This is the second of a three-part review on the history of taxonomy. Having just read Gunnar Broberg’s biography of Linnaeus, I now turn to Every Living Thing. Linnaeus was not the only seventeenth-century scholar trying to get to grips with life’s diversity; French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (Buffon hereafter) was another. Though the two men never met, their ideas did. Author Jason Roberts provides a biography of Linnaeus and Buffon, writing an epic history of their work and intellectual legacy. It has quickly become one of my favourite books this year for introducing me to a new scientific hero.

Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, written by Jason Roberts, published by Riverrun (a Quercus Books imprint) in April 2024 (hardback, 411 pages)

Every Living Thing is divided into three parts and 29 fairly short chapters. In the first two parts, Roberts charts the lives and works of Linnaeus and Buffon, alternating between the two as he goes. Having just finished Broberg’s Linnaeus biography, I could not resist immediately checking his reference section: The Man Who Organized Nature is not among them, though he has consulted two of Broberg’s other works. The timing of this checks out though. Broberg’s book was published in the USA in July 2023 while Roberts’s appeared in April 2024; likely Every Living Thing was already in production when Broberg’s book appeared. Though Roberts has not accessed the Swedish sources that Broberg was able to read, he has consulted several of the Linnaeus biographies Broberg recommended, including more “recent” ones such as Rausing-Koerner’s 1999 Linnaeus: Nature and Nation and Blunt’s 2001 Linnaeus: The Compleat Naturalist. Roberts’s coverage of Linnaeus follows the major beats of his life but leaves out much of the extraneous detail that Broberg provided, focusing on his taxonomical ideas. He also gives more context and helps readers by inserting tangents to explain historical and biological concepts.

It quickly becomes apparent that Broberg was respectful, even mild, just reporting the facts of Linnaeus’s life but rarely passing judgment. Roberts has no such reservations, calling him out for arrogantly inserting “vast exaggeration [and] sheer fiction” (p. 76) into his Lapland travel account, denying his daughters an education “to a degree unusual even by the misogynistic standards of the day” (p. 193), and imposing with “monumental self-assurance” (p. 153) his binomial system on botany. More so than Broberg, he covers the students Linnaeus “with characteristic immodesty” (p. 135) called his apostles who were sent on collecting expeditions to uncharted parts of the world with often fatal outcomes. True, Roberts adds, they went willingly and were not the only ones to do so at the time, but “the first wave of Linnaeus’s apostles produced an extraordinary number of harsh lessons, and cautionary tales” (p. 168). Roberts particularly holds Linnaeus’s feet to the fire regarding his scientific racism, allowing me to return to the pin I put in my last review. “Later apologists have attempted to absolve Linnaeus of racism” (p. 180), but not Roberts. When in the tenth edition of Systema Naturae Linnaeus added prejudiced descriptions to his previous four categories of humans, it was “a spectacular act of ignorance masquerading as savantry” (p. 181). Sure, as The Myth of Race also documented, Blumenbach later added Caucasians to the list and declared them superior while Cuvier amplified the message, but make no mistake, Roberts writes, modern race science “has a genealogy that can be traced directly to the pages of Systema Naturae” (p. 181).

“Broberg was respectful, even mild, just reporting the facts of Linnaeus’s life but rarely passing judgment. Roberts has no such reservations.”

In contrast, Buffon (1707–1788) emerges from this book in a far more positive light. For background, he inherited a fortune at age 10 and by 1739 was nominated as intendant of the Jardin du Roi, gaining both the ear and the financial support of King Louis XV^[1]. That was vital for the project that would dominate the rest of his life: Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulière. Intended as an encyclopedia of all creation, he wrote 36 large and painstakingly detailed volumes, covering the mineral kingdom and part of the animal kingdom (the birds and quadrupeds). His handpicked successor Comte de Lacépède would write another eight.

Like Linnaeus, Buffon was a polymath and became captivated by life’s diversity, but that is where the resemblances end. I admit to knowing little about him before reading this book but, ye gods, he was a fascinating character! He was the morally more upstanding person of the two, vocally opposing slavery and treating the women who crossed his path as equals. At home, “Buffon designed a life of maximum efficiency” (p. 64), having his valet wake him up at 5 AM every day (even if it meant being dragged out of bed) for a strictly scheduled day of writing in his spartan room, with breaks for meals and some socializing. It was a lifestyle he would stick to for the next 50(!) years, delighting in his “rigorous cultivation of solitary focus” (p. 66).

As if that quirk was not enough to endear Buffon to me, his thinking was decades if not centuries ahead of his time. In his writings, he speculated about extinction, common descent and the evolution of species, the cellular basis of life, the finitude of natural resources, and an impending epoch of humans. Roberts provides relevant context to explain the rhetorical safeguards Buffon employed to sidestep royal and church censors, “insulating what he knew to be dangerous ideas by making them islands of text in a sea of general observations about ospreys and otters” (p. 198). Roberts is careful to avoid grand claims: Buffon might have speculated about, for example, the physical basis of inheritance, but it would be “overreach to claim that [he] had foreseen DNA and RNA” (p. 338). He also disentangles the “thicket of significant linguistic differences between Buffon’s era and ours” (p. 199), pointing out that e.g. evolution as we understand it had not yet been coined. Even so, Darwin admitted that Buffon’s ideas were “laughably like mine” (p. xi) and the Anthropocene Working Group was so struck by the parallels between their proposal and Buffon’s epoch of humans that they commissioned an English translation of his 1774 essay The Epochs of Nature.

