Plants and People

Lab Girl 

by Hope Jahren

"People are like plants: they grow toward the light. I chose science because science gave me what I needed---a home as defined in the most literal sense: a safe place to be." - Hope Jahren

Are people like plants? Can you hear plants grow? These and other questions are raised and answered or at least discussed in this fascinating book by geobiologist Hope Jahren. I have enjoyed reading about science throughout my life, from biographies of Michael Faraday and George Washington Carver in my youth to works by scientists and histories of science in my adult life. 

Lab Girl changed the way I perceived trees. It forced me to consider the incredible grace and tenacity of a seed. Most notably, it introduced me to a very fascinating woman, a scientist who was so enthralled with her work that I could practically feel it in every page. This is a clever, captivating, and successful debut. With her passion for science, Hope Jahren's Lab Girl teaches us in the best way possible. Its profundity made it a book that is powerful and unique. The result was as interesting a read as any I have had in quite a while.

Viewers of Nature

Watchers at the Pond 

by Franklin Russell

“The hawk turned slowly and flexed his great wings to maintain his height. In this cold wind, he flew merely to see and to travel. Gone was the exhilaration of fast-rising summer air carrying him so high into the sky's blue vacuum that the pond became a silver speck and the great southern lake dazzled him with a glaring slash of reflected sun.”  ― Franklin Russell, Watchers at the Pond




The poetic style of this book reminded me of Loren Eiseley's marvelous science writing. Franklin Russell watches along with other animals and narrates what he sees over the course of the seasons. The other watchers include hawks and hares and muskrats, but the observations of the narrator bring the pond alive merging science with poetry.

He begins his story in the winter with some ladybirds encased in ice while chipmunks and others would hibernate nearby. Some of the birds have flown south for the winter only to return in the spring. Nature explodes in the fury of a blizzard that wrenches limbs from trees and exposes sleeping carpenter ants to the frigid cold.

The pond of the title was actually based on many ponds from a park in Hamilton, Ontario to many other ponds that he would explore in the Canadian countryside. What he finds he relates in beautiful prose that does not ignore the science on display. He can visualize single-celled organisms "by the billions in the pond . . . infinitely more varied than visible creatures . . . their soft unicellular bodies pulsing with slow and stately dignity." He does not let the scientist get in the way of the watcher or the writer. The ducks flying over the pond pass "very low and fast" and are "gone in the sound of a quack." Spring and summer come with more variety from mosquitoes to more waterfowl. He does not ignore the flora with descriptions of flowers and fruits like wild strawberries. Some of this reminded me of my own Wisconsin upbringing and time spent near similar ponds.

Thoreau wrote, near the end of Walden: "We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor . . . We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion . . . and deriving health and strength from the repast . . . I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another . . . The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence."

The year at Russell's pond ends in a kind of innocence as well. The beauty of his prose mirrors the beauty of nature yielding a classic small book about the science and poetry that one can find at the edge of ponds. I would recommend this book as a great read for any season.

Illuminating and Inspirational Memoir: an introduction

The Periodic Table 
by Primo Levi



“Alongside the liberating relief of the veteran who tells us his story, I now felt in the writing a complex, intense, and new pleasure, similar to that I felt as a student when penetrating the solemn order of differentials calculus. It was exalting to search and find, or create, the right word, that is, commensurate, concise, and strong; to dredge up events from my memory and describe them with the greatest rigor and the least clutter.”   ― Primo Levi, The Periodic Table



Thomas Mann began his tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers, with this sentence: "Very deep is the well of the past." Primo Levi's memoir, The Periodic Table, demonstrates this metaphor in a much smaller, compact space. The lives of Levi and his Piedmont ancestors are explored through stories that illuminate the nature of the past and the source of those people's and our own humanity. This is done through vignettes that demonstrate Levi's love of chemistry and literature, his relations and relationships, while exploring his own attitude and thoughts.

