The Great Dying

by Kenneth J. Hsü and Kenneth J. Hsu

Book Overview

Great Dying, The: Cosmic Catastrophe, Dinosaurs, And The Theory O, by Hsu, Kenneth This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151369046
• ISBN13: 9780151369041
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Long term memory and nuclear winter

The Structure of Scientific RevolutionsI like a lot of other would have given Hsu's book a 5 star rating if it weren't for the fact that he continually says:"I didn't believe... " He was convinced by the weight of evidence that : 1) plate tectonics existed 2) magnetic pole reversal happened 3) finally, catastrophe played a part in geological history As a result I'm convinced that he is less a scientist than one who was there when others were doing the discovery. In this case the father and son team of Luis and Walter Alvarez were most responsible for this "Paradigm shift". That Hsu hasn't mentioned Mandelbrot, Per Bak and Hurst while being the world expert on sedimentation and long term memory, seems to say he hasn't learned the lessons about learning that he should of in this era of change. I actually learned a lot of geology from this book, so I have to give it four stars. Hsu is not a man who is easy to convince and may be one of the men who, now, holds back geological science again.

A very good book about the way of science.

This book is 16 years old, and somewhat dated by more recent discoveries, such as the Chicxulub meteor crater. Nonetheless, Hsu's excellence as an author/scientific historian and philosopher transcends this seeming defect to a great degree. Although the book's ostensible subject is dinosaur extinction and its causation, it soon becomes apparent that the real messages address the whimsical way of evolution, and the misapplications of Darwinian theory.Evolution is not a steady gradual process. Instead, it proceeds apace until interrupted by a calamity such as a cosmic impact, enormous volcanic disturbance or climate change, or the like. In such instances, writes Hsu, the list of survivors is a matter of good fortune, not design, and the process of new adaption and speciation begins all over once more. So it was with the dinosaurs, and so it might be again. It is impossible to divine a purpose or reason for such things. The key is to accept them and to understand them, if possible. Hsu's application of Oriental thought to the process is most enlightening. His writing is informal, tight, and obviously very well thought out. Hsu also addresses that perversion of the theory of evolution known as "Social Darwinism". It is carefully pointed out that Darwin NEVER intended his theories to become a basis for claims of racial or ethnic superiority. Hsu then demonstrates not only the fallacy of such beliefs, but shows why Darwin would have been equally disapproving of them. You don't have be a scientist or philosopher to read this book, but reading it will give you great insight into both disciplines. I found it fascinating from start to finish, and would recommend it highly to anyone past their early teens. It is a real keeper.

An Exciting Book

I have read this book twice,and might read it the third time. It's a really excellent science book for nontechnical readers(as well as professionals, perhaps)who are interested in evolutionary biology and/or geology,esp. for those want to know the exploring process in the science research,although it was published early. In order to detect the actual factors causing the dying of dinosaurs, Hsu investigates and analyses a wide variety of seemingly irrelevant first-hand materials, bring to our attention in the process some fascinating and little-known facts. The Great Dying is tightly constructed,and its lucid ,smooth style suggests rigorous and penetrating thinking.

Fascinating

This is the book that could make a geologist out of me, yet. I read it more than a year ago and, because of it, I have gone onto read more and very serious scientific literature regarding evolution and geology. Hsu is candid, entertaining, clear, convincing, and always educative. His assertion that the theory of evolution has been used to justify racism and racist policies took me by surprise and I chose not to believe it until, forced by the excellence of the book to admit that the author could have a point regarding evolution, I checked on Darwin's history. The realization that Darwin was a consumate racist didn't come as a total surprise --most Europeans were at the time--. But the fact that he had designed a great part of his theory to fit his own ideas regarding the superiority of the white "civilized" people against those who were "darker," "barbarian," and "uncivilized", made me see how this man could have been blinded by his own prejudices. Evolution may have happened and probably did, but Hsu presents a very strong case for chance, accident, and pure luck playing a much more important role than the one reserved for them by the established scientific community. His ideas run contrary to the accepted wisdom of evolution, which requires a great amount of time for the mutations to take place, and which didn't take into account the presence of catastrophes in the make up of life. Nevertheless, Hsu has demonstrated that catastrophes play a pivotal role in deciding who dies and who lives as, when the most famous of extintions --but not the largest-- happened about 65 million years ago, the life forms most superbly adapted to the planet, the dominant species of that time, were wiped out most probably by an object impacting Earth and suddenly changing the conditions under which the dinosaurs had been successful. The school of catastrophism has traditionally been dismissed as nonsense by the neo-Darwinist ideologues that dominate our curricula and books. Perhaps this extraordinary work, so faithful to the scientific method and so superb in its scholarship, will contribute to promote more exchanges of ideas in the scientific community. This is, after all, the basis of good science.

Earth's Bad Day: The Great Dying

Challenges to the all-inclusiveness of gradualistic natural selection are rare in genuine scientific literature, but this articulate and fascinating book is an exception. Hsu, a Wollaston Award-winning geologist, carefully documents the case for bad luck and cosmic catastrophe (in this case, comet or meteor impact) as the cause of the Cretaceous extinction. Unlike many writers, Hsu does not stop there but continues on into the philosophy of evolutionary progressivism and survival of the fittest in the face of the evidence, concluding that natural selection (as is usually taught) is not only false, but a positively evil doctrine. However, this book is NOT a creationist polemic. While I do not completely agree with Hsu's conclusions, this book is a good supplement to Stephen J. Gould's many writings on the K-T event and to Alvarez' T-Rex and the Crater of Doom. I only found one truly fallacious statement: there is no iridium anomaly at the Permian-Triassic boundary, as far as I can determine from other published literature. I highly recommend The Great Dying and wish it were not out of print.