“I admit to knowing little about [Buffon] before reading this book but, ye gods, he was a fascinating character!”

Of relevance to the history of taxonomy, and the leitmotif of this book, is the rivalry between the ideas of these two men. Roberts captures the contrast beautifully early on: “To Linnaeus’s mind, nature was a noun. All species remained as created during Genesis, representing an unchanging tableau. To Buffon, nature was a verb, a swirl of constant change” (p. 7). Linnaeus, like most naturalists at the time, believed in the fixity of species. Effectively an intellectual hangover from the biblical account of Genesis, the species we see today had always been there, unchanged since their creation: “the Maker had long since put away His tools and closed up His workshop” (p. 72). Our now-familiar concepts of evolution and extinction were basically blasphemy, implying that Creation was imperfect. As such, Linnaeus was convinced that the number of species was finite and cataloguing them was an achievable if time-consuming prospect; his adherents are also referred to here as systematists. Buffon went against the grain and was a complexist. He believed that species evolved and went extinct, even if he did not yet know how. Their differences reflected a deep philosophical divide. Linnaeus believed in absolute universal truths, in Aristotelian essences, with species being real entities. Buffon, in contrast, wrote how systems and methods were “the scaffolding of science, and not science itself” (p. 120), with Linnaeus “mistaking the scaffolding for the edifice” (p. 121). Systematics and species were useful concepts but also human constructs and thus inherently flawed.

Roberts’s biographical account in the first two parts is told with verve. What further elevated the book for me is that he leaves himself a comfortable 110 pages in part 3 to describe what happened next and what the relevance of their ideas is to us today. It is a satisfying way to conclude this book, also as some reviewers complained that Broberg omitted this from his Linnaeus biography. The grand arc that Roberts traces is that, after his death, Buffon’s ideas were quickly sidelined by Linnaeus’s adherents but over time have regained their significance. He takes you through the French Revolution and its aftermath, giving terribly interesting profiles of famous naturalists who embraced Buffon’s ideas to various degrees such as Geoffroy, Lamarck, Cuvier, and Agassiz. He also discusses Britain’s lukewarm reception and then slow acceptance of Linnaeus’s ideas, with his collections ending up in the hands of James Edward Smith who founded the Linnean Society of London in 1788. Simultaneously, Buffon influenced other Brits including Darwin and the remarkable Huxley family—both Thomas Henry Huxley (“Darwin’s Bulldog”) and his grandson Julian Huxley who lived through the rise of genetics.

“[Roberts] leaves himself a comfortable 110 pages […] to describe what happened next and what the relevance of their ideas is to us today. It is a satisfying way to conclude this book.”

Today, Linnaeus’s taxonomical hierarchy has started to creak under the sheer magnitude of the planet’s biodiversity and has increasingly been abandoned, leaving just binomial nomenclature and a hierarchy of categorical ranks. My next review of Ragan’s Kingdoms, Empires, & Domains examines one example of what it struggles with: how to deal with other high-level groupings such as corals, sponges, fungi, and microbes that are neither animal nor plant. Buffon’s observation, that life is like a web or network instead of a thread, seems more relevant than ever. Meanwhile, species concepts remain troublesome beasts, and some scholars propose we consider species “snapshots rather than static points“, which hews closer to Buffon’s idea they are “an entity of reason rather than a physical fact” (p. 352).

Though Roberts is not a science historian, he has done his homework, going back to source material wherever possible. He is not shy to judge both men by modern standards with Buffon emerging as the clear moral victor. In the absence of more recent books, Roberts has convinced me to seek out Jacques Roger’s 1997 biography. He leaves ample space to discuss the aftermath and modern relevance of their ideas, which is a welcome stroke of brilliance. If you are new to the history of taxonomy, I have no hesitation in recommending that you start here; Broberg’s book is a more advanced text on a more circumscribed topic that will make for good follow-up reading.

One final brief aside: some may wonder how this book compares to Rob Dunn’s 2009 book by the same name that also dealt with “Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life“. Having quickly perused it, it gives a broader history of taxonomy that is not focused on Linnaeus and Buffon (the latter is not even mentioned); includes modern figures such as Lynn Margulis, Carl Woese, and Terry Erwin; and also talks about e.g. marine biology and astrobiology. The two comfortably exist side by side.

1. ↑ Roberts seems to be mixing up his dates here, alternately referring to Louis XIV and XV. The former died in 1715 when Buffon was still a child.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Every Living Thing

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Students of genetics and evolution might be familiar with the name of J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964), particularly for his contributions to population genetics. What I did not realise before reading A Dominant Character was that he had many more strings to his bow and was a larger-than-life character. In a fascinating biography that never seeks to downplay his complicated character, journalist Samanth Subramanian effortlessly switches back and forth between Haldane’s personal life and his many scientific contributions.

