The Pinball Effect (How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor
Possible and Other Journeys Through Knowledge)
Little, Brown, and Company 1996
Also, you all might be interested in:
The Human Zoo: A Zoologist's Classic Study of the Urban Animal
by Desmond Morris
Originally published in 1969 this controversial bestseller has been
reprinted by Kodansha International this year in paperback. Morris is
another British zoologist trained at Oxford, he preceeded Dawkins by
roughly one academic generation. From the preface:
"When I was working on this book in the late 1960's, I had just completed a
decade as a zoo curator. Studying the stresses and strains of animals
confined to small cages gave me the idea for suggesting a parallel between
the animal zoo and the human city. I saw the captive zoo inmates as
telling metaphors for the tense citizens I encountered in everyday life."
This is good stuff. The new paperback is cheap and the ideas are still
relevent. Morris does an excellent job. Topics include: tribalism, status
and pecking orders, sex and gender relations. Actually, if you are
attached to a good library, it will probably have a copy in circulation.
That's how I read it the first time.
Sorry I haven't had a chance to respond to the recent posts. Very
interesting stuff. Work, you know...
Reed
konsler@ascat.harvard.edu