Skip to main content

Where Do Camels Belong? – Ken Thompson *****

Some of the best popular science books are the ones that change your way of looking at something. They might show you, for instance, that time travel is real, not just science fiction, or that quantum theory is not just for Nobel Prize winners – or, in this case, that our whole attitude to invasive species is down to emotional knee-jerk response, not to real science.
Ken Thompson’s fascinating and highly readable book takes us on a tour of the way that ecologists have made invasive species public enemies without any good basis. He shows how it is very difficult to say whether a species is native or alien, and whether this matters. Often, it seems to come down to whether we like the species or not. He shows how many of the invaders we panic about actually improve species diversity, how it’s a perfectly natural thing for species to move from place to place, and how bad science means that ecologists confuse correlation and causality – a classic scientific error.
While turning the view of invasive species on its head, Thompson also keeps us reading with well-crafted and often drily humorous turns of phrase. Describing the brown tree snake (one of the few genuine baddies in these circumstances) and its invasion of the island of Guam, he comments ‘Small, highly gregarious, white eyes [a local bird] roost together on a branch, shoulder to shoulder, and can be taken one at a time without the others taking flight, in a kind of ornithological kebab.’
This is an important and thought provoking book that deserves widespread exposure. At risk of hyperbole, I’d say it is to ecology what Darwin’s Origin of Species was to evolution. Not because it’s as important as Origin, but because like that book, it shows us a piece of biological theory that is entirely obvious and logical once you see it, yet it’s one that most of the people working in the field simply haven’t acknowledged or noticed.
Highly recommended, and without doubt one of the best popular science books so far in 2014.

Paperback:  

Kindle:  
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

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more