pt. 1. Mother Nature or monster earth?
ch. 1 Evolution's Motive Force
Pebbles in the sand walk of perpetual worries
Darwin loses faith and discovers the monster that created us
-but of what or whom? The sagacity and morality of worms
More are born than can survive
Charles Darwin Jr's death at evolution's dawning
Understanding mired in ignorance
Which `favoured races'? Yan Fu and heavens' performance
ch. 2 Of Genes, Mnemes and Destruction
Dawkins' selfish genes in a selfish world
Competition: the leitmotif of the twentieth century
A Lamarckian vision of cultural evolution
Semon's marvellous mnemes, including one that changed the atmosphere
The survival of the fittest as the survival of none
Alfred Russel Wallace: a working-class evolutionist with a social conscience
Pondering man's place in the Universe
Musings on the beetle that writes
Would a Wallacean world have been different? The sum of cooperation of all life
Venus and Mars, and Lovelock's jet-propelled understanding
Gaia, from the horse's mouth
The mysteries of Daisyworld
Gaia and Lord of the Flies
Sir Francis Bacon and the great Christian morality play
ch. 4 A Fresh Look at Earth
ch. 5 The Commonwealth of Virtue
The tightness of connections
A living planet without a brain? The importance of geo-pheromones
-can Gaia control herself? The faint young Sun paradox
-or a schizoid Earth? A commonwealth of virtue
Life in a country long unchanged
How women are making men in their minds' image
Why the world is full of lonely giants
-a sort of magic pudding? May the African honeyguide frame our thinking.
What makes us different? The lying deer and the importance of the mneme
Our Medean face, and the sins of a wanderer
Why Adam and Eve never met
Why the largest, fiercest and strangest have disappeared
The tale of the toad pioneers
How Homo erectus trained the Old World giants
Why we should call Australia home
Don't blink or you'll miss the extinction
Do Neanderthals hide piecemeal within us? Conquest of the mammoth steppe
Of Pharaohs and dwarf elephants
The unicorn and the wanderer of Baghdad
How the hobbit saved the dragon and the giant rat of Flores
Pleistocene weather makers?
Hunters and the challenge of the commons
The Telefol and the long-beaked echidna
Respect for elders can protect ecosystems
-a progenitor of modern conservation
The wisent of Bialowieza, and the swamp deer of Beijing
Almost every large creature survives by our good grace
Survival of the fittest ecosystem? Why we love lawns and water views
The heart of man and a humanist credo -
pt. 3. Ever since agriculture
Civilisations created without the use of reason
The Pioneer and The Soul of the White Ant
Ant herders, farmers and slaves
Bodies and superorganisms
Buffon's needle theorem and ant democracy
South American ants vs Elizabethan England
An amazing New World civilisation
ch. 10 Superorganismic Glue
Monogamy and the origins of superorganisms
How polyandry pays off, and the mystery of inclusion
A species-wide brush with death preconditioning us to superorganise
The miracle at the pin factory
The collective strength of the weak
Why we're becoming more stupid, but more peaceful
The loss of commonsense? The unlikely triumph of democracy
A second human influence on the atmosphere
ch. 11 Ascent of the Ultimate Superorganism
Five roads to civilisation
The smallest superorganism and its love of taro
Crops, towns, metals and empires
-predestined steps to superorganisation? Printing, gunpowder and the compass: the value of imperfect connections
Can we see ourselves in Rome? Collapse leaving millennia of tribal war
The scientific method, industrial revolution and political reform
The superglue that is American culture
Colonial success and its sequel .
The whole world as an enemy
On destroying a gram of matter
Richfield Oil Corporation's atomic tar-oil
Hydrogen bombs to melt the Arctic ice
-the would-be father of the Polar Gulf Stream
A memento of atomic madness in every brain
Radiation takes the express train to the abyss
How Nazi research led to Silent Spring
Organochlorines and organophosphates
Death chemicals passed on in mothers' milk
A Japanese beetle invades the US and is carpet-bombed with pesticides
Poisoning the salmon, too
The toxic 1960s live on in us
Denmark and the decline of sperm
PCBs, hermaphrodites and shrivelled sex organs
Toxins silently fill the abyss
`Man must conquer nature.'
ch. 14 The Eleventh Hour?
