E-Book Overview
Answering the question "What is death?" by focusing on the individual is blinkered. It restricts attention to a narrow zone around the individual body of a creature. Instead, how expansive is the answer we receive when we look at the context of death within the biosphere. Death now is tied to all of life, via the atmosphere and ocean. Death supports the awesome biological enterprise of making abundant the green and squiggly life. Talk about death has headed us straight into a contemplation of life, not only individual life, but big life, life on a global scale. Death and life are neatly dovetailed by the supreme cabinetmaker of evolution. Again, the crucial feature is not the death of any one creature per se, but rather what is done with death. To reach into the meaning of death, we must reach out into the wider context of which death is a part.
E-Book Content
WHAT IS DEATH? A Scientist Looks at the Cycle of Life
Tyler Volk
A PETER N. NEVRAUMONT BOOK
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
WHAT IS DEATH?
WHAT IS DEATH? A Scientist Looks at the Cycle of Life
Tyler Volk
A PETER N. NEVRAUMONT BOOK
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Copyright © 2002 by Tyler Volk. All rights reserved Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be add