A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane, written by Samanth Subramanian, published in the UK by Atlantic Books in August 2020 (hardback, 385 pages)

Haldane was not an easy man. In his interactions with others, Subramanian characterises him as grouchy, delighting in provocation, and blunt to the point of hostility. His life offers plenty of drama for a biographer to work with. Following his father’s example, he routinely experimented on himself for his physiological research on respiration, locking himself in airtight chambers or snacking on chemicals to change the acidity of his blood. He unexpectedly relished the experience of trench warfare during World War I: “what mystified even him, although only in retrospect, was his taste for the violence and pleasure he took in killing an enemy” (p. 88). But two decades later, during voluntary visits to a Spain torn by civil war, the “lopsided nature of power in aerial bombing” (p. 218) deeply unsettled him. His first marriage to Charlotte Franken in 1926 started as an affair while she was still married and became a public scandal when a tribunal ejected Haldane from his biochemistry readership at Cambridge, which he overturned in an appeal. His second marriage to Helen Spurway in 1945 similarly blossomed from an affair while his first marriage frayed over childlessness and mutual infidelity. And at the age of 65 he emigrated to India, publicly announcing his disgust with Britain’s handling of the 1956 Suez crisis.

Besides these colourful episodes, there were two difficult topics where I thought Subramanian excelled in neither vilifying nor exonerating Haldane, but presenting him as the complicated, contrarian person he was.

First was that of eugenics, which was all the rage at the beginning of the 20th century. Though Haldane considered “many of the deeds done in America in the name of eugenics […] about as much justified by science as were the proceedings of the inquisition by the gospels” (p. 138), in a 1928 speech he commended the work done by the Eugenics Education Society in encouraging certain people to reproduce, but not others. Subramanian adds that “to his credit, he would go on to revise this notion, arguing decades later that human diversity was not only desirable but was a signal of social liberty” (p. 139). Regarding race, Haldane “scoffed at any nostalgia for bygone racial perfection [yet] could still lapse into shoddy generalization […] He was not a bigot, but he was also not fully exempt from the preconceptions held by those around him” (p. 139–140).

“[…] there were two difficult topics where I thought Subramanian excelled in neither vilifying nor exonerating Haldane […]”

Second was his strongly held political convictions, which landed him in far hotter waters. He slid from socialism in his youth to communism in adulthood, enamoured by several visits to the Soviet Union. MI5, Britain’s Security Service, took a keen interest in Haldane but was never able to decide whether he represented a threat. Subramanian clears him of recently made accusations of being a Soviet spy, “if espionage involves the deliberate transfer of secrets to another state, nothing stains Haldane’s innocence at all” (p. 257). Instead, it is the Russian agronomist Trofim Lysenko that stains his reputation. Lysenko pushed a pseudoscientific idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics* and applied this to crops, promising greatly enhanced yields. Once he secured the backing of Stalin, he purged Soviet academia of the dangerous Western idea of genetics. Numerous scientists were arrested and murdered, including a good friend of Haldane, the famous seed collector Nikolai Vavilov. And yet, Haldane, “the devotee of the scientific method” (p. 26), could never muster more than half-hearted criticism of Lysenko, and always while arguing his ideas had some merit. Subramanian insightfully concludes that this was about Haldane’s “[…] emotional attachment to the party. Admitting he was wrong about Lysenko would mean admitting he was wrong about Communism and the nature of Stalin’s regime” (p. 262).

Despite his many flaws and idiosyncrasies, Haldane was also a genius, and Subramanian effortlessly weaves Haldane’s many scientific achievements into his narrative. This was a time when Mendel’s findings had only just resurfaced and various other explanations were still competing with Darwin’s notion of natural selection. Haldane wrote a series of ten papers, collectively known as A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection, that provided just that. It made him an important contributor to the nascent discipline of population genetics and what later became known as the modern evolutionary synthesis. He made the first estimates of mutation rates in humans and, in a paper written with his sister, demonstrated the first example of genetic linkage (certain traits inheriting together because of their proximity on a chromosome). His work on heterozygote advantage in thalassemia patients preempted the Anthony Allison’s findings on sickle cell anemia. And his name lives on in Haldane’s rule (the observation that sterile or inviable hybrids are usually the heterogametic sex), the Oparin–Haldane hypothesis (life arose from biochemical reactions between organic compounds), and the Briggs–Haldane equation that describes enzyme kinetics.

“Despite his many flaws and idiosyncrasies, Haldane was also a genius, and Subramanian effortlessly weaves Haldane’s many scientific achievements into his narrative.”

If that was not enough, his 1924 book Daedalus predicted peak oil, the switch to wind and solar energy, the hydrogen fuel cell, and test-tube babies. From the 1930s onwards he started writing popular science articles on virtually every topic under the sun in numerous newspapers and magazines (notable ones were later bundled in books), and he started a lively correspondence with readers. Arthur C. Clarke, of all people, called him “the most brilliant science popularizer of his generation” and Subramanian beautifully captures the spirit of his inquisitive mind: “On every front of science, he seemed to know every journal article being published, every item of research being conducted, as if scientists confided their dreams to him every morning before heading off to their laboratories” (p. 4).

A Dominant Character is the third biography of Haldane after Ronald Clark’s in 1968 and Krishna Dronamraju’s in 2017. The latter was the last PhD student to work with Haldane before he died. Not having read these I cannot compare them to A Dominant Character. What I will say is that this book is well researched. Subramanian has drawn on archives at eighteen institutes in five countries and some of his footnotes are so detailed that you know exactly what to expect if you were to check these out for yourself. More importantly, Subramanian braids together Haldane’s academic genius and his colourful personal life into an incredibly enjoyable biography that effortlessly switches back and forth between the two. A book that is hard to put down once you start it.

