Rough Ride to the Future, A

James Lovelock

Introduces two new Lovelockian ideas. The first is that three hundred years ago, when Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine, he was unknowingly beginning what Lovelock calls 'accelerated evolution', a process which is bringing about change on our planet roughly a million times faster than Darwinian evolution.

The second is that as part of this process, humanity has the capacity to become the intelligent part of Gaia, the self-regulating Earth system whose discovery Lovelock first announced nearly 50 years ago.

In addition, Lovelock gives his reflections on how scientific advances are made, and his own remarkable life as a lone scientist. 184 pages.

Softback £9.99 £8.99