On his book Feats of Strength: How Evolution Shapes Animal Athletic Abilities
Cover Interview of March 05, 2019
Lastly
I wrote this book in such a way that it is (hopefully) accessible
to anyone with an interest in evolution, the animal world, or terrible Sylvester
Stallone movies. Having said that, I did have a potential target audience in
mind, and that is students who are considering or actively embarking upon
graduate studies in ecology and evolution. There is more opportunity than ever to
do really interesting and integrative research on performance and all of the
areas that performance intersects with, and I would be pleased indeed if
something in my book sparks the imagination of a young scientist searching for
a dissertation topic. I even rigged the odds of this happening in my favor. Over
the years I have filled a notebook with ideas for research projects that I will
likely never get around to executing. Many of those ideas are dreadful, but
several of the more lucid ones made their way into this book. So, there you
have it: if you are interested in research questions that another scientist
you’ve never heard of hasn’t bothered to follow up on, this book is for you!
However, I also very much hope that anyone who reads it,
regardless of their background, goals, or interests, learns a little bit more
about the natural world, about evolution, and about how and why we do science. It’s
difficult to write something that will appeal to more than one audience, so in
the end I just wrote something that appeals to me. I’m happy to say, this it does,
even though all I can see when I open it now are problems and things I could
have done better. With any luck, nobody else will notice them!
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
I wrote this book in such a way that it is (hopefully) accessible to anyone with an interest in evolution, the animal world, or terrible Sylvester Stallone movies. Having said that, I did have a potential target audience in mind, and that is students who are considering or actively embarking upon graduate studies in ecology and evolution. There is more opportunity than ever to do really interesting and integrative research on performance and all of the areas that performance intersects with, and I would be pleased indeed if something in my book sparks the imagination of a young scientist searching for a dissertation topic. I even rigged the odds of this happening in my favor. Over the years I have filled a notebook with ideas for research projects that I will likely never get around to executing. Many of those ideas are dreadful, but several of the more lucid ones made their way into this book. So, there you have it: if you are interested in research questions that another scientist you’ve never heard of hasn’t bothered to follow up on, this book is for you!
However, I also very much hope that anyone who reads it, regardless of their background, goals, or interests, learns a little bit more about the natural world, about evolution, and about how and why we do science. It’s difficult to write something that will appeal to more than one audience, so in the end I just wrote something that appeals to me. I’m happy to say, this it does, even though all I can see when I open it now are problems and things I could have done better. With any luck, nobody else will notice them!