* For those who now think “but what about epigenetics?”, good point, and there are some who seek to rehabilitate Lysenko. And—to insert one of my catchphrases—there is a book about that.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

A Dominant Character

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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The idea that extinction is a bad thing and diversity a good thing seems self-evident to us. But, by surveying more than two centuries of scholarship, science historian David Sepkoski shows that this was not always the prevailing belief. Rather than a book discussing mass extinction, Catastrophic Thinking is more meta than that, discussing how we have been discussing mass extinction. So, we have an interesting premise, but also an interesting author because—bonus detail—the work of his father, J. John (Jack) Sepkoski Jr., was instrumental in recognizing the Big Five mass extinctions. I could not wait to get to grips with this book.

Catastrophic Thinking: Extinction and the Value of Diversity from Darwin to the Anthropocene, written by David Sepkoski, published by The University of Chicago Press in October 2020 (hardback, 359 pages)

Extinction was long considered a theological non-starter in Western philosophy; God’s creation is perfect after all. But once some naturalists finally accepted fossils for what they were, extinction became a possibility and this is where Sepkoski starts to chart our thinking on extinction through four transitions. In the Victorian era extinction was initially seen as a regular process that was the logical consequence of natural selection. After the trauma of World War I it morphed into a cyclical process, extinction being the result of species reaching the end of their “life span”. The invention and deployment of nuclear weapons and the shadow cast by the Cold War prepared the way for a more catastrophic interpretation so that when the Alvarez team proposed a fiery end to the reign of the dinosaurs, it found fertile ground in the popular imagination. And that concern gave way to considering extinction as a ongoing slow-motion biodiversity crisis.

This exceedingly brief and simplified outline can barely do justice to the many subtleties and insights that Sepkoski unearths. Catastrophic Thinking stands out for the depth of its scholarship; next to careful reading of books and journal articles, he has interviewed some key figures and dives into private correspondence held in archives. Sepkoski previously wrote Rereading the Fossil Record in which he charted the rise of palaeobiology as a discipline, and he draws on that book here. For palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists there are thus plenty of fascinating science history details.

For example, how Charles Lyell’s uniformitarian views of slow and gradual change won out over Georges Cuvier’s ideas of periodical catastrophic revolutions and went on to influence Charles Darwin’s thinking. Sepkoski is at pains to explain that the uniformitarianism-versus-catastrophism dichotomy is itself an oversimplification and was only one of the concerns, another being the question of intrinsic versus extrinsic causes of extinction. Somewhat later, the rise of cyclical thinking questioned Darwin’s assumption that the fossil record is very fragmentary and incomplete; perhaps the sudden disappearance of species was not an artefact after all.

“Catastrophic Thinking stands out for the depth of its scholarship […] For palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists there are […] plenty of fascinating science history details.”

This, in turn, paved the way for catastrophic thinking when the question of the fossil record’s completeness got an empirical boost in the 1950s through the work of first Norman Newell and later Sepkoski’s father on fossil marine invertebrates. As Sepkoski explains, their remains are so plentiful, several orders of magnitude richer and more complete than vertebrate fossils, that they are considered to offer a true and reliable picture of the history of life. And this record was revealing five big mass extinctions and potentially many other smaller ones. This raised questions whether natural selection and Darwinian evolution might be suspended during such crises, which David Raup pithily summarized in the title of his book Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck?

The catastrophic school of thought, too, planted the seeds for the next transition. After all, mass extinctions reveal themselves as a rapid and precipitous drop in biological diversity. Already in 1992, none other than E.O. Wilson argued that biodiversity loss due to human-caused habitat loss and climate change are plunging the world into a sixth mass extinction. This concept was further popularised in 2014 by Elizabeth Kolbert although, as Sepkoski explains, there is some pushback from palaeontologists.

I could go on, but the biological story is only one side of this book. Catastrophic Thinking is part of Chicago’s science•culture series which contains books examining the intersection of the two. A central theme for Sepkoski, reiterated throughout, is how he sees science and culture as inseparable: “[…] cultural and biological values surrounding extinction mirrored and reinforced one another” (p. 84). Attempting to disentangle the two is a fool’s errand that will confront you with “a serious chicken-and-egg problem” (p. 287). At any given historical period, science and culture combined to form an extinction “imaginary”, an academic term he borrows from art. This may sound somewhat abstract but once Sepkoski gets underway it quickly becomes clear what he means.

“A central theme for Sepkoski, reiterated throughout, is how he sees science and culture as inseparable: “[…] cultural and biological values surrounding extinction mirrored and reinforced one another“”

So, Darwin’s ideas were used to justify imperialism, slavery, and racism—the “extinction” of “primitive” tribes encountered by colonialists being perceived as a regrettable but also inevitable result of the strong vanquishing the weak. Sepkoski emphasizes how we cannot simply blame Darwin for this, even though his ideas fed off, and in turn fed into, Victorian-era culture and politics. The later cyclical thinking echoed contemporary historical accounts that emphasized the cyclical rise and of fall of civilizations. The idea of dinosaur-extinction-by-asteroid hit a collective nerve, especially when Carl Sagan and others made direct links with the potential consequences of a nuclear winter in case atomic weapons were to be used. And most recently the idea of biological diversity as a sign of a healthy planet has been applied to culture, as exemplified by the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity.