Some of his thoughts are about reading and its meaning for his life. This is a topic that I especially love to explore and learn about;  I will take it up in this introductory commentary on his memoir. His reading is based on his love for great literature particularly his appreciation for the writings of Thomas Mann, whom he holds in the highest esteem. 
Early in the narrative during his sojourn as a chemistry student he meets Rita, a fellow student, and is attracted to her although, due to his shyness, he does not know how to approach her. He reaches a point where "I thought myself condemned to a perpetual masculine solitude, denied a woman's smile forever". Yet one day he found beside her, peeking out of her bag, a book. It was The Magic Mountain. He relates, "it was my sustenance during those months, the timeless story of Hans Castorp in enchanted exile on the magic mountain. I asked Rita about it, on tenterhooks to hear her opinion, as if I had written the book: and soon enough I had to realize that she was reading the novel in an entirely different way. As a novel, in fact: she was very interested in finding out exactly how far Hans would go with Madame Chauchat, and mercilessly skipped the fascinating (for me) political, theological, and metaphysical discussions between the humanist Settembrini and the Jewish Jesuit Naphtha." (p 38)
We all may have had a similar experience more than once: finding someone (whether drawn to them by Eros or not) reading a book we love, but not reading the same book.

Levi's love for Mann's writing also provided him solace while working on a demanding project during the war. He was sequestered in a laboratory next to a nickel mine and forced to work long hours. He dared not venture far from the mine, so "Sometimes I stayed in the lab past quitting time or went back there after dinner to study, or to meditate on the problem of nickel. At other times I shut myself in to read Mann's Joseph stories in my monastic cell in the submarine. On nights when the moon was up I often took long solitary walks through the wild countryside around the mine". (p 79)
One can picture Levi pondering while walking by the light of the Tuscan moon finding comfort as did Jacob in Mann's novel when he walked in the moonlight. It is the moonlight with its "magically ambiguous precision" that mirrored for Jacob the way the traditions of the children and grandchildren of Abraham are "spun out over generations and solidified as a chronicle only much later--". ("The Tales of Jacob")

Throughout his memoir Primo Levi shares other literature and experiences as he narrates the lives of his friends, family, and ancestors. Just as he is inspired by reading Thomas Mann and the moonlight that inspired Jacob so many centuries ago he is imbued with the life of the people around him. Yes, The Periodic Table is deep, and one wonders at the lives narrated by this brilliant Jewish Italian chemist and humanist.  


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Introduction to Freud's Thought

Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 
by Sigmund Freud


“With words one man can make another blessed, or drive him to despair; by words the teacher transfers his knowledge to the pupil; by words the speaker sweeps his audience with him and determines its judgments and decisions. Words call forth effects and are the universal means of influencing human beings.”   ― Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

In 1916, some twenty years after coining the word psychoanalysis, Freud began a series of lectures entitled Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. This book presents those lectures where Freud describes his theories and techniques directed towards discovering and finding solutions to the mental problems observed in patients.

During the course of the twenty-eight extremely accessible essays, we discover that he came by the idea that there could be unconscious desires from the practice of hypnosis, in which wish suggestions are rooted in the brain and some time after the patient has awakened actuates upon those suggestions without knowing why.  Freud has a way with words and his style makes this and his other books enjoyable to read.

An important aspect of this book is its logical organization.  It is divided into three sections pertaining to parapraxes, dreams, and a general theory of the neuroses. Although mutually related, we find that Freud's discourse throughout follows a similar pattern: hypotheses, research and discovery, and one may wonder whether the research inspired the hypotheses, or if the presuppositions needed to begin questioning and researching led to his very particular and what were at the time revolutionary brand of ideas. 
Parapraxes are introduced as faulty acts, such as memory or speech errors, mishearing, chance actions, forgetting, losing or mislaying something, misreadings and misprints, blunders and slips of the tongue. Upon reading more they turn out to be everyday displays of pathologies: actions assumed to have not been planned but upon inspection the opposite is often the case. 
Before Freud, dreams were generally considered random and meaningless images, but for Freud, the psychoanalyst, nothing is left to chance or indifference; there is not a single psychical phenomenon which does not have some meaning or intention, most notably disguised expressions of unconscious wishes. If you are interested in more details about Freud's views on dreams his earlier Interpretation of Dreams is a great book to read.
The final section of lectures draws the reader into the realm of the neurosis. These type of mental disorders need to be understood as the result of conflict and repression, and hence the neurosis, dream, parapraxes, and unconscious mind are solutions arising from the inherent and universal animosity either between unconscious and conscious mental states, or society and the individual.

