Carving Nature at Its Joints: Mammalian Anatomy, Behavior, Development, and Evolution

A Zen master and butcher by profession once said that until he understood the body he had repeatedly to sharpen his knives. After his illumination over the import of joint spaces, he never had to sharpen his implements again.

Carving Nature at Its Joints surveys a variety of mammals from the mole to the rhinoceros. It offers fresh perspectives on anatomy, behavior, development, and evolution and explores Dr. Theodore Grand's methods for getting beyond-beneath, below, behind, and past-conventional top-down reductionist approaches.

You will discover:

• why language is the primary wrinkle in the fabric of science;
• why traditional disciplines are self-limiting;
• why "parts and wholes" are less problematic for physical than for biological and social sciences;
• why the buck stopped at Aristotle's laws of formal logic;
• why we are wedged between opposed cognitive systems.