Imperfection

A Natural History

Telmo Pievani, Michael Gerard Kenyon, Ian Tattersall

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English

MIT Press
12 March 2024

Biology, life sciences

In praise of imperfection- how life on our planet is a catalog of imperfections, errors, alternatives, and anomalies.

In praise of imperfection- how life on our planet is a catalog of imperfections, errors, alternatives, and anomalies.

In the beginning, there was imperfection, which became the source of all things. Anomalies and asymmetries caused planets to take shape from the bubbling void and sent light into darkness. Life on earth is a catalog of accidents, alternatives, and errors that turned out to work quite well. In this book, Telmo Pievani shows that life on our planet has flourished and survived not because of its perfection but despite (and perhaps because of) its imperfection. He begins his story with the disruption-filled birth of the universe and proceeds through the random DNA copying errors that fuel evolution, the transformations of advantages into handicaps by natural selection, the anatomical and functional jumble that is the human brain, and our many bodily mismatches.

Along the way, Pievani tells readers about the Irish elk (incidentally, neither Irish nor elk), whose enormous antlers serve to illustrate the first two laws of imperfection; the widespread dissemination of costly or useless traits; and the neuroimperfection of the human brain-""a frozen accident of evolution that was not designed from scratch,"" as Pievani calls it. He sizes up the alleged perfection of the human body, asking, for example, if everything in our bodies serves a purpose, why do we have appendixes? Why bipedalism, with the inevitable back pain that results? In this fascinating account, Pievani offers the first comprehensive explanatory theory for the ubiquity of imperfection.

By: Telmo Pievani, Michael Gerard Kenyon
Foreword by: Ian Tattersall
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 133mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262548359
ISBN 10: 0262548356
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 12 March 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Foreword ix Ian Tattersall 1 A Subtle Imperfection: and So It All Began 1 2 Imperfect Evolution 17 3 Imperfections that Work 39 4 The Imprint of Uselessness in DNA 65 5 A Proverbial Jumble: The Human Brain 83 6 The Imperfect Sage 103 7 Would You Buy a Secondhand Car from a Homo Sapiens? 121 In Conclusion, the Laws of Imperfection 143 References and Further Reading 151 Index 159

Telmo Pievani is Full Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Padua, where he covers the first Italian chair of Philosophy of Biological Sciences. A leading science communicator and columnist for Il corriere della sera, he is the author of The Unexpected Life, Creation without God, Serendipity, and other books.

Reviews for Imperfection: A Natural History

"""Imperfection takes the reader on a convincing whirlwind tour of the dangers as well as the impossibility of perfection, how imperfection is built into the nature of the universe, and into all living things--including ourselves... a perfect way to begin understanding our imperfect world."" - Wall Street Journal"