This is the best place to start if you have never read Freud. His prose style is felicitous.  He explains the "Oedipus complex", "freudian slip" and other concepts which have become part of our cultural heritage.  In doing so he provides a thorough introduction to his views on psychoanalysis.

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The Immortal Demon

The Cancer Chronicles: 
Unlocking Medicine's Deepest Mystery
by George Johnson

"We must never feel disarmed: nature is immense and conplex, but it is not impermeable to intelligence; we must circle around it, pierce and probe it, looking for the opening or making it." - Primo Levi, The Periodic Table

George Johnson opens his book, on the page preceding chapter one, with an epigraph from Reynolds Price's memoir about his own struggle with cancer that left him in a paraplegic state. I mention this because I was moved by my reading of Price's book almost two decades ago and, while it was an eloquent expression of the experience of cancer it did not, as I remember, inform me significantly about the nature of the disease itself. With The Cancer Chronicles George Johnson, a writer whose book Fire in the Mind impressed me several years ago, shares both the history and nature of the disease called Cancer and a memoir of his wife's own battle with that disease.
The history of cancer begins very far back in prehistoric times for it seems that scientists have found that the disease was already present in the age of Dinosaurs. This revelation along with others made the book both informative and interesting to read. His chronicle of the history of the science of cancer explores the realms of epidemiology. clinical trials, laboratory experiments while sharing information from evolutionary biology and other sciences. Even the economics of the Cancer research juggernaut is described -- an industry that has grown to an immense size in the search for an elusive "cure" for cancer.
Cancer the disease is at the core of the book and permeates the narrative, but the chronicles reveal what is in reality multiple different diseases. Each cancer affects different parts of the body and different groups of humans in unique ways. This is an important part of the story and represents some of the basis for many of the obstacles scientists continue to face in analyzing how to stop or prevent the disease.
Johnson capably personalizes the story with interludes where he shares his wife's struggle with Cancer. In doing this he reveals a view of the disease from the point of view of the everyday person who must deal with the practicalities of diagnoses and treatments and hospital stays. For those of us who have family or close friends who have had the experience of this disease the narrative is a moving personal story. I also appreciated the literary allusions whether explicit, like the reference to Solzhenitsyn's masterpiece Cancer Ward, or implicit.  The author is eloquent both in his telling analysis of the disease and in his personal memoir; he demonstrates an ability to convey scientific concepts lucidly enough for the layman to understand. These characteristics and the fascination that the author shares for scientific discovery make this a great book full of insights into the deep mysteries of some of the most complex areas of modern medicine.

The Cancer Chronicles by George Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

A Grander View of Life

The Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows...There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whiles this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” ― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

