Canadian Store (CAD)
You are currently shopping in our Canadian store. For orders outside of Canada, please switch to our international store. International and US orders are billed in US dollars.
We’ve selected Michel Anctil’s Luminous Creatures: The History and Science of Light Production in Living Organisms as the August Book of the Month. For those unfamiliar with the program, MQUP offers 30% off a new or best selling book each month. Simply add the book to your shopping cart on our website and enter discount code MQUP30 at the checkout to receive 30% off your purchase.
Naturalists in antiquity worked hard to dispel fanciful ideas about the meaning of living lights, but remained bewildered by them. Even Charles Darwin was perplexed by the chaotic diversity of luminous organisms, which he found difficult to reconcile with his evolutionary theory. It fell to naturalists and scientists to make sense of the dazzling displays of fireflies and other organisms. In Luminous Creatures Michel Anctil shows how mythical perceptions of bioluminescence gradually gave way to a scientific understanding of its mechanisms, functions, and evolution, and to the recognition of its usefulness for biomedical and other applied fields. The book offers a unique window into the awe-inspiring, phantasmagorical world of light-producing organisms, viewed from the perspectives of casual observers and scientists alike.
Michel Anctil is honorary professor of biology at Université de Montréal and author of Dawn of the Neuron: The Early Struggles to Trace the Origin of Nervous Systems.
“Luminous Creatures provides an unparalleled holistic narrative of the development of oceanography as a scientific practice, the characters that drove the efforts, and the animals that they studied. [It] is profoundly well researched, is scientifically accurate, and provides a unique view into the lives of bioluminescence scientists through the ages. Take time, if you can, to step away from the bright laboratory lights and dive into the enchanting world of living light.” Science
Read the full Science review by Darrin Schultz.
“Enlightenment is the through-line in Michel Anctil’s intelligent new book on the history and science of light production in living organisms. After all, what is science, if not a journey from the darkness into the light? A probing of the mysteries of nature, through our specimens. It is exactly this sort of probing that Anctil writes about in Luminous Creatures, most radiantly. It is just as much about how real science is done. Its rich, variegated material will surely be dredged up and mined for shimmering treasures not only by future generations of scientists, but also by artists and writers, who, if they brave the science and stay with this book, may be similarly rewarded.” Literary Review of Canada
Read the full LRC review by Irina Kovalyova (requires sign-in).
No comments yet.