“Richard Dawkins” – Alan Grafen & Mark Ridley (ed)

This is a hommage to Dawkins, split into 25 essays in 7 parts, most focussing on the impact The Selfish Gene has had on the authors and their respective fields. For someone like me, who shamefully still hasn’t read the Selfish Gene, it further persuades to finally get around to it.

Steven Pinker’s contribution, as expected, is clear and interesting and concerned with language, as he deals with some of the confusion Dawkins’ use of the word “selfish” has caused – if human brains, effectively lumps of neural tissue, have conscious experiences like wanting and feeling, “there is no principled reason to avoid attributing states of knowing and wanting to other hunks of matter“. Genes “know” things through the sequence of their DNA, “try” by creating extended phenotypes whose effect is a differential ability to survive and reproduce, leading to feedback loops into the next generation of the gene. Pinker argues that a major achievement of The Selfish Gene was to allow the application of mentalistic terms to biology, which in turn has exerted a positive influence on the study of consciousness, where concepts like wanting and thinking can be dealt with as manifestations of abstract phenomena.

Selfish, of course, does not need to imply ruthlessness or the lack of collaboration, as genes often achieve their imperative by building organisms programmed to commit selfless acts and get along with their relatives and neighbours. We must remember, as Pinker notes, that “the motives of the gene are entirely different from the motive of the person“.

As the last chapter of The Selfish Gene deals with memes, the phrase coined by Dawkins describing cultural replicators, so do some of the essays in this collection. Robert Aunger notes that no significant body of empirical research has developed out of the excitement sparked by the meme theory. The problem seems to be that memes can be used to explain everything, and therefore explain nothing.

One of my favourite essays was that by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, which discusses the effect of The Selfish Gene on the research of family relations. They identify in-laws as a “cross-culturally ubiquitous source of marital conflict”, discuss why full siblings may cooperate more than half siblings and why people more often comment on an infant’s resemblance to its father than its mother.

As this review presents only a small sample of a sample of fields influenced by Richard Dawkins’ writings, and as nearly every essay in this collection comments on his readability and style, The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype, should probably be required reading for anyone professing an interest in the biological sciences.

“Race, Culture and Intelligence” – Richardson and Spears (ed)

I bought this book at a sale for 50 cent, mainly because of its title and the fact that it was published in 1972. I was hoping for some shocking opinions rife with racism so that I could write about them here and possibly ridicule them. But unfortunately (for me, but fortunately for the 70s as a decade,) it is a fairly enlightened collection of essays by a bunch of sensible scientists, social and real (kidding), that are putting up solid arguments against the followers of Galton-like racism masked as science.

These essays are drawn from three areas concerning intelligence research; psychology, biology and sociology, and the conclusions drawn by the 15 writers all seem to agree that a) an IQ score is a terrible way to measure something as complex and manifold as intelligence and b) it is likely going to be impossible to separate any potential genetic influence from the environmental factors involved in shaping the mind of a human being.

One contributor, John Hambley, points out that insisting on genetic variability to be dismissed (for any trait) gives the “very dangerous impression that recognition of any genetic difference among members of the human species necessarily implies inevitable distinctions, that are judged on an axis of superiority-inferiority.” Instead “variability is a biological resource to be valued”.

I still found some leftovers of 70s vernacular; amazing how unacceptable expressions like “Negroes” and “mongol subnormals” have become. I particularly enjoyed the outdated references to the expected size of the human genome, then shrouded in mystery – it “may consist of as many as five to ten million genes”.

“The View from Mount Improbable”, Richard Dawkins

“The View from Mount Improbable” is perfect for swotting up on Dawkins when you don’t have much time. It is an extract from the 320-page “Climbing Mount Improbable” and is published as part of a Pocket Penguin series, which is well worth checking out.

Dawkins starts with a summary of his famous metaphor for the results of evolution as an incredible mountain peak with a seemingly unclimbable ragged front. But his metaphorical mountaineers are so “intent [...] on the perpendicular drama of the cliffs, they do not think to look around the other side of the mountain. There they would find not vertical cliffs and echoing canyons but gently inclined grassy meadows, graded steadily and easily towards the distant uplands”.

