Full of interesting detail and anecdotage, a warm and readable history of a key era in science.
How England’s Royal Society was born from, and continued to foster, the groundbreaking innovations of scientists.
“The revolution in science was . . . not the work of one man, but of a Fellowship,” writes Gribbin (The Scientists, 2003, etc.), seeking to spread praise more widely for the breakthrough usually attributed to Isaac Newton. In 1600, William Gilbert, an Elizabethan physician, published the first careful investigation of magnetism, with conclusions firmly based in experiments that Gilbert himself performed and described for the reader. Another Elizabethan doctor, William Harvey, used experimental techniques to trace the circulation of blood. Around the same time, Sir Francis Bacon laid a philosophical foundation for the scientific method. Bacon’s emphasis on experiment and on the practical value of scientific investigations inspired a group of men who began meeting at Oxford in the 1650s to discuss scientific questions. The group included several who would go on to make their marks in science, but one stood out: Robert Hooke, perhaps the last true scientific polymath. When the Oxford group evolved into the Royal Society in 1660, Hooke became the leading light of British science. In fact, Gribbin argues, Hooke clearly anticipated several of Newton’s chief discoveries; only his low social status and less-developed mathematical skill kept him from being granted equal stature with his rival. Newton, for his part, did his best to keep Hooke in the shadows, going so far as to lose the only known portrait of his competitor when he supervised the relocation of the Society to new quarters in 1710. Gribbin concludes the narrative with Edmund Halley, probably the finest astronomer of his era. Halley encouraged Newton to publish, and his 1705 prediction of the return of the comet now named for him demonstrated the accuracy and universality of Newtonian theories.
Full of interesting detail and anecdotage, a warm and readable history of a key era in science.Pub Date: April 5, 2007
ISBN: 1-58567-831-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
A meticulously researched, frightening report on a deadly pathogen.
A gripping account of one of the most devastating infectious agents on the planet.
MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, was once considered the exclusive bane of hospitalized patients, who were already weakened by disease or surgery, and hence prey to any infectious organism able to survive and adapt to the array of disease-fighting drugs used in health-care settings. Methicillin is an antibiotic that was first hailed as the successor to penicillin, designed to dispatch the bugs that had grown resistant to the first antibiotic. And so it did—until the bugs outwitted it. In time, strains of MRSA appeared not only in sick patients, but also in healthy people who had never been near a hospital. Science journalist McKenna (Beating Back the Devil: On the Front Lines with the Disease Detectives of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, 2004) writes that the first reports of community-based MRSA were scoffed at by the medical profession. The doctors assumed that the community patients had acquired infection from a bug that had escaped from the hospital. The strains were different, however, and so was their profile of drug resistance. McKenna traces a 50-year history of antibiotic-drug development and drug resistance, coming to the dismal conclusion that it’s a war we are losing. MRSA infections now kill nearly 20,000 Americans each year, and an estimated 4.4 million are colonized with the bug. Compounding the problem are the difficulties in hospital infection control—just getting staff to wash their hands between patients has proven a formidable hurdle. Testing all hospital admissions and isolating carriers has been effective, but the process is costly and comes with its own side effects—patients are left alone and have fewer check-ups by a staff that requires new gloves and gowns each time. Big Pharma has not helped, since companies see greater profit in drugs for chronic diseases. McKenna suggests that vaccines might be the answer, but it seems a distant hope—and too late for the patients whose heartbreaking stories she tells.
A meticulously researched, frightening report on a deadly pathogen.Pub Date: March 23, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5727-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A collection of wondrous tales that present ancient myths as the proto–science fiction stories they are.
A fascinating unpacking of ancient myths that feature robots and other lifelike beings, some of which bear an eerie resemblance to modern technology.
More than 2,000 years ago, Greek thinkers were already envisioning the spectacular potential of being “made, not born.” As Mayor (The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World, 2014, etc.), a research scholar in classics and the history of science at Stanford, writes, during ancient times, “we…find a remarkable set of concepts and ideas that arose in mythology, stories that envisioned ways of imitating, augmenting, and surpassing natural life by means that might be termed bio-techne, ‘life through craft’…ancient versions of what we now call biotechnology.” The bronze giant Talos, protector of Crete, appears in numerous poems and artworks, some dating to 500 B.C.E.; Jason, of the Argonauts, is depicted as battling a phalanx of robotlike soldiers sprung from the earth and programmed to kill. Of course, these episodes are fiction, but they reveal the sophistication of the ancients’ imagined automata. In her meticulous research, the author discovers that the Greeks were hardly alone in conceiving mechanistic warriors, servants, or evil human replicas. Surviving myths from Rome, India, and China also explore ideas of artificial life and intelligence. In her insightful analyses of these tales, Mayor is approachable and engaging, and she infuses many familiar stories with new energy in the context of technology. She adroitly explores the ethical aspects of artificial life, addressing big questions about sentience and agency through the lens of ancient ideas. She also makes a convincing argument that these imagined machines anticipated advances that are considered cutting-edge today. Ultimately, she leaves readers in awe of these thinkers who dreamed of “androids” long before it was conceivable to build them.
A collection of wondrous tales that present ancient myths as the proto–science fiction stories they are.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-691-18351-0
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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