Name: Wynter's review of The Serengeti Rules by Sean B. Carroll
Item: The Serengeti Rules
Rating: 4
Author: Wynter

Sean B. Carroll

How does life work? How does nature produce the right numbers of zebras and lions on the African savanna, or fish in the ocean? How do our bodies produce the right numbers of cells in our organs and bloodstream? In The Serengeti Rules, award-winning biologist and author Sean Carroll tells the stories of the pioneering scientists who sought the answers to such simple yet profoundly important questions, and shows how their discoveries matter for our health and the health of the planet we depend upon. One of the most important revelations about the natural world is that everything is regulated—there are rules that regulate the amount of every molecule in our bodies and rules that govern the numbers of every animal and plant in the wild. And the most surprising revelation about the rules that regulate life at such different scales is that they are remarkably similar—there is a common underlying logic of life. Carroll recounts how our deep knowledge of the rules and logic of the human body has spurred the advent of revolutionary life-saving medicines, and makes the compelling case that it is now time to use the Serengeti Rules to heal our ailing planet. A bold and inspiring synthesis by one of our most accomplished biologists and gifted storytellers, The Serengeti Rules is the first book to illuminate how life works at vastly different scales. Read it and you will never look at the world the same way again.

The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

The Serengeti Rules

Sushil Kumar

Wynter

A thorough look at checks and regulations that rule natural world. So thorough in fact that I caught myself wondering where the author was going with his line of thought on multiple occasions. However, everything makes sense in the end, so appreciate Carroll being able to juggle so many threads of supporting evidence towards a logical conclusion. 

That conclusion made me pause and think for a while. In afterword chapter Carroll uses an example of smallpox eradication as supportive argument for the possibility of many nations uniting together to solve a global problem that used to be deemed impossible, ie. reversing our impact on the environment caused by indiscriminate and irresponsible use of resources. That made the gears in my brain turn. Aren't pandemics a direct result of Serengeti Rules, where large density populations competing for limited resources become victim to disease as nature's way to balance out the books? Here in Alberta we are too familiar with the equivalent pandemics among burgeoning population of coyotes that develop mange. Are we fighting nature in our quest to preserve lives or to extend our life expectancy with our engineered drugs and sanitized way of living? That made me speculate further on cause and effect, as well as moral obligations of population control and our future as ever-expanding species in global environment. Perhaps this book puts humans on a special pedestal, like we are somehow above the Serengeti Rules, but I don't think that's the case at all. I think in a way we prevent nature to balance itself by being simply us. Interesting subject and I recommend everyone to familiarize themselves with it.

Dana Kraft

The first few chapters are clear, concise and easy to read, but some of the chapters (i.e. about cancer) got a bit technical for my taste. That said, I like the thesis behind the book and I totally buy the arguments. The "rules" make sense and are probably applicable to how all kinds of complex systems work. A few of my takeaways are:

- I've managed a lot of web A/B tests and the presumption is that changes can have a directly positive or negative impact on conversion. This book made me think about how those impacts may not be as 'direct' as I thought.
- many of the examples of 'broken' ecosystems are pretty obvious and we should clearly be more mindful of how we use our environment for human benefits. That said, it seems much easier to identify an unhealthy ecosystem than to declare one 'healthy'. The only metric seems to be 'diversity' - more is better. How much is enough? Maybe we have so much obvious stuff to fix that we shouldn't worry about that yet.
- humans have a lot more power than understanding

Sushil Kumar &
The Serengeti Rules by Sean B. Carroll

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Sushil Kumar &The Serengeti Rules by Sean B. Carroll

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Sushil Kumar &
The Serengeti Rules by Sean B. Carroll