The only nitpick I have is regarding the supposed periodicity of mass extinctions, roughly every 26 million years, that Sepkoski mentions several times. Without going into the nitty-gritty, he leaves out two recent books arguing in favour, but, more importantly, he does not mention that this idea is not widely accepted. Raup, who originally proposed it together with Sepkoski’s father, wrote in his 1999 afterword to The Nemesis Affair that “[…] the periodicity question is firmly planted on the back burner.” and is not supported by the consensus (p. 217). Indeed, Ted Nield wrote in 2011 that “the theory seems unable to go further. […] The jury awaits further evidence.” (p. 141), while Michael Benton added in 2019 that “The debate rumbles on […] but most have abandoned the idea of periodicity” (p. 264).

Leaving aside that minor detail, I found Catastrophic Thinking a thoroughly enjoyable and convincing read. My impression is that there has not been a reflection of this kind, at least in book form, since The Mass-Extinction Debates in 1994. Catastrophic Thinking presents a far wider and more inclusive take on the topic though and is positively bristling with fascinating insights. Obviously, this is a must-read for science historians, but palaeontologists and evolutionary biologists interested in the history of their discipline can also safely pick this up. Furthermore, thanks to the compelling arguments and accessible writing, this book should appeal strongly outside of these disciplines to anyone with an interest in palaeontology, evolution, or mass extinctions.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Catastrophic Thinking

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Some time after I reviewed Angela Saini’s book Superior, I was contacted by medical anthropologist and science writer Alondra Oubré, offering me the opportunity to review her new book. The overall aim of Science in Black and White might be the same—the debunking of the biological arguments used to justify racist thinking—but Oubré shows there is more than one approach to get there.

Science in Black and White: How Biology and Environment Shape Our Racial Divide, written by Alondra Oubré, published by Prometheus Books in April 2020 (hardback, 376 pages)

Scientific racism has a long history, so the first third of this book provides plenty of background information and history to get you oriented. This includes the origins of the nature vs. nurture debate, social Darwinism, and eugenics. The rise and fall of the blank slate, the notion that the human mind is shaped solely by the environment. The rise of both behavioural genetics, which studies genes associated with behaviour, and Darwinian medicine, which looks at evolutionary explanations for why some genetically related groups are more prone to certain diseases. The basics of natural selection, DNA, SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms—the single-base-pair mutations that much research has focused on), and the method of genome-wide association studies that allow you to rapidly compare whole genomes for numerous such mutations. But also the concepts of gene × environment interactions, epigenetics (inheritance through other mechanisms than DNA), and biological plasticity. And, finally, a primer on brain architecture.

In case you were in doubt, Science in Black and White is an information-dense and intensely data-driven book that is meticulously annotated. Hundreds of endnotes reference the studies that Oubré draws on to back up her statements and claims. In discussing this background, she already reveals a long history of trying to justify exploitation, colonialism, and white supremacy with scientific arguments. Most of that has now been shown for what it is: flawed research, full of confirmation biases and faulty assumptions. And yet, there remain plenty of right-wing scholars happy to use the latest research tools to push their agenda, while others continue to misinterpret new results.

The remaining two-thirds of the book thus samples a wide range of modern research and what it is and is not telling. This covers purported ethnic differences in IQ, the use of MRI to show racial differences in brain features and anatomy, and the use of candidate gene association studies that result in those headline-grabbing claims of “scientists have found gene for X!”. But Oubré also covers studies on sexual maturation and age of puberty onset, with the accompanying claims that African American girls start earlier—the not-so-subtle hint being that this makes them more prone to adolescent behavioural problems, teenage pregnancies etc. And there is the tale of testosterone and now the AR or androgen receptor gene, with some scholars seeking to pin increased violence and incarceration rates of African Americans on hormones.

“By the end of the book, it is hard not to feel that some people are just incorrigible racists, hell-bent on proving some link, any link, to support their notion of black inferiority and white supremacy.”

These chapters offer plenty of asides that might not immediately deal with racial science, but that serve to place it in a wider context and explain technical details. Nevertheless, a clear pattern emerges. In chapter after chapter, Oubré shows how simplistic claims of racial differences in behaviour or personality traits that are pinned on genetics do not stand up to scrutiny. Further research invariably shows that things are, well, complicated. By the end of the book, it is hard not to feel that some people are just incorrigible racists, hell-bent on proving some link, any link, to support their notion of black inferiority and white supremacy.

To expound on this a bit more, pro-nature advocates love to flaunt statistically significant results, but they rarely discuss the extent of variation around averages. Nor do they consider effect sizes, i.e. are minuscule but statistically significant differences actually biologically or socially relevant? And the correlations they show do not equal causation, though this is frequently overlooked or conveniently forgotten. Their claims are thus already on shaky ground by themselves.

What complicates such attempts at straightforward genetic explanations further are environmental influences, which can completely overrule genetic tendencies, and epigenetics, which add another layer of complexity. Some examples discussed here include brain structure (powerfully shaped by nutrition and early childhood development), intelligence (influenced e.g. by the socioeconomic status of the family you grew up in, but also by epigenetics, e.g. the chemical substance DNA methyltransferase that can tweak the activity of genes associated with intelligence), or the effect of genes on aggressive behaviour (which can be completely annulled by growing up in nurturing environments free of abuse). Furthermore, the genetic basis of many traits is complex, influenced by thousands of genes with tiny contributions each (so-called polygenic traits—Robert Plomin makes a notable appearance here).

