Skip to main content

Science in Wonderland - Melanie Keene ***

It's an odd one this, though I was pleased to have it to read, as it makes a distinct change from the usual diet of heavy duty science.

 Cambridge historian of science Melanie Keene introduces us to a genre I was unaware of - a peculiarly Victorian idea of putting across science for children using the mechanisms of fairy tales. Sell-out demonstrations at venues like the Royal Institution had shown the public appetite for science, when presented in the best way, and writers were enthusiastic to get these true wonders of the age across, but felt that children would best be introduced to science using intermediaries like fairies (relatively newly transformed from human-sized mischief-makers like Puck to insect-sized, much more attractive winged creatures) and wizards.

 An obvious opportunity that was seized with both hands were the parallels between the dramatic revelations of the prehistoric existence of dinosaurs and storybook tales. Here the science was simply presented with some of the language of storytelling - dinosaurs would be described as monsters and dragons. But elsewhere, fairies, for instance, became intermediaries for getting the message across. In one chemistry book, for instance, different fairies represented different elements, bonds were the fairies holding hands and so forth.

 One topic that inevitably got the fairytale treatment was evolution. Although the science was sometimes watered down, with the author making sure that there was room for a creative guiding hand, evolution was a natural fit for wonderland. It was fascinating to discover, for instant that Kingsley's The Water Babies was a book that was powerfully driven by evolution. I can see that now looking back, though when I read it as a child I just found it mawkish and silly, lacking the imagination, drive and wit of the Alice books with their explicit dismissal of fiction that had a worthy message.

 Unfortunately, the author hasn't learned a lesson from her topic - that a good presentation of non-fiction makes use of some of the tools of fiction. Specifically, one of the big differences between a textbook and book to sit down, read and enjoy (as I presume this is supposed to be) is that good non-fiction should have a narrative arc. This book really doesn't. It doesn't appear to be going anywhere or drawing any significant conclusions from its observations. It takes us on a random tour, littered with unnecessary academic wording (I don't think I have ever read a book with so many occurrences of the word 'quotidian') unsupported by a feelimg of purpose or direction.

 Certainly an interesting topic, then - covering one of the predecessors of popular science, and a subject that is widely unknown and deserves a wider audience - but the way it is put across is not ideal.
Hardback:  

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

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader.  We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard.  This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Infinity Machine - Sebastian Mallaby ****

It's very quickly clear that Sebastian Mallaby is a huge Demis Hassabis fan - writing about the only child prodigy and teen genius ever who was also a nice, rounded personality. After a few chapters, though, things settle down (I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' description of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) and we get a good, solid trip through the journey that gave us DeepMind, their AlphaGo and AlphaFold programs, the sudden explosion of competition on the AI front and thoughts on artificial general intelligence. Although Mallaby does occasionally still go into fan mode - reading this you would think that AlphaFold had successfully perfectly predicted the structure of every protein, where it is usually not sufficiently accurate for its results to have direct practical application - we get a real feel for the way this relatively unusual company was swiftly and successfully developed away from Silicon Valley. It's readable and gives an important understanding of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nanotechnology - Rahul Rao ****

There was a time when nanotechnology was both going to transform the world and wipe us out - a similar position to our view of AI today. On the positive transformation side there was K. Eric Drexler's visions in the 1986 Engines of Creation. Arguably as much science fiction as engineering possibilities, it predicted the ability to use vast armies of assemblers to put objects together from individual atoms.  On the negative side was the vision of grey goo, out of control nanotechnology consuming all in its path as it made more and more copies of itself. In 2003, for instance, the then Prince Charles made the headlines  when newspapers reported ‘The prince has raised the spectre of the “grey goo” catastrophe in which sub-microscopic machines designed to share intelligence and replicate themselves take over and devour the planet.’ These days the expectations have been eased down a notch or two. Where nanotechnology has succeeded, it has been with the likes of atom-thick mat...
Post a Comment
Read more