Customer Reviews

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

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I first encountered Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey by accident in a university's library stacks. I took it down from the shelf and, after glancing at the table of contents, started to read one of the essays. Three hours later I realized that I was still standing in the same place and had read through almost half the book. I had never encountered writing like this before. Eiseley writes about nature with the eyes of a haunted poet who sees the natural world slipping away even as we view it. It is hard to convey to one who hasn't read any of this just what makes his writing so special. He is a master of language. His 'take' on what he observes in nature is original and fresh. The structure of his essays, like arguments in the form of stories, progressing from some general observation to an unexpected conclusion - please and surprise the reader.

Each of his essays is, at one and the same time, a lesson, a sermon, a lyrical poem, a travelogue through time and space, a prayer and a great imaginative leap beyond human skin, culture, time and place.

These essays deserve to have a much broader audience than they have enjoyed. This is simply some of the best and most original writing that has been done in our century.

This is a very unusual book. It is ostensibly about the "Immense Journey" of man along his long evolutionary trail. But, in the same way that "The Odyssey" is not just an historical travel tale, Eiseley's book is much more. This is a work about the wonders of life, the joys of curiosity, the rewards from solitary time spent in the natural world and the transitory nature of all existence.

This one must have been just fantastic when it was published in 1957. It's still very good in 2003 despite the passage of time, which has exposed several of Eiseley's scientific beliefs and musings to be erroneous. Keep in mind the tremendous advancements in archeology, molecular biology and all other fields of science over the last 46 years and don't get hung up on these anachronisms. Instead, revel in the beautiful language Eiseley uses and the imagery he evokes: "Some lands are flat and grass-covered, and smile so evenly up at the sun that they seem forever youthful, untouched by man or time." Or another favorite: "Tyrannosaurs, enormous bipedal caricatures of men, would stalk mindlessly across the sites of future cities and go their slow way down into the dark of geologic time."

Read this book and you'll want to dig up fossils, listen to the wind, watch other animals and soak up life. And you will probably want to read it again.

This is a wonderful book. Loren Eisley is an anthropologist who writes like John Donne.

I went to the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s when Loren Eisley was Professor of Anthropology. He was then recognized as the finest writer at Penn. Though his field was anthropology, every semester he was a guest lecturer for the English department in their Creative Writing classes.

Each chapter starts with a theme from nature, archeology, or biology. Gradually his writing turns from scientific observation to philosophical musing, poetry, and introspection. A perfect example is his chapter called "The Dream Animal."

In "The Dream Animal" Eisley starts by pondering a genuine problem in evolutionary biology - the remarkably short period
of time (approx. 500,000 years ago to 150,000 years ago) during which the brain evolved from the size of an apes to modern man. He ends with this -

"The story of Eden is a greater allegory than man has ever guessed. For it was truly man who, walking memoryless through bars of sunlight and shade in the morning of the world, sat down and passed a wondering hand over a heavy forehead. Time and darkness, knowledge of good and evil, have walked with him ever since...a new world of terror and loneliness appears to have been created in the soul of man.

For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated himself and heard with a sudden unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the wind in the night reeds. Perhaps he knew, there in the grass by the chill waters, that he had before him an immense journey. Perhaps that same foreboding still troubles the hearts of those who walk out of a crowded room and stare with relief in to the abyss of space so long as there is a star to be seen twinkling across those miles of emptiness."

Take your time with this book - read it in a quiet space where Eisley's musings can lead you into musings of your own.

The other reviews say it so well, so I will simply quote something from the book: "...whenever I see a frog's eye low in the water warily ogling the shoreward landscape, I always think inconsequentially of those twiddling mechanical eyes that mankind manipulates nightly from a thousand observatories. Someday, with a telescopic lens an acre in extent, we are going to see something not to our liking, some looming shape outside there across the great pond of space.

"Whenever I catch a frog's eye I am aware of this, but I do not find it depressing. I stand quite still and try hard not to move or lift a hand since it would only frighten him. And standing thus it finally comes to me that this is the most enormous extension of vision of which life is capable: the projection of itself into other lives. This is the lonely, magnificent power of humanity. It is, far more than any spatial adventure, the supreme epitome of the reaching out."

