Description
Book SynopsisTraces historical developments in physiology, ecology, behavior, and evolutionary biology during the decades following World War II.
Life Out of Balance focuses on a period in history when new ideas of self-regulation, adaptation, and fitness became central to a variety of biological disciplines.
Trade ReviewThe idea of balance and directionality in ecological systems has a rich history, but usually not as well connected to the work of systematists and physiologists. The standard narrative for the mid-century period has been the rejection of physiological metaphors and superorganisms in favor of a Gleasonian ‘individualistic concept’, nicely tied to an origin story for evolutionary ecology as a discipline. Hagen brings a welcome corrective to that history by revealing the widespread and persistent appeal and use of the idea of homeostasis, across multiple fields." —William C. Kimler, associate professor of history at North Carolina State University
"As a work of intellectual history or the history of scientific ideas,
Life Out of Balance also draws on the archival record and on correspondence, bringing new and unfamiliar insights to a subject that should have been far more central in the history of the biological sciences." —Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, author of
Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary BiologyTable of Contents
- List of Figures
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. Adaptation and the Wisdom of the Body
- Chapter 2. Bodily Wisdom or Stupidity?
- Chapter 3. Free and Independent Life
- Chapter 4. Living Water
- Chapter 5. Physiological Ecology from an Engineering Perspective
- Chapter 6. An Experimental Naturalist in the Laboratory and Field
- Chapter 7. Complexities of Thermoregulation
- Chapter 8. Physiological Teamwork, Homeostasis, and Coadaptation
- Chapter 9. Limits of Tolerance, Adaptation, and Speciation
- Chapter 10. Adaptation, Natural Selection, and Homeostatic Populations
- Chapter 11. Symbiosis and Coadaptation in Homeostatic Ecosystems
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