“This book is not driven by a pro-nurture agenda; Oubré repeatedly hammers home the message that nature vs. nurture ought to be replaced by nature plus nurture. Both play a role.”

Intelligence has been a hot and recurrent topic over the decades in this kind of research, and one oddity struck me: Oubré takes as a given the reality of the IQ gap, the idea that white people are smarter than black people because they score higher on intelligence tests. I might be mistaken, but I was under the impression that this gap is subjective, notably because IQ tests are notorious for their inbuilt (cultural) biases and are thus of questionable value.

Aside from that, I found Oubré’s dispassionate approach a breath of fresh air. I greatly appreciated her neutral post-mortem of the Samuel Morton–Stephen Jay Gould debacle on braincase volume and its link to intelligence*. Where racialist scholars have a point, Oubré will readily grant them it. And while for Saini all research on ethnic differences is suspect by definition, Oubré is level-headed, highlighting its value in understanding why ethnic groups differ in their vulnerability to certain diseases (e.g. the increased risk of prostate cancer in African American men). This book is not driven by a pro-nurture agenda; Oubré repeatedly hammers home the message that nature vs. nurture ought to be replaced by nature plus nurture. Both play a role. Her epilogue, which highlights that clan or family genetics might offer a new perspective is remarkable in that sense.

Science in Black and White is not necessarily the easiest book to read and I can see people getting bogged down by the rich technical detail provided here. But if you want to engage with the nitty-gritty and go deeper into the claims of racialist scholars and understand why they are mistaken, this book is the ticket.

* Gould shot down Morton’s ideas in his book The Mismeasure of Man, but later, more careful reanalysis found that Gould’s approach was not free of confirmation bias either, causing no end of glee in certain quarters.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Science in Black and White

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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This review is one half of a two-parter. Against Democracy has been sitting on my shelves for a while now. After I recently received a review copy of Roslyn Fuller’s book In Defence of Democracy, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally read it. Two books, two opposing viewpoints, two reviews, back-to-back.

Against Democracy, written by Jason Brennan, published by Princeton University Press in September 2017 (paperback, 312 pages)

As the title of this book already suggests, Jason Brennan (a Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University) here offers a strident critique of democracy and argues in favour of epistocracy: a rule of the knowledgeable. Pull up your comfortable debating chair, because things are about to get controversial.

Brennan’s argument

Universal suffrage (an expensive way of saying the right to vote for everyone) is a hard-won freedom denied to many until not so long ago. Surely, it is a proud achievement? Of course, Brennan concedes, democracy beats most other forms of governance we have tried (dictatorships, oligarchies, etc.), but can we do better? Despite the strongly-worded title, Brennan does not know for sure there is a better alternative, but we ought to try and find out. And if there is one, then we ought to practice it. That alternative could very well be a rule by the knowledgeable – an epistocracy. Why? Because, Brennan writes, most people are ignorant, irrational, misinformed nationalists.

Against Democracy first charts how bad the situation is (quoting political theorist Jeffrey Friedman: “The public is far more ignorant than academic and journalistic observers of the public realize“) and lays bare the irrationality, tribalism, and cognitive biases affecting voters. Some of this feels questionable – is your ability to recall factoids really a good proxy for political knowledge? – and Fuller makes minced meat of these arguments in In Defence of Democracy. After this, Brennan spends a significant chunk of the book disarming three so-called proceduralist arguments often used to defend democracy. What they share is to claim that there is something intrinsically just about democracy. The going here gets quite technical, so without going into too much detail: democracy ennobles us, empowers us, and signals and expresses respect for us. Brennan finds fault with all three.

I found the first argument, that political participation would ennoble us, particularly interesting. Notably, many theorists argue for some form of a deliberative democracy, where voters come together to discuss and debate. Fuller, for example, promotes an Athenian-style direct democracy. Despite her confidence in voters, I have my doubts about the competencies of the average citizen. Brennan argues the empirical track record is terrible: such debates polarize, are frequently unbalanced, depend on manipulation and status, and rarely achieve consensus.

“If we agree that children should not have a vote because they have no idea what they are doing, why does this not apply to other groups?”

Having made the claim that there are no good reasons to prefer democracy over epistocracy on proceduralist grounds, Brennan continues to see if there are reasons to prefer epistocracy over democracy. He argues we have the right to a competent government. If we agree that children should not have a vote because they have no idea what they are doing, why does this not apply to other groups? Similarly, we demand our doctors and judges to be knowledgeable and competent, to study and pass exams. Why should this be any different for voters, whose choices have consequences that affect us all? I will admit that, superficially, this line of reasoning sounds incredibly appealing to me.

A final chapter then examines various forms that an epistocracy could take. In essence, Brennan proposes several variations where we either take voting power away from people deemed too ignorant, or give more voting power to those deemed sufficiently knowledgeable. But many things would remain untouched: there would still be elections where we choose representatives, and we would still have to choose between political parties.

So far, so good. Brennan’s presentation of his arguments is clear: he introduces what he is going to talk about, talks about it, and then summarises what he just talked about. Frequent bullet-point lists clearly structure the text. Even for someone like myself who lacks a background in political philosophy, I found I could follow Brennan’s line of thought and only occasionally had to look up some jargon.