This short book is then dedicated to the alleged bane of Darwin’s theory: the evolution of the eye. As it takes Dawkins only 56 tiny pages (including drawings) to dispel conclusively all qualms anyone might have with this eye issue, I will not attempt to summarise it further.

Read this book to brush up on arguments against creationists and their continuing reluctance to understand that evolution is, in fact, quite the opposite of chance resulting in perfectly adjusted organisms. Instead, it is a series of random mutations, selected for the small improvements they confer on an organism, over thousands of generations, to eventually give an organ, a mechanism or a species that appears to be made just so for its environment.

“The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism and Environment”, Richard Lewontin

What a lovely philosophical book!

Instead of blindly following ways of thinking inherited from generations of other scientists, Lewontin rethinks evolution and development.

This is science criticism, but not in a sweeping, bitter way. Rather, it is subtle criticism of details that have a great effect on how we think about established dogmas like “DNA makes proteins” and “organisms adapt to fit their environments”.

The three main parts of this book discuss how the trinity of genes, organism and environment all act as cause and effect in relation to each other.

This is a warning to Mind Your Metaphors, and not let human perception alter the questions we ask of science (as, for example, in the issue with the evolution of the chin) and then fit the answers we receive into categories we can understand.

“It is easy to be a critic”, Lewontin says, but he does it so well! His arguments are extremely well structured and when he explains how physical signals of the outside world determine the life of an organism “like shadows on the wall, passed through a transforming medium of its own creation”, it is logical as well as poetic.

He talks about some cool quirks of evolution, like this one:

“The time between the origin of a species and the time that a mutation of just the right sort occurs and reaches a high enough frequency to be significant in the selective process is of the same order as the total lifetime of the species”, so that most possibly beneficial mutations are never seen.

We shouldn’t ask what a certain feature is “good for” and instead realise that often it is due to the meandering nature of evolutionary progress.

The style of writing is quite personal, despite the abstract topics, and asides like the philosophical musings about avoiding maybe a few but never all causes of death make this a really enjoyable book, that I felt good for reading.

Even if I don’t know if I personally can take on his advice and practise better science for it, Lewontin makes that seem desirable.

“Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code”, Matt Ridley

I enjoyed this book immensely! Biographies of brilliant people might be a completely untapped source of reading pleasure for me. Surely, a lot of it is due to Ridley’s easy style and entertaining anecdotes; I have only read his “Genome” and can’t remember how I felt about it, but I’ll definitely read more of his works in the future.

But what I loved the most was finding out about this astonishing man, who I always thought had stood in Watson’s shadow, which was apparently not the case at all.

I was so enamoured with Crick by half-way through the book that I was totally shocked by the revelations about his radical views (at least he held them in the 1960s and 70s) on races, eugenics and sterilisation of “genetically inferior” people. I don’t know what to do with this information and it seems like neither did Ridley. It is mentioned dutifully but the author doesn’t really take a position and maybe that is not the job of a biographer. As I uneasily read on about this man with the incredible imagination, admiration gained the upper hand again and by the end I cried when he dies.

The fact that Crick was a raging (yes!) atheist helped, of course, but the main reason for liking him is expressed in this last sentence of the epilogue: “He would have liked to find the seat of consciousness and to see the retreat of religion. He had to settle for explaining life.”

“A Devil’s Chaplain”, Richard Dawkins

This book for me was mostly a slightly embarrassing reminder of how tastes and opinions change. I had bought and read only some of the essays published in this book in 2002. My review of it was published in our college newspaper. I am too afraid to go back and read it in full, but I remember my dislike of Dawkins and pencilled notes in the book itself remind me how derogatory and one-sided I found the author and his book.

I have since come full circle on the Dawkins Appreciation Curve and embrace his justified arrogance and argumentative strength. This book is a great way to start into Dawkins’ writing as this collection offers essays on all his topics of interest and allows the reader to choose one or all to read up on in more depth.

