nsaaurora.blogg.se - Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

Elsewhere, he explains how fungi were essential for the original colonization of land by plants, as they effectively served as roots for the first rootless arrivals. While fungi lack brains, they can process and share complicated information about food and the habitability of environments quickly and over great distances, influencing the "speed and direction of growth," in ways not yet understood, prompting Sheldrake to ask, "Can we think of their behavior as intelligent?" By discussing how fungi come together with algae to form lichens, Sheldrake touches on another question, that of "where one organism stops and another begins" in symbiotic relationships.

Scientist Sheldrake debuts with a revelatory look at fungi that proves their relevance to humans goes far beyond their uses in cooking.

Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize.

Shortlisted for the British Book Award.

Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms-and our relationships with them-are changing our understanding of how life works. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. Sheldrake’s vivid exploration takes us from yeast to psychedelics, to the fungi that range for miles underground and are the largest organisms on the planet, to those that link plants together in complex networks known as the “Wood Wide Web,” to those that infiltrate and manipulate insect bodies with devastating precision.įungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. In Entangled Life, the brilliant young biologist Merlin Sheldrake shows us the world from a fungal point of view, providing an exhilarating change of perspective. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems.

But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR- Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday

“Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”-Ed Yong, author of An Immense World A “brilliant entrancing” ( The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi-the great connectors of the living world-and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems.