history of science

Book review – Selfish Genes to Social Beings: A Cooperative History of Life

8-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology

Evolution is often characterised rather one-sidedly in terms of a struggle for existence, “red in tooth and claw”, and selfish genes. And yet, as evolutionary biologist Jonathan Silvertown shows here, cooperation in biology is both widespread and ancient. In his entertaining Dinner with Darwin which I reviewed way back in 2018, he briefly touched on food sharing in humans as one example of cooperation; in Selfish Genes to Social Beings, he gives the topic at large the book-length treatment it deserves. Silvertown here writes for a broad audience, explicitly including those without a formal background in biology. With nary an equation in sight, he relies on a potent combination of human-interest stories, wit, and ingenious metaphors to convince you that cooperation is an important component driving evolution.

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Year list – The Inquisitive Biologist’s top 5 reads of 2024

4-minute read

2024 was a year in which I managed to read and review 38 books. What follows is my personal top 5 of the most impactful, most beautiful, and most thought-provoking books I read this year.

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Book review – A History of Dinosaurs in 50 Fossils

6-minute read
keywords: paleontology

Giving an overview of all of dino-dom in just 50 fossils and a mere 160 pages might seem like a tall order. Fortunately, palaeontologist Paul M. Barrett, a Merit Researcher in the Earth Science Department of the London Natural History Museum (NHM), is no stranger to writing popular works on dinosaurs. This handsomely illustrated hardback will do well in the museum’s gift shop.

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Book review – Imperfection: A Natural History

8-minute read
keywords: evolutionary biology

This is the second of a two-part review where I am revisiting the idea that evolution by natural selection is not a process that will always result in perfect adaptations. I first touched on this back in 2019 when reviewing Daniel S. Milo’s Good Enough which, as per its title, argued that evolution does not care for perfection: good enough to survive will do just nicely. Having previously reviewed Andy Dobson’s witty Flaws of Nature, I am now turning to Telmo Pievani’s Imperfection: A Natural History which offers an altogether more erudite take on the topic.

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Year list – The Inquisitive Biologist’s top 5 reads of 2023

3-minute read

2023 was a year in which I managed to read and review only 42 books. Yes, there were some really big books, but mostly this has been a year of intensification: reviews are becoming longer and I am taking many more notes while preparing them. A course correction seems in order as I would like to increase that number next year. Another development you might have noticed was several double-reviews, triptychs, and even a quartet. Increasingly often I find that new titles complement earlier books that I have on my shelves, unread. I am keen to learn more, dig deeper, and in the process hopefully provide useful context, so I plan to continue this habit next year.

What follows is my personal top 5 of the most impactful, most beautiful, and most thought-provoking books I read during 2023.

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Book review – Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes Our World

9-minute read
keywords: oceanography

“This isn’t merely a diverting tale about some salty water. This is the story that defines planet Earth” (p. 13). With that quote from the introduction, oceanographer Helen Czerski sets the tone for this book. In a break from many other books about the deep sea that talk about animals, Blue Machine focuses on the ocean itself, revealing a fascinating planetary engine. Equal parts physical oceanography, marine biology, and science history, topped off with human-interest stories, Czerski has written a captivating book that oozes lyricism in places.

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Book review – On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth

10-minute read
keywords: earth sciences, ecology

The scientist, environmentalist, and futurist James Lovelock is probably best remembered for the Gaia hypothesis: the notion that the Earth is a giant self-regulating system that maintains conditions suitable for life on the planet. It has gained a certain respectability in academic circles over the decades, but how justified is this? In my previous reviews of Lovelock’s original 1979 book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth and the 1995 follow-up The Ages of Gaia, I was critical of various assumptions and claims expressed therein. At the same time, I am aware that other, more knowledgeable people have worked on this idea for years, so what do I know? In On Gaia, Earth system scientist Toby Tyrrell gives a thorough and dispassionate overview of the scientific evidence and whether it supports Gaia. This, then, is the third of a four-part review series that explores the Gaia hypothesis in greater detail (see also part 1, part 2, and part 4).

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Book review – How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future

8-minute read
keywords: climate change, energy, technology

The complexity of modern civilization is somewhat of a double-edged sword. It has brought great advances in human health and well-being, yet a full understanding of the sum-total of our knowledge of how the world works is now far beyond any single person. Consequently, getting people to agree on how to tackle complex problems becomes this much harder. In How The World Really Works, energy expert and policy analyst Vaclav Smil provides the big picture of the material and energetic basis undergirding human civilization, and what this means for attempts at addressing climate change. Rich in eye-opening facts and not a little bit opinionated, this is a much-needed reality check that purposefully avoids extreme views of both the techno-optimist and catastrophist kind.

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Book review – Dinosaurs – 10 Things You Should Know: 230 Million Years for People Short on Time

4-minute read
keywords: paleontology, popular science

When it comes to popular science books, some of the books I admire most are the smallest ones. It takes great skill to capture the essence of a subject into a short book, steer clear of well-trodden ground, and contribute something novel that will educate and enthuse your reader. Palaeontologist and science communicator Dean Lomax here collects ten short essays on dinosaurs, convincingly showing that good things come in small packages.

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Book review – Explorers of Deep Time: Paleontologists and the History of Life

6-minute read
keywords: paleontology

When I ask you to think of a palaeontologist, what comes to mind? Admit it, you likely thought of someone digging up dinosaur fossils. And that someone was probably a white man. Grounded in the past, and endlessly repeated in the present, this is of course a very narrow picture of what palaeontology is like. In Explorers of Deep Time, Roy Plotnick, a palaeontologist and emeritus professor in earth and environmental sciences, challenges this and other stereotypes. Pardon the excruciating pun, but he leaves no rock unturned in the process of showing the many faces of modern palaeontology.

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