Center for Scientific Studies

Review of "Strange Encounters: Adventures of a Renegade Naturalist"

by James A. Huggins, Ph.D., University Professor & Director of the Hammons Center for Scientific Studies

June 174, 2004 - This book by well-known ecologist Daniel Boykin is a collection of notes and thoughts that have traversed his mind over a storied 30 year career as an ecologist. His service to the discipline has led him through several institutions, across the world, and brought him face to face with some of the critical problems that face our planet. His experiences have been many and varied; his ability to carry away a message from each encounter is evidenced in this book. Dr. Boykin has the unique ability to see not only the problem at hand but to bring into focus the landscape surrounding the issue. Whether confronted by the huge or relatively simple things of life he is quick to learn from and place meaning with each experience. This wisdom is then liberally applied to the professional and personal side of his many encounters with the study of life. To the aspiring biologist his journey is one that should be scrutinized and, to some extent, emulated.

This is not a book to bring into the classroom but a preparatory discourse for the student that would like to get a look at the life of a biologist. While he consistently weaves graduate students into his accounts I wish that he had reminisced about and recorded more of his classroom experiences within this book. It would be hard for me to believe his classroom preparations and discussion did not contribute much to what he and his career ultimately became. I suspect he is a very good teacher but a lack of these experiences is a bit discouraging for those of us who pour so much of our lives into the classroom. This is perhaps a reflection of the lack of importance to which the classroom is often relegated in the research institution and therefore within his reflections of his life. It is, therefore, an accurate reflection of the importance that undergraduate education is given across much of the United States.

Dr. Botkin, currently a research professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, and president of the Center for the Study of the Environment, has penned an important and entertaining journey for those who would seek a life within the academic discipline of biology. I would recommend it to those who believe that God may have prepared them for such an adventure.