Tentative signs of progress
But PFSs and other new threats remain
One man's poison...the deaths of vultures
Diclofenac and the discomfort of the Parsees
What about the bees? Of frog plagues and pregnant women
Then there's the world's poison we cannot see
ch. 15 Undoing the Work of Ages
Mercury and the horror of Minamata
From the heavens to the abyss, and onto our dinner plates
Coal, cremation and the two dollarsolution
Cadmium, cigarettes and itai itai! Lead, schizophrenia and murder
Anti-foulant and sex change
The prehistoric nuclear reactors of Gabon
-an elemental dinosaur threatening to destroy our Earth
-the globally deadly imbalance
-it's worse than the experts thought
Hotter, more flooded and less habitable
Can a greenhouse world host a global superorganism?
Ecological release and overpopulation
What will control us? The miracle of 2009
The demographic transition
-the battleground between mneme and gene
ch. 17 Discounting the Future
-or how much in a year? Are men more stupid and impatient than women? The importance of game theory
An evolutionary approach to understanding foolish behaviour
Why poverty is the ultimate enemy of sustainability
ch. 18 Greed and the Market
A selfish and greedy brain
Business or crime? Try and stop me, then
Can you trust a neoclassical economist? An unhealthy interest in self-interest
The discount factor and collective disfunction
Deception nearly disables Lord Stern
Blood & Gore in the new economy
If quarterly profits destroy, how about triennial ones? Green bonds for the war on unsustainable practices
A global fund for global commons? Robert Monks and the universal investor
How smart is Harvard? Personal interests
-or civilisation's survival?
ch. 19 Of War and Inequality
Trade and peace, and war and the city
Earth, the first victim of the next world war
In a globalised world is war civil or conventional? Somali pirates showing the way
The eradication of poverty no fantasy, but it will take a century
Relative improvement keeps the peace
Sacrifice by the wealthiest
The immorality of the growing affluent
If we cannot help the poor, we cannot save the rich
The violence of a dying tribal world
From Forma Urbis Romae to Google Earth
Intelligent cars and other smart machines
-here sooner than we think
An autonomous nervous system for a city
Smart farming and the need for efficiency
Malaysia stopping illegal logging the intelligent way
The land is getting smart, but what about the oceans? Argo probes
Will we foresee Earth's challenges?
The end of history? Limiting the powers of the powerful few
Obama's great breakthrough
Are all high-level governments subject to irrelevance? Are they needed? The perplexing problem of the global commons
Game theory and accord at Copenhagen
-or concord for collapse? One pole nationalised, and the other? Sovereignty reined in, but never eliminated
Grotius and the high seas
The fate of the Atlantic bluefin tuna
A Gaian Security Council? Everyone a guardian
ch. 22 Restoring the Life-force
Giving a fit touch to nature
Expanding Earth's biocapacity
-a miraculous transformation
A perfect carbon capture mechanism in search of storage
The importance of rainforests
Reversing the coal-fired power plants
Food and energy for a hungry planet
Carbon at home on the range
Fire, carbon and wildlife
A felicitous indicator of planetary health.
pt. 6. An intelligent earth?
What lies on the other side?
Where will evolution take us? Intelligent Earth
-or The Road? Belief as self-fulfilling prophecy
A transformation prolonged and agonising, or short and clean? The cost of unity and the gravest of crimes
The end of the global frontier
If we succeed much will be lost
Will it be Chinglish? Nature already ended? A domesticated Earth, or a re-wilded one? Paying the Medean debt
Fitting a brain to a body? The obligation of intelligence
For the good of the Gaian whole
Earth as one entire, perfect living creature
Are we alone? A Universe to nurture the human spirit.
