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RICHARD DAWKINS, the evolutionary biologist who holds a chair in the
public understanding of science at Oxford University, has collected
essays by some of the most influential scientists of the 20th
century that are also examples of original thought and literary
competence.
Dawkins is something of a polymath whose
interests range far beyond his chosen field of study. For example,
his most recent book, The God Delusion, is a witty and provocative
examination of the persistence of the belief in God and its
consequences.
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing
reflects not only his knowledge of the key theories of science but
also his tastes in literary exposition and style.
The anthology includes the writings of
scientists as diverse as Rachel Carson, Francis Crick, Theodosius
Dobzhansky, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Stephen Jay Gould,
Douglas Hofstadter, Primo Levi, Ernest Mayr, Roger Penrose, Carl
Sagan, C.P. Snow and Alan Turing to list only some of them in
alphabetical order.
Although the editorial purpose of the collection
is to focus on “good writing by professional scientists,” the
book succeeds in revealing how their minds worked as they wrestled
with the technical intricacies of subjects as varied as theoretical
physics and computer design.
The essays in the collection contain many
interesting and, to the layman, lesser-known facts but more than
this, the book is a celebration of the scientific method.
General principles and personal preoccupations
are revealed. Thus, Peter Atkins wonders whether thermodynamics is a
simple or a complex change. Or insights gleaned from crossing
traditional boundaries as when Fred Hoyle, an astrophysicist, looks
at evolution and remarks that he is “overwhelmingly impressed by
the way chemistry has gradually given way to electronics.” The
moral choices faced by scientists are recollected as in J. Robert
Oppenheimer’s memoir on the development and eventual use of the
atomic bomb. There are ruminations by Primo Levi on the periodic
table and a poem by J.B.S. Haldone on the rectal cancer that killed
him.
The essays are arranged under four headings:
“What Scientists Study”; “Who Scientists Are”; “What
Scientists Think”; “What Scientists Delight In.”
The groupings, however, are not hermetic nor
exclusive as can be expected from researchers who spend every waking
hour—or sometimes even sleeping hours—tossing in their minds
problems, possibilities and testing procedures of both familiar and
arcane phenomena.
Dawkin’s introductions to the book and to the
essays are pithy but do not say why some of the pieces fall into a
particular group. The first section, for instance, covers the life
sciences, the mind, and the universe. Why? Dawkins perhaps thinks
that they are the subjects that would interest the common reader.
The third group brings together pieces by theoretical physicists and
mathematicians. He does not say why studying and thinking are
separate.
The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, all
437 pages of it, is a buffet rather than an sequential repast that a
reader could pick and choose from with profit, wonder, and
enlightenment.
For those of us who dabble in science
journalism, Dawkin’s book contains no lessons on how to write
about science or to communicate science to a mass audience. This is
not necessarily a shortcoming as he shows us brilliantly the nature
of science as a facet of culture and a fact of civilization. This is
more than any science reporter could ask for.
opinion@manilatimes.net
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