HMS Beagle embarked for South America with Charles Darwin on board on May 11th in 1829. Thirty years later he published The Origin of Species where he began by laying out the main principles of his theory of natural selection in the early chapters. However, Darwin devotes most of the book to defending his theory against criticisms and presenting detailed examples of how natural selection occurs. The geological record is a formidable impediment to Darwin’s theory, as the existing fossil record does not provide the “missing links” in the chains of descent that Darwin proposes. In response, Darwin argues that the geological record is imperfect and that many fossil remains have been destroyed by changes in the earth or have yet to be discovered.
Darwin also attempts to explain how variations occur in species, driving natural selection and the creation of new species. Geographical isolation is a key component of Darwin’s theory. Darwin hypothesizes that because all species originated from one or a few original beings, species needed modes of transportation to migrate between geographical areas throughout the world. Barriers such as oceans and mountain ranges restrict the ability of organisms to migrate, and the few that manage to do so play a large role in shaping the evolution of species on islands and in geographically isolated areas. Geographical isolation accounts for the plethora of unique species on islands, as well as the wider distribution of species across continents.
Darwin’s theory challenged not only the prevailing view of the independent creation of species but also larger claims of religion and science. Darwin explicitly denied the validity of natural theology, which posited that species’ adaptations to their environments was proof of their “intelligent design” by a creator. It was natural selection, not independent creation, that resulted in these adaptations, Darwin argued. Moreover, Darwin’s use of scientific methodology to prove his theory amounted to an explicit critique of naturalists who would attempt to ignore the scientific validity of his theory because of its controversial nature. While the text of The Origin of Species did leave room for religious theology, Darwin’s overall commitment to scientific rationale rather than theological reasoning pitted him against religious doctrine.
Darwin’s text sold out on the day it was published in 1859 and created both friends and enemies of the theories discussed still to this day. There have been modifications of Darwin's theory of the origin of species (notably the Mendellian synthesis that incorporated genetics into the theory), but it stands to this day as the foundation of our understanding of the evolution. Surprisingly the only time evolution is specifically mentioned is in the last paragraph of the book.
This is a great book for anyone who wants to read a classic text of science.

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Naturalist Extraordinaire

The Immense Journey: 
An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature 

by Loren Eiseley

“The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.” ― Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
 

Simply the most beautiful science writing I have ever read. An “imaginative naturalist,” according to the cover of his book, The Immense Journey. An anthropologist, a scholar, a poet, a genius. Eiseley wears all of these hats. He observes the story of life unfolding throughout history, recounting some of it to us in his own story. “Forward and backward I have gone, and for me it has been an immense journey” (p 13). By the time we read these words we have come to realize that Eiseley is not just talking about his own life’s journey. Eiseley’s narrator is metaphor for the journey of all humankind through the vast dimension of time and space—a journey filled with perplexity, delight, and impermanence. Eiseley might refute that, if he were alive today. He claims he does not pretend to speak for anyone but himself.


“I have given the record of what one man thought as he pursued research and pressed his hands against the confining walls of scientific method in his time. But men see differently. I can at best report only from my own wilderness” (p 13).


This book is science and philosophy presented in lucid, beautiful prose - a reader's delight.






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The Moons of Jupiter

On Thanksgiving eve I had the opportunity to view the moons of Jupiter. Ed, my brother-in-law, set up his high powered astronomical binoculars on the deck of the house that he and my Sister, Robbie, built here in Spring Creek, Nevada. With the aid of these binoculars we were able to view Jupiter in the southeastern sky along with its four largest moons: Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. The view was stunning as was the view of the half-moon presence of Earth's own moon, with detail of craters galore on its surface. These images have stayed in my mind over the days since we viewed them along with other objects in the night sky, including the "Seven Sisters" and Orion's "belt" which was just above the horizon to the northeast on that early evening.
The juxtaposition of seeing the moons first identified by Galileo with the recent anniversary of Darwin's great work, The Origin of Species, reminded me of the importance of scientific accomplishments for our lives today. This was reinforced yesterday as we ate our Thanksgiving meal and watched a football game on the wide screen high-definition television. We continue to evolve and explore the reach of our minds as humans. It is a wonder both to behold and to be part of.

Darwin among the Machines

As far as we know mind and intelligence exist on an open-ended scale. Perhaps mind is a lucky accident that exists only at our particular depth of field, like some alpine flower that blooms between ten thousand and twelve thousand feet. Or perhaps there is mind at elevations both above and below our own.

- Darwin among the Machines, p. 217.