The comparison of a frog's eye low in the water to humanity peering out into the universe from observatories blows me away and epitomizes this great writer's style and deep imagination, which is evident in all of his books. He was able to take the simplist things and weave them into a vision of immense beauty or perhaps disturbing self examination. A fascinating and lovely book. Go back and take a look at the cover, which I think fits perfectly!

It is unfortunate that although words such as 'bioethics' exist, the dichotomy is still firmly entrenched in our minds that scientists are funny little people in lab coats and the folks who write about ethics and values in relation to science (or worse show a passion for their topic that extends beyond what can be paraphrased in a theorem or hypthothesis) are not of equal calibre. Perhaps this is because so many ecological tretises do ultimately degrade into special pleading, but for whatever reason, Loren Eisely was a man both deeply passionate about his work and simultaneously an excellent scientist, assisted by a multidisciplinary background in anthropology, geology and biology.

Eisely is never afraid to let you know what his feelings are, even when they move into the realms of extrascientific (Wallace's suggestion that the evolution of traits was directed by God, such that they appear in a species BEFORE needed), never shorting himself or the scientific community. This middle of the road tactic allows for the foundation of 'The Immense Journey', Eiseley's most well known book, and among one of the most compelling reads in Biology.

The book itself is an examination of the mystery of life, a question that Eisely himself cannot quantify, yet clearly it motivates him throughout. His method of elucidation is to start with some observation--one which may at first seem less than shocking, yet his thoughts reflect upon this observation, casting the reader forth in a sea of wonder. We are left to contemplate why gophers declined when they might instead have become kings of the plains and kept the monkeys at bay, the finding of ancient human (?) skulls with larger brain pans than our own, why aliens would in all likelihood not resemble human beings or any other life on this planet, the evolutionary significance of language, the erroneous pitdown man, and many, far more personal introspections. This is ultimately a book of 'what if's' instead of a book of answers--answers that would so many years down the road no doubt be dated. The questions though...they are still as valid as ever.

To wrap this up then, Eisely was a thoughtful and passionate scientist who also had a tremendous gift for writing (at times one is left wishing he had written some fiction.) His imagery is unforgettable, as is the whole book. Students of biology (if not everyone) will be forced to address the material in a new way, not simply because Eisely makes some exellent points but because he had above all else, the gift to make people ask questions for themselves. I cannot think what other attribute makes a better scientist.

Wonderful essays on evolution, nature, and the human mind. Makes most books about these subject seem as deep as articles in _People_.

I quote one of these essays, "Flying Saucers and Little Green Men," on my home page:

"Darwin saw clearly that the succession of life on this planet was not a formal pattern imposed from without, or moving exclusively in one direction. Whatever else life might be, it was adjustable and not fixed. It worked its way through difficult environments. It modified and then, if necessary, it modified again, along roads which would never be retraced. Every creature alive is the product of a unique history. The statistical probability of its precise reduplication on another planet is so small as to be meaningless. Life, even cellular life, may exist out yonder in the dark. But high or low in nature, it will not wear the shape of man. That shape is the evolutionary product of a strange, long wandering through the attics of the forest roof, and so great are the chances of failure, that nothing precisely and indentically human is ever to come that way again."

"In a universe whose size is beyond human imagining, where our world floats like a dust mote in the void of night, men have grown inconceivably lonely. We scan the time scale and the mechanism of life itself for portents and signs of the invisible. As the only thinking mammals on the planet -- perhaps the only thinking animals in the entire sidereal universe -- the burden of consciousness has grown heavy upon us. We watch the stars, but the signs are uncertain. We uncover the bones of the past and seek for our origins. There is a path there, but it appears to wander. The vagaries of the road may have a meaning, however; it is thus we torture ourselves."

"Lights come and go in the night sky. Men, troubled at last by the things they build, may toss in their sleep and dream bad dreams, or lie awake while the meteors whisper greely overhead. But nowhere in all space or on a thousand worlds will there be men to share our loneliness. There may be wisdom; there may be power; somewhere across space great instruments, handled by strange manipulative organs, may stare vainly at our floating cloud wrack, their owners yearning as we yearn. Nevertheless, in the nature of life and in the principles of evolution we have had our answer. Of men elsewhere, and beyond, there will be none forever."

