Armand Marie Leroi is a professor of evolutionary
development biology at Imperial College London. He is the author of
Mutants: On the Form, Variety and Errors of the
Human Body, which has been published in eleven languages and won
The Guardian's First Book Award in 2003. He is one of the UK's most
prominent science media figures.
Praise for The Lagoon "For several years in his middle age,
Aristotle lived on the island of Lesbos, where he studied the
creatures in an inland sea known as Kolpos Kalloni. It was here,
Leroi argues in this vivid travelogue and scientific history, that
the philosopher pioneered a method of thinking about the natural
world that amounted to the invention of science. Breaking with the
speculative theories of his naturalist predecessors, Aristotle
insisted on rooting claims about the purposes and causes of living
beings in observation. The vast catalogues that resulted from his
work are messy and filled with unassimilated data, but, as Leroi, a
biologist, demonstrates, their basic methodology has filtered down
through the ages."
--The New Yorker "Armand Marie Leroi's reappraisal of [Aristotle],
The Lagoon, is one of the most inspired and inspiring I have read .
. . Leroi's ambitious aim is to return Aristotle to the pantheon of
biology's greats, alongside Charles Darwin and Carl Linnaeus. He
has achieved it."
--Nature "The Lagoon is an intellectual homage--an admiring, deeply
researched and considered reconstruction of Aristotle's thinking
about living things . . . marvelous . . . a work as important to a
historian and philosopher of science as it is informative to a
biologist and entertaining to the general reader. As compelling as
Stephen Jay Gould's best work, it will long outlast most nature
writing of recent years."
--New Scientist "A fascinating new book . . . Leroi argues that
Aristotle developed many of the empirical and analytical methods
that still define scientific inquiry . . . . Leroi is a brilliant
guide to the history of science. He traces the history of ideas
with skill and care, and he avoids the smug certainty of many
contemporary science writers."
--The Daily Beast "A remarkable recovery of an ancient thinker's
daringly original enterprises--and mind-set."
--Booklist (Starred Review) "Leroi calls on his expertise and his
experience as a BBC science presenter to explain why Aristotle's
writings on science are still relevant today . . . A wide-ranging,
delightful tour de force."
--Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) "Leroi lovingly rescues the
reputation of Aristotle's alternately meticulous and bizarre
studies of animal behavior from the ruins left in the wake of
derision during the Scientific Revolution. Leroi brings modern
sensibility to, yet evokes an air of timelessness with, his
gorgeous descriptions."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "Leroi clearly adores Greece
and he uses his detailed local knowledge to splendid effect,
evocatively re-creating the experiences of the peripatetic
philosopher . Leroi is absolutely right to say that even those
sections of Aristotle's work we no longer believe to be correct
have affected the knowledge that we have today."
--Literary Review "In this lush, epic and hugely enjoyable book,
biologist Armand Marie Leroi explores the idea that it was another
ancient Greek giant whose shoulders we may all stand upon. Leroi is
a beautiful writer and it's been too long, a decade, since his last
outstanding book."
--Observer "Brilliant. Not just a charismatic book, but one that
places Aristotle in a freshly Aegean context. Above all, Leroi
shows, science today trawls through reams of data for patterns and
explanations, in precisely Aristotle's manner."
--Sunday Times "Leroi takes us through Aristotle's work, finding
hints of modern thinking everywhere. The Lagoon bubbles with
enthusiasm for its subject, making an absolutely gripping read out
of what might have seemed the most unlikely material."
--The Times (London) "Compelling, sometimes contentious, and always
thought-provoking. It celebrates what is most admirable in the
Aristotelian tradition: its appreciation of what is actually
there."
--Financial Times "How Aristotle nearly beat Darwin to a theory of
evolution. Brilliant."
--Sunday Times Must Reads "Whether Aristotle is exploring the
meaning of existence, the structure of the human heart or the souls
of cuttlefish, Leroi is an enthralling and irreverent guide to 'the
first scientist'."
--Independent "A look at some of the great Greek's most startling,
yet often overlooked, ideas."
--Observer "Magnificent . . . . This book is powerful, graceful and
charming. Leroi's prose is as blue-white bright as an Aegean sky
reflected from a whitewashed wall. . . beautifully designed and
deftly illustrated."
--Guardian "Leroi says that Aristotle's writing is a 'naturalist's
joy'; the same can be said for Mr. Leroi's . I admire this
entertaining, insightful and felicitously written book."
--International New York Times "Scintillatingly argued."
--James McConnachie, Spectator Books of the Year "Leroi
reconstructs Aristotle's studies of wildlife at the Kalloni lagoon
on Lesbos more than 2,300 years ago. Entertainingly, he builds up
the thesis that the great Greek philosopher was the world's first
systematic biologist."
--Financial Times Books of the Year "In the History of Animals,
[Aristotle] speaks of the reproduction of lice, the mating habits
of herons, the sexual incontinence of girls, the stomachs of
snails, the sensitivity of starfish, the dumbness of the deaf, the
flatulence of elephants and the structure of the human heart: his
book contains 130,000 words and 9,000 empirical claims'. Leroi's
own uncompromising investigation gives us a flavour of his
subject's indefatigable explorations. Leroi does not upstage
Aristotle's descriptions with modern anatomical illustrations,
though his attractively illustrated discussions draw on much
scholarship that has been expended on editing and interpreting
Aristotle's ideas about nature. Leroi's scholarship is impeccable
and consistently generous. Only an expert biologist with broad
cultural sympathies and a deep feeling for history could have
created such a compelling reappraisal of Aristotle's place in the
history of science. What's in a name, indeed; in marshalling the
facts and ideas that support Aristotle's scientific credentials in
exuberant detail, Leroi must be accounted the king."
--Times Literary Supplement
"Armand Marie Leroi opens Aristotle's classical cabinet of
curiosities to discover the genesis of science inside. In elegant,
stylish and often witty prose, he probes the near-legendary, almost
primeval lagoon, which inspired the ancient Greek's Historia
Animalium and animates it anew with his own incisive observations.
From snoring dolphins to divine bees, Leroi shows us how Aristotle
invented taxonomy two and a half millennia before Linnaeus. That,
in fact, out of poetry and metaphysics, blending the mythic with
the mundane, Aristotle foresaw our contemporary dilemmas of
definition and description. The Lagoon is a heroic, beautiful work
in its own right, an inquiring odyssey into unknown nature and the
known world, which science has created out of it."
--Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan, or The Whale
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