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While the concept of "oneness" with nature is foreign to most western cultures, groups such as the Hindus and the Hopi Indians have long comprehended their role in an ever-cycling universe and the inevitable coming of the end of the world. As the earth reaches 8.64 billion years--the length of the Hindu's "creation-and-destruction" cycle--Professor John Leslie of the University of Guelph in Canada thinks that the end, at least for this course of humanity, is near. Impending threats to our survival include nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare; ozone depletion; the greenhouse effect; disease; natural disasters; and even the potential for accidental production of a new Big Bang. And while trying to forestall an apocalypse would be futile, Leslie promises it will all end quickly.
From Library Journal
Will the human race become extinct fairly shortly? Have the dangers been underestimated, and ought we to care? In seeking to answer these questions, Leslie (Universes, Routledge, 1990) examines many "doom soon" scenarios but specifically centers on mathematician Brandon Carter's "Doomsday Argument," which applies bayesian reasoning to the idea that the risk of human extinction has usually been underestimated. Leslie has built on Carter's Doomsday Argument, stating that it doesn't generate risk estimates but is rather an "argument for revising the...estimates that we generate when we consider various possible dangers." Even so, Leslie estimates that the entire human race has a 30 percent chance of annihilation by nuclear war, disease, or some other means in the next 500 years. This intriguing work may be of interest to philosophers, population studies scholars, biologists, and human ecologists and is recommended for academic libraries.?Susan Maret, Auraria Lib., Univ. of Colorado, Denver
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
