Biographies : J

J.

Jantsch, Erich: (1929-1980) Austrian astrophysicist whose 1979 lectures in System Science at the University of California in Berkely became the basis for his book The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution (Pergamon Press, 1980). This now long out of print work deals with self-organization as a unifying evolutionary paradigm that incorporates cosmology, biology, sociology, psychology, and consciousness. Jantsch is inspired by and draws on the work of Ilya Prigogine concerning dissipative structures and nonequilibrium states. (Wikipedia) Although superseded by more recent developments in system science, this book exerted a very strong influence on me (MAK) when I read it in the early 1980s, and still inspired because of the author's elegant presentation of a big picture "integral" worldview (MAK)

Janvier, Philippe: Philippe Janvier is a paleontologist at the Museum National de l'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. He is a specialist in Palaeozoic vertebrates, and has written a number of scientific papers on the subject, as well as a definitive book, Early Vertebrates. Janvier has also contributed to the Tree of Life phylogeny project. MAK061003

Select bibliography

Janvier, Philippe. (1993). Patterns of diversity in the skull of jawless fishes. In The Skull (ed. J. Hanken and B. K. Hall), Vol. 2, pp. 131-188. The University of Chicago Press.
Janvier, Philippe. 1996. The dawn of the vertebrates: Characters versus common ascent in the rise of current vertebrate phylogenies. Palaeontology. 39:259-287.
Janvier, Philippe. 1996. Early Vertebrates. Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics, v. 33, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, ISBN 0-19-854047-7 392 pp. - a comprehensive review of the phylogyny and technical characteristics of Paleozoic fish
Forey, P. L., and Janvier, P. (1993). Agnathans and the origin of jawed vertebrates. Nature, 361, 129-134.
Forey, P. L., and Janvier, P. (1994). Evolution of the early vertebrates. American Scientist, 82, 554-565.
McBirney, Alex and Philippe Janvier, 2005, The Trilobite Affair, Libri Terrarum, ISBN 0-9772425-44 ; 350 pages - on French geologist Jacques Deprat, who was accused of falsifying his data by using spurious fossils. Janvier, who has worked in the same regions where Deprat worked in Vietnam and has a personal familiarity with much of the background of this famous case. This book argues that Deprat was the victim of a vicious conspiracy.

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