What do Thomas Hobbes, Erasmus Darwin, Samuel Butler, Alan Turing, Olaf Stapledon, and the RAND Corporation have in common? George B. Dyson explains what they have in common and more in his sometimes uneven but always fascinating book about "evolution of global intelligence" Darwin among the Machines. Dyson relates the story behind the growth of our global digital world through the individual stories of the above thinkers and more. They were all visionaries who saw beyond the everyday into the future and whose ideas led to the development of artificial intelligence and related fields that continue to undergo development in our new century. Dyson is good at relating these stories while weaving them into an evolutionary web that captures the changes that have occurred in the areas of digital computing and telecommunications, and the mechanics of the mind and artificial intelligence over the past century. The story that evolves from all his telling is both exciting and filled with possibilities for the future that border on science fiction. But in retrospect we see that science fiction has a way of becoming science fact. Readers who appreciate and want to learn more about the relationship of technology, humanity and nature will enjoy this book.


Darwin among the Machines by George B. Dyson. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. 1997.

Notes on a Darwin Weekend

Further Exploration

There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. . . Nevertheless the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.

- Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

The weekend study retreat on Charles Darwin that I just attended included two additional lectures; one on Saturday afternoon by Michaelangelo Allocca, Basic Program Instructor, with the tongue-in-cheek- title, "More Fun than a Barrel of Monkey Trials: Darwin's Complex Relationship with Religion", and one on Sunday morning by George Anastaplo, Basic Program Instructor, "On the Suggestive Origins of Darwin and Lincoln". Professor Anastaplo opened with an epigraph from the movie, King Kong, "It was beauty that killed the beast," and went on to once again demonstrate the fecundity of his ideas, centering his comments mainly on the similarities between the thought of Lincoln and Darwin who share more than simply the same birth date. These similarities included both their approaches to anti-slavery and their relationship with technology. In spite of similarities they were not successful in assessing each other's work.
Michael's presentation was informative in highlighting the complexity of Darwin's relationship with religion from the his early training as a vicar to his specific references to it in his works and letters. Perhaps most interesting, Michael noted the Catholic Church's muted criticism of Darwin in contrast with that of the Anglican church in his day. Continuing to the present the strongest critics of Darwinian evolution have generally been more fundamental Protestants. In addition Michael contrasted Darwin's views on religion with those of Alfred Russell Wallace who, while almost simultaneously developing a similar theory of evolution, held much more eccentric views of religion and the supernatural.

The highlight of the weekend was a multi-media presentation with song on Saturday Evening by Richard Milner, Anthropologist and Historian of Science Extraordinaire. His musical presentation of the life and thought of Darwin was spectacular. A taste of it can be found at his own web site, Darwin Live.

Notes on a Darwin Weekend

An Exploration of Evolutionary Ideas

There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this plane has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

I just returned from a weekend immersed in the works and ideas of Charles Darwin who was born two hundred years ago, on February 12, 1809 (the same day as Abraham Lincoln). A group sponsored by the University of Chicago Basic Program of Liberal Education held a weekend study retreat, Charles Darwin: A Continuing Challenge.

On Friday night the weekend commenced with a lecture, "Does Darwin Support or Subvert Morality?", by Larry Arnhart, Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University. The lecture and subsequent discussion considered the historical science in Darwin's writings and the difficulties he anticipated. It moved quickly into the consideration of morality where it was noted that Darwin was not neutral; for example, he advocated the abolition of slavery, even criticizing Lincoln who he felt went neither far enough nor fast enough. Darwin's critics claim that his view that people are just "animals" subverts morality; encourages atheism, advocates a materialism that leads to denial of free will, and ultimately leads to the sort of Social Darwinism that results in eugenics and racism. In defending Darwin Prof. Arnhart pointed out that in The Descent of Man Darwin claimed that man has a "natural moral sense" that develops from four stages of his evolutionary development: social instinct, intellectual faculties, language and habit. This "moral sense" is seen as a "highly complex sentiment" that leads to kindness, reciprocity, and mutuality. In conclusion Prof. Arnhart pointed out that sympathy for other humans is the "noblest part of our nature" (The Descent of Man).

