The Truth is the Whole: Essays in Honor of Richard Levins

Richard Levins (1930-2016) was an outstanding ecologist, population geneticist, biomathematician, philosopher of science, complexity theorist, and Marxist. Key to all aspects of his work was a dialectical logic of process and change. His work provides a framework for the understanding of crises in environment and society and their analytic relationship with capitalism and imperialism, as well as the tools for the critique of biological determinist justifications for the existing structures of power. This anthology pays tribute to Levins by carrying forward his work in the development of the understanding of the dialectics of nature and society. The contributions are organized into four sections--Dialectics in Wholistic Research; Political Ecology and Health; Complex Systems; and Reminiscences and Tributes. The authors are as almost as hard to label as Levins; the fields they draw from range from biomathematics to NGO activism; environmental policy to island and aquatic ecology; eco-justice podcasting to biogeochemistry; reflective practice to science-in-society, agroecology to public health phylogeography; philosophy of biology to political science--and more.

Review :
"The times with you and Dick Lewontin have been the most enjoyable and intellectually stimulating times in my career, and gave me all sorts of resources to go forward... In addition to all you have done in biology, you have been a revolutionary in philosophy. And an exemplar of a socially concerned and involved mentor--something that we need now more then ever to pass on to our students." Bill Wimsatt "A few minutes of a conversation with Dick... generated a certain cognitive dissonance: He was brilliant! But he was nice! The most critical thing he ever said to me was 'That's very interesting . . . perhaps we could think of it in this way.' An intellectual encounter with him resulted in a feeling of co-creation of new intellectual forms..." John Vandermeer "Your hand is on my hand when I rest my palm on the heads of new generations, the children of this family, the children of my heart, the ones who ask me to teach them, the ones who read my words. Whether they know it or not, they are your children, too, scientists and poets, artists and entrepreneurs, and radical women rabbis your grandmother's grandmother would be proud to know." Aurora Levins Morales "We should not pretend or aspire to an insipid neutrality. Instead, we should proclaim it as our working hypothesis that all the theories that promote, justify, or tolerate injustice are wrong." Richard Levins