Customer Reviews

Modeling Nature (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series)

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...for anyone interested in the history and development of Population Biology. It is a real shame that this book has gone out of print (and that Kingsland hasn't chosen to do a second edition)as this relatively short (267pp) book captured the really important trends and ideas of mathematical ecology up to the early 1970's in straight-forward and remarkably non-technical language. Kingsland gives us both the theories and the background and personalities that generated the theories, along with some delightful portraits of the Heavy Hitters during this seminal period in theoretical ecology. She ends with MacArthur & one would like to think that enough has happened since then that a sequel is in order, but I would recommend this book to any advanced undergrad or first-year grad student looking for background material.

Nature has many ways to understand it, and this book is great for understanding how scientists model nature and the equations we currently use to analyze it.

Kingsland is biology by training therefore many scientific concepts in this book are very welled summarized and organized, making it easy for professionals and non-professional as well to grasp the general ideas in population biology. However, this book focus more on the historical context and the personality of some key scientists in this area, which gives readers more indepth understanding outside science itself. The auther did a wonderful job in interweaving science and human sides, and made it easy to pick up some major transitions in the history of population biology. highly recommmended to professional population ecologists, and general public who is interested in science as well! a bonus: some pictures of famous scientists in this area, such as McArthur, Lokta, Volttera etc...it's interesting to me, after reading all their work, finally had a chance to see what they look like.