Alook at science writing as a popular art form
“Big science, as often as not, hinges on small moments. Oncethe grants have been secured and the politics navigated, the groundbroken and the visionary promises made, when banks of computersflicker to life and fingers curl above keyboards, ready to flash thefirst discoveries via E-mail, a decade’s work can still come crashingdown in the final hour — a castle erected in the thin air of theory,too weak to withstand true gravity.”
–“The Best American Science Writing 2000”
A book is not limited to the classic interpretation of the word,meaning some type of prose fiction.
There is a style of writing to fit every type of reader, and somereaders are science-minded.
Too often, science writing is ignored in reviews because adistinction is made and a line is drawn, abandoning science to aweekly special section that the average individual with an eighthgrade level of reading comprehension can easily pass over.
Science can be read for pleasure.
So, for all those who wince at the thought of Danielle Steel andlaugh openly at Harry Potter groupies, try “The Best American ScienceWriting 2000.”
This book contains a collection of 19 essays and articles from awide variety of magazines, both of the extremely scientific variety,such as Scientific American, and the not-so-scientific, such as TheOnion.
“The Best American Science Writing 2000” is not limited by asingle author or a type of author with a specific background.Scientists themselves, like Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould,journalists and, in some cases, the patients contribute to thispresentation of the latest science.
What can be seen through this book, and through books of sciencefrom the past, is that, as a construct of humanity, science changeswith the times — it is molded to fit the needs of society. Thelimits of science are mankind’s limits imposed on the potential ofscience.
The cutting edge science in this book is only cutting edge today– tomorrow it may have no more practical application than a goodblood-letting.
The significance lies in the ability of today’s science to shapeand guide the science of tomorrow, to test the boundaries ofmankind’s limitations so that tomorrow, the boundaries can be broken,the unimaginable can become simply the next challenge and sciencefiction can become science fact.
“The Best American Science Writing 2000” is not merely a catalogof the virtues of science, layered with science-speak intended toinspire awe and blind faith in the majesty and infallibility of thescience machine. The book also records the struggle of science andeven the failure, as in “The Biotech Death of Jesse Gelsinger” — avery character-driven look at the people involved in the tragic deathof an 18-year-old medical volunteer. This narrative looks first-handat everyone, from the scientists who found themselves lost andwithout an explanation for Jesse’s death to the boy’s father and hisresigned acceptance.
This style is in contrast to the typical image of data-heavyresearch reports the idea of science writing brings to mind.
Perhaps the most enlightening and frightening aspect of the bookinvolves a first-person account by a man who caught a cold. Duringhis illness the cold targeted his brain so that by the time herecovered, he had brain damage.
The narrative recounts the process of becoming a wholly newperson, as the intellectual nature by which his pre-sickness self wasdefined is forcibly reshaped by the literal holes and scars in thetissue of his brain.
Whether one emphasizes the mind in one’s persona or not, everyoneis living on borrowed time if a cold can change the topography of anindividual’s brain and alter who a person is.
Because the book involves more than simply science regurgitated byjournalists, it avoids the sensationalism that feature journalism hascome to require in all but a few of the essays.
For the most part, “The Best American Science Writing 2000” is aninteresting and engaging look at modern science that does not requirea Ph.D. in any particular discipline on the part of the reader. Someof the science is very readable, as are the first-person accounts,but make no mistake — this is science writing — much of the essaysare so complex they will shut the average reader down and leave him adrooling, twitching vegetable.
Offthe shelf
“Nothing could be more misleading to our children than ourpresent affluent society. They will inherit a totally differentworld, a world in which the standards, politics, and economics of the1960s are dead (…) We are today involved in the events leading tofamine; tomorrow we may be destroyed by its consequences (…) Thebirth rate must be brought into balance with the death rate ormankind will breed itself into oblivion.”
–“The Population Bomb”
Is there relevance in old science?
Sometimes.
In 1968, the first printing of “The Population Bomb” becameavailable for the baby-boomer generation, as rumblings ofover-population were first being heard.
As the current world population recently received the news of itssix billionth birth, it is clear that, although this book hadwidespread selling success — particularly for a scholarly work, itsmessage was lost on a generation not dealing first-hand with thedoomsday predictions of author and professor Paul R. Ehrlich.
With chapter subheads like “Too many people,” “Too little food”and “A dying planet,” the book reads like a threatening, yet lengthypamphlet promoting the agenda of a radical environmentalist group. Inthe end, it is almost a How To for joining the cause.
Ehrlich promotes perfectly valid yet unfeasible solutions to hisown hypothetical threats of nuclear war and famine. For “ThePopulation Bomb,” it comes down to poor timing, as humanity is cominginto a time when society might be more apt to listen –unfortunately, the bomb has already exploded, with the world sitting6 billion strong, and having the mindset to listen may only be anexample of panic in a situation that is too late to fix.
However, if the style is radical and this dusty book seems dated,the message is clear and timely, and the science is sound andvalidated in humanity’s current numbers and problems.
The message “We are too many” feels very real in 2000. Perhapseveryone should reread his parents’ old copy of “The Population Bomb”and see if the previous generation’s apathy can be bridged and asolution found.