Logical gaps, curious omissions, and tough questions

But what of the arguments themselves? Here I was, to my surprise, ultimately less convinced. There are some glaring logical gaps, curious omissions, and tough questions thrown up by this book.

I will highlight two things that seemed illogical to me. First, Brennan agrees with empirical democratic theorists who point out that democracies actually function quite well, despite an uninformed public. “There are a large number of “mediating factors” that prevent the electorate from getting its way“. But if voters are not that influential anyway, what difference will an epistocracy make? Second lapse in logic: the comparison with doctors and such falls flat because they actually apply their knowledge themselves. The electorate does not, they choose politicians who do, so that would shift the competency burden to politicians. If democracy fails, isn’t this rather a case of incompetent politicians? In defence, Brennan claims that low-quality electorate delivers poor-quality candidates.

This brings me to what I consider two omissions. First, the book is US-centric but never stops to consider how broken the US political system is. Politics divides us, says Brennan. It is a zero-sum game where for someone to win, someone else has to lose. It turns us into situational enemies, the way Roman gladiators are unwillingly pitted against each other in a fight to the death. But in a two-party system with first-past-the-post voting, what else do you expect? Many of the objections to democracy given in chapter 9 would not go away in an epistocracy: they are a problem not of dumb voters but of a broken system. Second omission: his claim that money has little influence on politics just seems naive. This was a major point in Beasts and Gods, though Brennan refers to Martin Gilen’s work in Affluence and Influence. He is not convinced by that work and mentions the existence of a large body of literature showing that campaign contributions barely impact political outcomes. I am obviously no expert in political philosophy, but this sounds unlikely. What of all the special interest groups, think tanks, and other lobbyists representing wealthy and powerful corporations that erode laws and legislation? You do not have to look hard to find scandals. If one author points to a body of research saying A, and another points to a body of research saying B, then either someone is cherry-picking or the matter just is not that clear-cut as either would like.

“Many of [Brennan’s] objections to democracy […] would not go away in an epistocracy: they are a problem not of dumb voters but of a broken system.”

Then, two tough questions. First – and this is no doubt a really big one for many readers – what knowledge actually matters? Who is knowledgeable? And who decides on this? Brennan provides sketches here. It could be that voters have to pass a citizenship exam, or pass an economics and political science exam, or pass a test for a proxy of such knowledge, such as solving logic and mathematics problems. Clearly, this needs developing. To me, it sounds that the level of knowledge he would consider sufficient would take away voting rights from the vast majority. Second tough question: Brennan proposes running experiments with small-scale epistocracies, e.g. on state level. By what metric would you judge its success? How would you know it is performing better than a democracy?

Finally, Brennan highlights the risk that taking away voter rights will reinforce existing segregation and discrimination, though he thinks this points to underlying problems that we should fix. “If epistocracy, warts and all, performs at all better than democracy, warts and all, than we should have epistocracy. I am not arguing, and need not argue, that epistocracy will be wart-free“. Though in an academic debate this is a reasonable defence, it will likely not go down well with many and be seen as glib elitism. I think we should first address those underlying injustices before we start excluding voters. Why insist on being divisive? Why not rather make yourself strong for being inclusive and trying to raise everyone’s proverbial boat? Brennan will no doubt reply that excluding dumb voters will result in better decisions, which will achieve just that, but I am not so sure. History teaches us that oppressors rarely have the well-being of the oppressed at heart.

Conclusion: against or in defence of democracy?

Having now read both books, how do they compare? Brennan’s is certainly the more academic read of the two, though clearly structured. Ironically, Fuller and Brennan have one thing in common: they both agree that democracy, as it is currently practised, is broken. But they diverge as to the problem and the solution. Brennan argues people are the problem, and a rule of the knowledgeable the answer. Fuller argues the system is the problem, and mass-participation the answer. It reminds me a bit of the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant, where each blind man touches a different part of the elephant and gives a different description of it. Democracy obviously being the elephant here.

On balance, I lean more towards Fuller’s ideas, though a hybrid approach might well be needed. I do think voter ignorance is a huge problem, but, compared to the other problems Fuller highlights in Beasts and Gods, not to the extent that Brennan makes it out to be. I will agree with Brennan’s point that we should not be shy about picking whatever works best (in turn opening a whole new can of worms about metrics for this, which is another topic).

Reviewing In Defence of Democracy and Against Democracy back-to-back was an intellectually stimulating and surprisingly fun exercise. It was both interesting and mildly disconcerting to observe my own opinion on the topic swaying first in one and then another direction. This goes to show that on a topic where there are no absolutes it is a worthwhile exercise to seek out contrasting viewpoints, so I recommend both books.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Against Democracy paperback, hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“Superior: The Return of Race Science”, written by Angela Saini, published in Europe by 4th Estate in May 2019 (hardback, 272 pages)

The title Superior is a bit of a play on Saini’s very successful previous book, Inferior: The True Power of Women and the Science That Shows it. Just to make sure that there can be no misunderstanding the book’s angle, a quote from Reni Eddo-Lodge, author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, graces the dustjacket: this book roundly debunks attempts to give racism scientific underpinnings.

The prologue and first introductory chapter already make some very sharp observations: “We can draw lines across the world any way we choose, and in the history of race science, people have” (p. 5). Or the fact that Enlightenment thinkers, at the dawn of what we consider modern science, took the politics of their day as a starting point. At a time when slavery and exploitation by white Europeans were part and parcel of everyday life, researchers did not start off free of prejudice or bias.

