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GENETIC MAPS AND HUMAN IMAGINATIONS

THE LIMITS OF SCIENCE IN UNDERSTANDING WHO WE ARE

An outspoken and well-spoken sociologist (City University of New York Graduate School) takes on the biomedical establishment in this collection of essays on genes, race, disease, eugenics, procreation, and the future. Rothman, whose earlier books probed the medicalization of motherhood, prenatal testing and surrogacy/adoption/parenthood, here attacks the Human Genome Project. This multibillion-dollar federal initiative to map and sequence all 100,000 human genes is fraught with dangers, she says—not the least of which is a new eugenics of designer babies. Rothman reviews the old eugenics movement, declaring it to be frankly racist, and she skillfully disposes of latter-day Bell Curve arguments. Her central point is that science is promulgating an all-in-the-genes model of biological determinism, and as an example she points to current medical thinking that all cancer is genetic. She claims that we live “in an era of looking down—telling individuals to eat more wisely, slather on the skin protectors,” and she sees the search for susceptibility genes as just another focus on what is wrong with the individual and not with society or the environment. When it comes to the future, Rothman trots out the slippery-slope scenarios but seems less concerned about cloning. Instead, she simply says we could spend money a lot more wisely than on the genome project—while ignoring what the genetic enterprise has yielded in terms of understanding evolution, developmental biology, aging, and the human brain. Rothman’s empathy, warmth, and intelligence are everywhere apparent, but in painting biology with a reductionist brush that dismisses selfhood or “soul,” she confuses scientific practice with what scientists think and overlooks the fact that there are many geneticists who know that genes are not causal and there is more to life than molecular biology.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-393-04703-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998

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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING

Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science...

Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.

As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”

Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.

Pub Date: May 6, 2003

ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Broadway

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

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LETTERS FROM AN ASTROPHYSICIST

A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.

Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, 2017, etc.) receives a great deal of mail, and this slim volume collects his responses and other scraps of writing.

The prolific science commentator and bestselling author, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, delivers few surprises and much admirable commentary. Readers may suspect that most of these letters date from the author’s earlier years when, a newly minted celebrity, he still thrilled that many of his audience were pouring out their hearts. Consequently, unlike more hardened colleagues, he sought to address their concerns. As years passed, suspecting that many had no interest in tapping his expertise or entering into an intelligent give and take, he undoubtedly made greater use of the waste basket. Tyson eschews pure fan letters, but many of these selections are full of compliments as a prelude to asking advice, pointing out mistakes, proclaiming opposing beliefs, or denouncing him. Readers will also encounter some earnest op-ed pieces and his eyewitness account of 9/11. “I consider myself emotionally strong,” he writes. “What I bore witness to, however, was especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will not soon leave my mind.” To crackpots, he gently repeats facts that almost everyone except crackpots accept. Those who have seen ghosts, dead relatives, and Bigfoot learn that eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. Tyson points out that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so confirmation that a light in the sky represents an alien spacecraft requires more than a photograph. Again and again he defends “science,” and his criteria—observation, repeatable experiments, honest discourse, peer review—are not controversial but will remain easy for zealots to dismiss. Among the instances of “hate mail” and “science deniers,” the author also discusses philosophy, parenting, and schooling.

A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.

Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-324-00331-1

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Norton

Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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