviction that where humans
are concerned, "trend is not destiny." Dubos
grounds his famous slogan "Think Globally, Act Locally" in elementary
principles of life in a chapter that could well serve as a blueprint for ecological
balance in nature and nations alike. He goes on to some of his favorite frontiers
of human adaptation, including brain chemistry, planned communities, and solar
energy. He leaves us with the reminder that of the great herds of animals that
evolved with Homo sapiens in the African savanna, only we have voluntarily
left it to populate the globe. And in this biologically rooted need to seek and
understand new environments and situations lie the joy and hope of human life.
Early in his career, Dr. René Dubos developed the
first technique for the discovery and production of antibiotics. Among his thirty-two
books, So Human An Animal won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. He is Professor
Emeritus at Rockefeller University, New York City, where he has held many posts
over a fifty-year career. More recently he organized the René Dubos Center
for Human Environments, which promotes humanistic solutions to environmental problems.
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