-- Loren Eiseley, "Little Men and Flying Saucers," The Immense Journey

There is more bleak majesty and wisdom in these three paragraphs than in any hundred science fiction novels. It also neatly summarizes Stephen Jay Gould's arguments from _Wonderful Life_.

I rarely give out "10s". This book is seriously wonderful.

--Stefan Jones

I would probably not have read this book had it not been required reading for a Humanities class that I took last semester. That would have been my loss. Eiseley took me back to a place inside of myself that I had forgotten existed. His words were thought-provoking and yet lyrical. More than once, as I read this book with his descriptive style and his eloquent phrasing, I was taken back deep into the wilderness of Yellowstone (my favorite place to experience nature). The scent, the sound, the feel was all there. His words were to be felt as easily as read. He reminded me to stop the hustle of my busy life and explore the wonders of all the other life going on around me. He reminded me that it's not the end of your life's journey that's important, it's the journey itself.

This book was first published over fifty years ago when Americans used to read plenty of naturalists (like Emerson, Thoreau and Muir.) That said, I think this book is just as relevant today as it was fifty years ago when it was first written. I would even put this book up as a healthy alternative to much of our New Age writing (in particular, his passages on the notion of the homonculous man seem to challenge our generation's obsession with Newness, i.e. contempt for certain parts of the past.)

Eiseley's message is simple: a person can find personal meaning and comfort in nature. I enjoyed this book a lot, mostly because Eiseley indirectly reminded me to go outside and poke around. As a result, all of his little explanations about evolution became more clear when I just looked around (like his chapter entitled, "How flowers changed the world.")

I recommend this book to anyone with a natural curiosity or a curiosity in nature.

"The journey is difficult, immense, at times impossible, yet that will not deter some of us from attempting it. We cannot know all that has happened in the past, or the reason for all of these events, any more than we can with surety discern what lies ahead." This quote comes from Loren Eiseley's book, The Immense Journey. Eiseley explores the evolution of life through his personal experiences as an anthropologist. Through his explorations of nature, Eiseley produces a model of his personal universe, one that seeks to explain the miracles of the world.
The most interesting aspect of The Immense Journey is the balance that is achieved between scientific fact and the detailed descriptions of the author's experiences. Every chapter contains numerous anecdotes that relate to the scientific topic being explored, without taking away from the scientific purpose. Eiseley uses his travels and observations as an anthropologist to provide entertainment to the average reader. The scientific concepts are easier to understand when a tangible example is included. Although Eiseley doesn't incorporate a lot of jargon into his writings, there are scientific concepts included that are difficult to understand. References are made to discoveries and theories that a person unfamiliar with the scientific world would not understand. Somewhat of a scientific background would be beneficial in understanding the full purpose of the book.
The book explores the origin of life-a topic that is relevant and intriguing to a wide audience of readers. One disadvantage is that the book was written in 1959, and since then, additional discoveries have been made and further research has been done to uncover new theories about life. The book would have been more advantageous in its own time. Eiseley makes references to many leading scientists of the time, including Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace. They are often quoted and material is used out of their books and scientific journals. Each chapter ends with a transitory paragraph that carries the reader into the next one smoothly. It follows a logical order-beginning in the earliest years of life and progressing to the present. Each event of life is studied and it is explained how it relates to man today.
The Immense Journey adequately serves as an interesting, as well as factual, scientific book. Its purpose is clear, and the facts are meshed with entertaining experiences that can be easily related to. Eiseley succeeds in appealing to a wide variety of readers by leading them down the path of his own life journeys.

the title, i suppose, could lead one to think that this book might be too heavily on the new-agey side of things for one's taste. not so! mr eiseley is one of the most profound thinkers i have come across over the years, and his writing is spectacular. i have seldom come across a non-fiction writer with such a marvellous prose style (lytton strachey comes to mind as an equivilant). this great book had me looking at life past and present in ways and from angles i had never considered. the authors wonder at existence in all its mystery, joy, and sorrow, made for some of the most moving reading i have ever encountered. this, and other works by mr eiseley, i will be reading and rereading throughout my lifetime.