Our Friday evening concluded with further discussion about these ideas and others over wine and conviviality. Darwin looked to be a topic that could support an invigorating exploration of ideas.

On Saturday morning, John (Jack) Melsheimer, Instructor in the Basic Program, presented "What Does 'Species' Mean in the Origin of Species?". Darwin said, "No one definition (of species) has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species."(p. 65). Generally Darwin uses species as a heuristic recognizing that species is "arbitrarily-given" and used for "convenience sake." Jack presented this and Darwin's discussion of morphology, taxonomy, descent with modification and other issues present in the Origin. It is here that Darwin summarizes his evidence, gathered over many years, for evolution of species such as the existence of rudimentary organs. Darwin uses his final chapter to recapitulate both the objections to his theory (he anticipates all the significant objections even though he does not have the evidence to rebut all of them) and the "general and special circumstances" in its favor. While presenting a picture of Darwin as a naturalist, and enthusiast for Aristotle and a genius capable of identifying and presenting fundamental scientific principles. We left the morning talk discussing the nature of species and pondering: are they real or theoretical constructs?



The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Modern Library, New York. 1993 (1859)
The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin. Prometheus Books, New York. 1998 (1874)

Brain & Music

Daniel J. Levitin’s This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession is a fascinating study about what happens in the brain when we listen to music. Levitin, a neuroscientist and former session musician and producer, has crafted an excellent study that both scientists and lay readers whose grasp of science is somewhat limited will find informative.
Perhaps best of all, Levitin’s book doesn’t ruin the enjoyment of listening to music.

Levitin primarily takes a thematic approach in examining how the brain functions when listening to music. Although the first chapter, which explains the basics of music like pitch, timbre, meter, may be sow-going for the musically-challenged, the remaining chapters are enlightening. With topics including how the brain remembers and recalls music, why music can impact our moods, and why musical preferences can vary from person to person, Levitin explains the processes occurring in the brain without overwhelming the reader with overly-technical and academically-dry details.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the final one, which makes a case for the evolutionary origins of music, arguing against scientists who believe music was a happy accident or an unplanned byproduct of language development. Levitin shows how music may have played a role in human survival and evolution, including aiding in cognitive development, serving as a key factor in promoting early human interactions, and giving musical males an extra advantage in the grand reproductive race.

Written for non-experts who might not know the difference between a hippocampus and a hippopotamus, This Is Your Brain On Music successfully manages to explain how we listen to music without reducing music to a series of neurons and brain waves. Levitin writes in an intelligent but not overbearing or condescending tone; his passion for music is apparent throughout the book. An excellent integration of science and music, Levitin’s book examines the brain’s role in listening to and processing music without downplaying any of the emotions we experience when listening to music. I enjoyed the book, particularly the science of the brain and its relation to music.


This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of an Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin. Dutton, New York. 2005.

The Selfish Gene
- some notes

I have finally (after several recommendations of friends over the years) read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Some of my immediate thoughts: I enjoyed his discussion of the importance of the gene through a dissection and diminution of the human being.
I will, no doubt have to read it again to understand all the nuances of the work. Some of Dawkins' metaphors, while mellifluous, are potentially problematical, e.g. "We are machines created by our genes." They roll off the tongue well, and I will no doubt use them in conversation but I am still trying to understand the subtleties of his scientific utterances. I have not yet wrapped my mind around a “purpose-intent” set of genes. The answer is probably hiding there the cloud of new ideas and I missed it, but they have lasted for more than a quarter century and Dawkins has established the concept of "meme" which has become ubiquitous. The book was fun, educational, and thought-provoking to read. I hope my genes will allow me to learn more about this area of science.
Also, I wonder why the idea of selfishness, whether it exists as a gene, or as a learned philosophy is not given a fair shake as a possible remedy for some agreed upon social ills. Is it not possible that Ayn Rand had it right in her concept of selfishness as a virtue?


The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Oxford University Press, New York. 1999 (1976)