
Mysterious Ways
Contingency, Emergence, and Selection in Nature
Jonathan D. Phillips(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 27. May 2025
Book
Hardback
416 pages
978-0-19-775509-9 (ISBN)
Description
General scientific laws guide and constrain how landscapes evolve, but because local geographical and historical contingencies are so important, there are infinite possible evolutionary pathways and outcomes. Nevertheless, certain patterns, structures, and relationships recur repeatedly that tend to maximize efficiency. But no laws determine that this should happen, and landscapes have no goals or intentionality. How does nature keep producing relationships, structures, and patterns that maximize efficiency? Those are the "mysterious ways " this book explains.
Drawing from a broad range of geoscience, bioscience, and other sciences, Mysterious Ways speaks to the stories we tell about how our world came to be, how it changes, and our place in it. The book makes a case for evolution and selection as general phenomena in nature. It shows how evolution and selection operate at the level of landscapes, and how landforms, soils, hydrology, and biota coevolve as they mutually adapt to climate and other environmental changes. It looks at phenomena like the transformation of tropical forests to savannas, karsts to deserts, and riverbed formation as outcomes of tendencies for more efficient, stable, and durable patterns, structures, and relationships to form, grow, replicate, and persist.
Drawing from a broad range of geoscience, bioscience, and other sciences, Mysterious Ways speaks to the stories we tell about how our world came to be, how it changes, and our place in it. The book makes a case for evolution and selection as general phenomena in nature. It shows how evolution and selection operate at the level of landscapes, and how landforms, soils, hydrology, and biota coevolve as they mutually adapt to climate and other environmental changes. It looks at phenomena like the transformation of tropical forests to savannas, karsts to deserts, and riverbed formation as outcomes of tendencies for more efficient, stable, and durable patterns, structures, and relationships to form, grow, replicate, and persist.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 237 mm
Width: 165 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
717 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-775509-9 (9780197755099)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2025
OUP eBook
€28.49
Available for download

E-Book
02/2025
OUP eBook
€28.49
Available for download
Person
Jonathan D. Phillips, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Earth Surface Systems at the University of Kentucky. He taught there for 20 years and previously held faculty positions at Texas A&M, East Carolina, and Arizona State Universities. He has published more than 250 journal articles, books, and book chapters in several areas of the earth, environmental, and ecological sciences, and is the recipient of distinguished career awards from the British Society for Geomorphology and the Geomorphology Specialty Group of the American Association Geographers.
Author
Professor Emeritus of Earth Surface SystemsProfessor Emeritus of Earth Surface Systems, University of Kentucky
Content
Preface
Chapter 1: Mysterious Ways
Chapter 2: Supra-organic Landscapes
Chapter 3: It Depends on the Scale...
Chapter 4: Landscape Memory
Chapter 5: The Goals of Landscape Evolution
Chapter 6: Selection and Landscape Evolution
Chapter 7: Store and Pour and Adapt
Chapter 8: Why Everything is Connected to Everything Else
Chapter 9: Perfection
Chapter 10: Climate Change and Mysterious Ways
Epilogue
Chapter 1: Mysterious Ways
Chapter 2: Supra-organic Landscapes
Chapter 3: It Depends on the Scale...
Chapter 4: Landscape Memory
Chapter 5: The Goals of Landscape Evolution
Chapter 6: Selection and Landscape Evolution
Chapter 7: Store and Pour and Adapt
Chapter 8: Why Everything is Connected to Everything Else
Chapter 9: Perfection
Chapter 10: Climate Change and Mysterious Ways
Epilogue