The edgy edge of scientific investigation presented with verve.
New Statesman columnist Brooks (Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science, 2012, etc.) details research being conducted on the extreme frontiers of science.
“Science has been successful for the most part in explaining why things are as they are,” writes the author in this absorbing piece of reportage. “But in the process they have also discovered the broad horizon of their ignorance.” It is encouraging to hear that scientists continue to push the envelope of inquiry in realms that require vast background knowledge to even frame the questions that are subsequently turned on their heads. Ignorance is an invitation, Brooks suggests, or as the physicist Richard Feynman once said: “Everything we know is only some kind of approximation. Therefore, things must be learned only to be unlearned again or, more likely, to be corrected.” Brooks accessibly examines his chosen 11 skirmishes with exploratory “corrections,” and he opens with a doozy: the origins and workings of human consciousness. Does it sit atop our sensory perceptions? Is awareness an illusion with no overarching narrative? Brooks proceeds to outline a theory of seeing, with all its herky-jerky gaps, that makes consciousness appear a survival tool straight out of Darwin. He provides a scintillating chapter on animal personalities that segues into animal-to-human organ transplants. He also explores epigenetics, forecasting the development of an embryo via the environment “in which [the] genes’ chemical properties are operating,” and he rolls out the experiments and studies that have been conducted to give the lie to the Big Bang theory, to promote examples of mind over body, or to demonstrate our ability to disconnect from time, with the aid of psilocybin. He ends with the great humbling statement: The more we learn, the more insignificant humans become, knocked off our perch of self-regard by, for instance, “godlike” subatomic particles.
The edgy edge of scientific investigation presented with verve.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1468310597
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
An exposition of the revolutionary changes in medicine coming in the next century as well as discussion of some of the ethical problems these will create. The distinguished Clark, professor emeritus of immunology at UCLA (Sex and the Origins of Death, 1996, etc.), attempts to explain to nonscientists the biology underlying molecular medicine. This is no small undertaking, and Clark is only partly successful. For the layperson, his work requires careful reading of dense text, mastery of a mysterious new vocabulary—``recombinant plasmids,'' ``antisense mRNA''—and study of complex diagrams. After these demanding biochemistry lessons, Clark turns to a fascinating discussion of what it all means in terms of health. He details the current state of gene therapy in treating cystic fibrosis and severe combined immune deficiency (the Bubble Boy disorder), in which copies of normal genes are being successfully introduced into the living cells of individuals with defective genes. In cancer, the ultimate goal of gene therapy is to alter or kill every tumor cell, and in AIDS to neutralize the effects of HIV. Clark, who is optimistic about reaching these goals, then devotes a chapter each to the profound effects on public health that DNA vaccination (injecting a gene from a pathogen, which would be more effective than today's vaccines) will bring in the next century and to the significance of the Human Genome Project, due to be completed shortly after the turn of the century. He clearly sees an educated public as the best defense against misuse of genetic information, for instance, altering a fetus's genetic makeup with the best of medical intentions but without knowing all the consequences of doing so. Although Clark insists that if one is to understand molecular medicine, one must first understand molecular biology, those who find his biology lectures too academic for comfort can still savor the well-wrought medical and ethical discussions.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-19-511730-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
In 1270, one year before the start of Marco Polo's fabled adventure, a Jewish merchant from the Adriatic port of Ancona set sail for the Orient; over 700 years later, his recently discovered account affords a rare and fascinating glimpse into the peoples, commerce, and thought of the 13th century. Selbourne, a former Oxford professor with an interest in Judaica, presents a fully annotated, very readable translation from the medieval Italian. It reveals Jacob d'Ancona as a savvy businessman, a scholar, a knowledgeable healer—and someone who never shies from disputation. Jacob sails to the eastern Mediterranean; journeys overland to Basra, where he attends the wedding of his son to a wealthy merchant's daughter; crosses the Arabian Sea, alighting on India's Malabar Coast; and then via Sumatra sails north to the Chinese port of Zaitun, the ``City of Light.'' Readers may be surprised to learn that Europeans of all stripes, as well as Saracens, or Muslims, had already been engaged in thriving trade with the Chinese for perhaps hundreds of years, Jewish merchants being among the most prominent. Zaitun itself was a Sodom of sorts: Its ``light'' is a consequence of the all-night commerce in human pleasures, which the pious Jacob abhors. But it is also a center of learning and a great agglomeration of peoples from the known medieval world. During his five-month sojourn, Jacob becomes involved in the intellectual and practical debates swirling around the city, which faced imminent invasion by Kublai Khan, to whom Polo would shortly become an advisor. Jacob's somewhat prolix disquisitions on piety and religion, the relationships among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and the wisdom of confronting the Mongols earn him both admiration and enmity, and he must finally flee the city, though not without considerable financial success. An exciting, stimulating, and unique human document, and one that will no doubt become a much-trumpeted addition to the historical record. (50 b&w photos)
Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1997
ISBN: 0-316-17353-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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