Most of his arguments concerning religion are familiar to me now from the “The God Delusion” and some of his evolutionary viewpoints are probably better described in the books devoted completely to that particular topic. It was very interesting, however, to read the essays in the section on Stephen Jay Gould, Dawkins’ most publicised adversary. I’ve always wanted to know where their main conflicts lie and even though it’s still hard to grasp from a few forewords to books and book reviews, at least I gained a little insight.

One thing I still cringe about was the letter to his daughter on her tenth birthday, which concludes the book. Maybe I’m just not aware of the tone in which to address a child of that age, but this does not seem to be it. It is a mixture between oversimplification and a patronising voice on one hand, extremely abstract ideas and sentences on the other hand.

The eulogies and lament, predictably, brought a few tears to my eyes and I step a good bit away from my previous criticism of coldheartedness on hearing of the death of a close friend.

I do think, though, prompted by the letter to his daughter and his brief excursion into travel writing about a trip to Africa, that Dawkins should not meddle in styles of writing other than the one he has so obviously mastered: biting, fiercely intelligent, thought-provoking and awe-inspiring science writing.

I have now erased all my pencil marks.

“A Short History of Nearly Everything”, Bill Bryson

When I read this book it changed my life. Then again, reading this book and my life changing may have been co-incidental but when I had finished “A Short History…” I knew that I was

a) completely in awe of science, nature (not the journals) and chance and

b) a full-blown atheist.

Bryson considers each major area of science at a time and walks the reader through all its major achievements and discoveries. It takes a lovely personal spin on things as he gives the big names personalities and stories, and reminds us how the real thinker behind an idea is often not credited.

Being a non-scientist, Bryson manages to take us to great scientific depths without ever becoming too technical, so this book is ideal for anyone with a respect or a curiosity for science or anyone who just needs a little perspective on human life.

The cover promises a story full of “wonder and delight” – true, but given the frequent reminders of various disasters that, statistically, should soon befall the Earth, one might add “panic” to the feelings this book inspires.

But given the amazing string of coincidences that lead to life being here in the first place, we shouldn’t really complain if this lucky streak were to end.

This book has some brilliant quotes, like calling humans “the living universe’s supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously”.

Bryson is obviously a very good travel writer, but taking a stroll through the universe with him is undoubtedly my best Bryson-reading experience.

“Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body”, Armand Marie Leroi

I read this initially because we invited the author to speak at the GenSoc Darwin Day Symposium 2006 and I wanted to be prepared. But it turned out to be really fascinating in the way that deformities are fascinating. The book features a lot of pictures, drawings and photos of mutants, but they are not even needed to keep the reader hooked. It’s well written in an intentionally dramatic style ( “Cleopatra ordered the dissection of pregnant slave girls so that she could observe the progress of their embryos. While we may admire her curiosity and ability to fit laboratory work into a busy social schedule, we can hardly follow her lead. We must approach the human body more circumspectly. We must find mutants.” ), which serves the slightly circus-like topic of the book well.

From a scientific perspective it is a very good overview of embryogenesis, Hox genes, the history of science and even human nature in dealing with “monstrosities”.

The last two chapters, however, seem like an afterthought, as if he’d covered the main themes and then remembered “I’m also interested in ageing and race!”. Those topics are also well dealt with and interesting, the style just changes to a more familiar genetics popular science book.

He is not intimidated by over-cautious ethical concerns and speaks honestly about his views of human race and brings home the message that studying inter-continental genetic variation does not make a scientist a racist.

Leroi does not try to patronise his readers by over-simplifying his explanations and this means that it is not the easiest read and is probably not intended for lay people. His use of foreign language expression is a little excessive but gives his writing a personal style.

Reading “Mutants” makes me wonder if it is advisable to have children at all for fear of the large number of things that can go wrong in their development. But then again, as Leroi puts it in his introduction: “We are all mutants. But some of us are more mutant than others.”