Michael Lockwood Boeken

This is one of the first four in a new series of fabulously illustrated natural history travel guides, intended for the general reader with an interest in natural history, and for the growing numbers of 'ecotourists' who want to know where to see wildlife in the countries they visit. The books are designed to complement each other and to build into a nature library, together giving an introduction to the natural history of Europe. The Iberian peninsula harbours snow-capped mountains,ancient deciduous forests that are home to bear and capercaillie, the unique wood-pasture of dehesa and montado, arid 'pseudosteppes' populated by stately great bustards and whirring sandgrouse, mighty rivers terminating in coastal estuaries and deltas teeming with waterbirds, not forgetting the Balearic archipelago, adrift in the azure Mediterranean, harbouring a unique flora and prolific seabird colonies. The wealth of its flora and fauna is unrivalled in western Europe today. Essentiallypractical, the book first introduces the ecology, geology, and wildlife of Spain and the Balearic Islands, then goes on to describe where to see its natural history at its best. There are descriptions of a selection of some 300 sites to visit, each carefully chosen to show a range of habitats and fascinating wildlife. The entries are the personal choice of the authors and are based on intensive travel and research in the region. Described sites range in size from a few to thousands of hectares, be they National Parks, nature reserves, or simply common land. All are open to the public and accessible to the ordinary visitor. Full colour throughout, this book has stunning landscape photographs, line drawings and photographs of individual animals of plants and animals, colour region and site maps, and a splendid composite painting encapsulating typical habitats and their inhabitants.

This work presents a radically new approach to the mind-body problem, drawing together consideratons from such fields as the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, neurophysiology, relativity and quantum mechanics. The very existence of consciousness, the author argues, poses a challenge to the traditional view of matter, as do the paradoxes of quantum theory. If mind as revealed in introspection, matter as manifested in observation and experiment, are to be seen as dual aspects of a unitary underlying reality, then a fundamental adjustment is called for in our understanding of mental and physical phenomena alike. The book demonstrates the need for a conception that is rooted both in the latest thinking about the foundations of quantum mechanics and in some previously neglected ideas of Bertrand Russell. Its implications are far-reaching and startlingly at odds with the conventional way of looking at the world and at the place of mind within it.