Skip to main content

Coral – Steve Jones ***

I was thrown off kilter from the start by the quote on the front of this book. Jones is the Alan Bennett of science writing. What could this possibly mean? That he writes with a Yorkshire accent? That he has tendency to ruminative monologues? That he can be very funny and poignant at the same time? None of these really seemed to apply. In the end, all I could think of was that Bennett is the voice of the spoken word Winnie the Pooh books, and Steve Jones sometimes comes across a bit like Eeyore.
When you get past the cover, you discover a subject that has just been crying out for good popular science coverage. Just as The Buzz About Bees transformed our view of the humble bee, here was a chance to reveal the sheer depth, complexity and interest of corals. And to an extent the book does it. There’s a lot to enjoy and be amazed by – but it’s all rather summary, because it only comprises about half the content of the book, the rest being huge asides that meander off on loosely related topics. So, for instance, there’s a great swathe of information about cancer, sparked off by the ‘ageless’ nature of hydra cells. This travels too far away from the core topic – it’s fine to have brief asides, but if I’d wanted a book about cancer, I would have got one.
The other danger in the asides is that Jones is straying from his field of expertise, and occasionally it shows. At one point he comments that glass is a liquid (at room temperature, I presume). I have to confess to repeating this old chestnut myself in one of my early books, but this is no longer thought to be the case. (It used to be argued that the liquid nature could be seen in very old window panes, as they tend to be thicker towards the bottom, caused, it was thought, by the glass running down very, very slowly. Actually they are like that because medieval glaziers couldn’t make glass of a consistent thickness, so they put the thicker part of the sheet at the bottom, making the pane more stable.) Also, unless I’m misreading his text, he seems to repeat the climate change myth that global warming in the interglacial periods was caused by rising carbon dioxide levels, rather than the correct analysis that rising carbon dioxide levels were caused by the warming (a totally different mechanism to modern manmade warming).
I’ll finish off with artistic symmetry by checking out another quote from the cover. It is surprising, exciting and so much more interesting than the mechanical simplification that usually passes for popular science. Leaving aside the sheer affront to so many wonderful popular science writers (mechanical simplification is more, in my experience, the lifeblood of newspaper book reviewers), it’s just not true. Jones can write well, but sometimes his prose is stodgy, and it’s not uncommon to have to read a sentence two or three times to get the meaning. Not because it’s too technical, but because the English is too tangled.
So, a real curate’s egg. A fascinating subject, but not enough on the core topic with too devoted to asides that travel far from the subject.

Paperback:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stephen Hawking: Genius at Work - Roger Highfield ****

It is easy to suspect that a biographical book from highly-illustrated publisher Dorling Kindersley would be mostly high level fluff, so I was pleasantly surprised at the depth Roger Highfield has worked into this large-format title. Yes, we get some of the ephemera so beloved of such books, such as a whole page dedicated to Hawking's coxing blazer - but there is plenty on Hawking's scientific life and particularly on his many scientific ideas. I've read a couple of biographies of Hawking, but I still came across aspects of his lesser fields here that I didn't remember, as well as the inevitable topics, ranging from Hawking radiation to his attempts to quell the out-of-control nature of the possible string theory universes. We also get plenty of coverage of what could be classified as Hawking the celebrity, whether it be a photograph with the Obamas in the White House, his appearances on Star Trek TNG and The Big Bang Theory or representations of him in the Simpsons. Ha
Post a Comment
Read more

Roger Highfield - Stephen Hawking: genius at work interview

Roger Highfield OBE is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group. Roger has visiting professorships at the Department of Chemistry, UCL, and at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a member of the Medical Research Council and Longitude Committee. He has written or co-authored ten popular science books, including two bestsellers. His latest title is Stephen Hawking: genius at work . Why science? There are three answers to this question, depending on context: Apollo; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, along with the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl; and, finally, Nullius in verba . Growing up I enjoyed the sciencey side of TV programmes like Thunderbirds and The Avengers but became completely besotted when, in short trousers, I gazed up at the moon knowing that two astronauts had paid it a visit. As the Apollo programme unfolded, I became utterly obsessed. Today, more than half a century later, the moon landings are
Post a Comment
Read more

Space Oddities - Harry Cliff *****

In this delightfully readable book, Harry Cliff takes us into the anomalies that are starting to make areas of physics seems to be nearing a paradigm shift, just as occurred in the past with relativity and quantum theory. We start with, we are introduced to some past anomalies linked to changes in viewpoint, such as the precession of Mercury (explained by general relativity, though originally blamed on an undiscovered planet near the Sun), and then move on to a few examples of apparent discoveries being wrong: the BICEP2 evidence for inflation (where the result was caused by dust, not the polarisation being studied),  the disappearance of an interesting blip in LHC results, and an apparent mistake in the manipulation of numbers that resulted in alleged discovery of dark matter particles. These are used to explain how statistics plays a part, and the significance of sigmas . We go on to explore a range of anomalies in particle physics and cosmology that may indicate either a breakdown i
Post a Comment
Read more