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The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World (2018)

door Charles C. Mann

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4721851,941 (4.23)7
Biography & Autobiography. History. Science. Nonfiction. HTML:From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493â??an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world.
In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groupsâ??Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity facesâ??food, water, energy, climate changeâ??grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly cr
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1-5 van 18 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
Long, detailed, fascinating, and provocative. Enjoyed it tremendously, but it also didn't make me feel any better about the state of the world or whether we as a species can actually tackle large problems together. ( )
  JBD1 | Mar 22, 2024 |
Fine book by a great science writer. Loved it. ( )
  steve02476 | Jan 3, 2023 |
This is a book about the "fathers" of the environmental movement and the Green Revolution—respectively William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. It is written by Charles Mann, also the author of "1491" and "1493," about the pre- and post-Colonial Americas.

Some of you may already find the premise questionable: a book written by a white man about two white men that "shaped" the 20th century relationship regarding human relationship with land. Yes, the book does fall into this common category of patriarchal history.

Mann is an entertaining writer. He often goes off on tangents leaving the reader wondering, "and how will this relate?" And, inevitably, it does (especially with a book so broad is scope).

In some ways, I was born into the debate for which Mann has created archetypes. The archetypes are pretty catchy—if you have to choose between "wizard," or "prophet," well, they both sound pretty cool!

I'm now in the middle of David Graeber and David Wengrow's "The Dawn of Everything," a sweeping history that took more than ten years to write.They ask a lot of questions about the assumptions behind the way that we speak about the role of agriculture in the arc of human history (and pre-history). I can't help but wonder if "The Wizard and the Prophet" will be disrupted by this new line of inquiry. In some ways, they are only tangentially related, in that Mann is mostly concerned with the 20th century, when Graeber and Wengrow are righting about ten millennia back. That said, Mann's background is in pre-history, and there are a number of hints to that domain within the text.

Another way that "The Dawn of Everything" pokes holes in the premise of "The Wizard and the Prophet" is by making fun of the Great Man archetype of historiography. It may be entertaining to write as though we can pinpoint an individual person that shaped history, but is this how things actually work? Well, not really. "Influential" could be said to be more a product of their contexts than nodal agents.

Meta-analysis aside, if you're interested in one origin story between the face-off between techno-utopians and deep greens, this is one way to sum things up. Increasingly though, it seems to me that this dichotomy is falling away. For example, people such as sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson have pointed out that we're already in the midst geo-engineering the planet, so it's not as though geo-engineering is off the table anymore (by definition, anthropogenic climate change is a form of geo-engineering). ( )
  willszal | Dec 8, 2021 |
Early on the book the author, Charles Mann, offers an example of how a scientist "works".
Perhaps you don't know - I didn't before reading this book -, that there are actually two different human lice species: one, adapted to live in our head; the other, adapted to live in our clothes. This is unremarkable, unless you are a scientist. If you are a scientist you would find this remarkable for two reasons: first reason, as humans "evolved" hair before clothes it follows that the lice species that thrives in our clothes is an evolution, an adaptation, of the one that thrives in our head. Second reason, if we can find one out when the body lice diverged from the head lice, and it is possible to know, then we could also know when humans started to wear clothing: 107.000 years ago (the scientist name is Max Stoneking).
This book is full of this kind of facts because it is an inquiry of scientific thought. More precisely, two ways of thinking: Prophets, who argue that our success in science and technology is ruining the planet and Wizards, who argue that science and technology will also be able to solve the problems they have created. This two competing visions are all around us and inform the public debate.
The book is fascinating and is an excellent read for everyone. ( )
  Pindarix | Jul 15, 2021 |
In "The Wizard and the Prophet", Charles Mann tells us the story of two 20th century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt. Even if the names aren't immediately familiar, readers familiar with the term "The Green Revolution", which refers to the huge increase in crop production in developing countries due to improvements in crop varieties and farming techniques, may at least be familiar with the work of Norman Borlaug. Borlaug, "the Wizard" in the book title, spent decades working to improve crop yields, especially of wheat in Mexico and India. His work forestalled the more dire predictions of William Vogt, "the Prophet", who warned that resources are finite, and unless population is controlled, hardship is sure to follow. The biographical stories of both men are interesting, as is the story of how each man came to differing conclusions in how to deal with resource management and the environment going forward.

With a rapidly growing world-wide population, the stories of these two men represent the choices we face looking to the future. Many, like Vogt, representing the Prophets, believe that population must be controlled in order to live within the resources we have. Others, the Wizards, believe that man's creativity and technology will continue to find answers to diminishing resources, and mankind will always find ways to solve societies problems. The example in this book which represent the wizards would be the development of high-yield crops as Borlaug developed to stave off starvation of the billions of people born in the 20th century. Other examples which may come to mind would include development of desalination plants to provide new sources of water as rivers and lakes dry up, or development of solar power, wind power, and fracking to offset falling production of fossil fuels.

These challenges are among those the author introduces in this book. Mann points out that in addition to the food challenges society faced, and was addressed through the work of Borlaug and others, we also face potential or real challenges with having sufficient water and energy, and problems due to climate change, each of which present challenges for the future. "The Wizard and the Prophet" provides food for thought for all of us looking to the future in an increasingly populous world.
( )
  rsutto22 | Jul 15, 2021 |
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Biography & Autobiography. History. Science. Nonfiction. HTML:From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493â??an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world.
In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groupsâ??Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity facesâ??food, water, energy, climate changeâ??grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly cr

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