These observations lead to the bulk of the book; through numerous interviews Saini provides a well written and fascinating overview of how science got tangled into the story of race and how old biases persist, some subtly, some decidedly less so. Darwin’s theory of evolution and his idea that we had a common ancestor put to bed the idea that what were called human races emerged separately, a predominant idea used to justify colonialism and slavery back then. But it did not stop racist thought and was bankrolled into it.

“The chapters where [Saini] charts what happened to race science post-WWII […] shows [her] at her most probing, leaving no difficult or thorny topic untouched.”

Saini chronicles the rise of eugenics, which is the idea to use our understanding of genetics to breed better humans the way you would breed livestock (some of this already came up in my reviews of She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity and Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity). These ideas fed into the atrocities committed during World War II, and Saini chillingly reminds the reader that prominent scientists and well-respected intellectuals of their day got drawn into this.

Really eye-opening were the chapters where she charts what happened to race science post-WWII. Richard Lewontin’s landmark 1972 paper showed that variation in genetic diversity within old-fashioned racial categories was far larger than between these categories, vindicating earlier opinions that these categories had no biological basis (see also Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature). But while the mainstream was busy accepting this, race science just went underground, as shown by Saini’s account of the academic right-wing fringe journal Mankind Quarterly and funding for this kind of research by the Pioneer Fund (see Sussman’s The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea for more). And lately scientific racism is on the rise again, with a new generation of people ready to misappropriate science for their own political agendas.

This part shows Saini at her most probing, leaving no difficult or thorny topic untouched, such as the continued use of racial categories when prescribing drugs against hypertension. Or the failed attempts to find racial difference in intelligence by looking at IQ scores, itself a very fraught concept. Her contention that race is a social construct used to justify political power play is supported by numerous sharp observations – so many I started to run out of my stack of post-it notes that I normally use to mark up noteworthy passages. I was totally on board with this part of her book and found it powerful and convincing.

“[The] contention that race is a social construct used to justify political power play is supported by numerous sharp observations”

Yet I have some criticism, and there is a certain incongruity at play here. Racial categories may have no biological basis, but there is genetic variation within and between human populations. To be crystal clear, I do not think these offer any justification for racism, but labelling this fact racist is also missing the point. And Saini seems very ill at ease with these findings.

So, on the one hand she includes geneticist Mark Jobling explaining the founder effect; the loss of genetic variation when small groups of individuals establish new populations, as happened during human migrations 100,000–50,000 years ago. And she remarks how India’s caste system with its restrictions on marriage has left a mark on the genetic makeup of castes, as shown by the incidence of rare genetic disorders.

But then on the other hand, she labels population genetics, which studies such variation to, for example, learn more about human evolution, as a rebranding of race science for the 21st century. The pioneering work in this field by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (see his Genes, People and Languages), who was about as outspokenly anti-racist as one could be, is eyed suspiciously. David Reich’s work on ancient DNA (DNA retrieved from archaeological remains) has shown humanity’s history to be one of a constant churn of groups migrating, interbreeding and displacing each other (see my review of his excellent Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past). But his suggestion that there are real genetic differences (“not large, but not non-existent either”) between e.g. West Africans and Europeans after evolving in separation for 70,000 years seems to scandalize her: “They are words I never expected to hear from a mainstream, respected geneticist” (p. 182).

“She labels population genetics, which studies human genetic variation to, for example, learn more about human evolution, as a rebranding of race science for the 21st century.”

Of course, she writes repeatedly, Cavalli-Sforza and Reich are not racists and their intentions are good, but their research could be misappropriated. The idea that it could help demolish the very racial prejudices she is fighting unfortunately does not seem to have much currency with her. In my opinion, in her fervour, she unfairly casts a shadow on the research and reputation of these scholars. I think it is a pity that Saini leaves unexamined the question of how best to interpret these findings and prevent them from being misappropriated, instead conflating them with the larger target she is aiming for: debunking race science.

That criticism notwithstanding, there are many strong points in this book. Her probing questions lay bare the often implicit biases many of us still retain. Her own background and experiences bring a much-needed perspective to this subject – one that I would much rather read than that of, say, a white male scientist. And the book is an engrossing read that did not let me go. All this makes Superior a potent condemnation of race science and all its fallacies, even if I did not agree with her categorizing population genetics as such.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Superior paperback, hardback, ebook, audiobook or audio CD

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall”, written by Mark W. Moffett, published in Europe by Head of Zeus, in April 2019 (hardback, 480 pages)

Two ideas lie at the basis of The Human Swarm. One is Moffett’s fascination with social insects and his conviction that human and insect societies are more alike than we might think. The other is a fascination with the concept of “foreignness”: how human societies are shaped in time and space by what are, on the face of it, but small differences.

With its narrative stretching over more than 360 pages, Moffett has divided the book into nine sections and 26 relatively short chapters. I think this has been a very good choice as the book is information-dense and, befitting a big history book, deals with big questions. It also allows him to bring together many disparate strands and still keep the story organised.

The first two sections of The Human Swarm introduce the different societies we see in vertebrates and social insects. This is a benchmark Moffett will return to throughout, although the majority of the book really deals with human societies. He makes some fascinating observations here. Though animals can congregate in large numbers, we typically do not consider the herd of mammals or the school of fish a society. Biologist W.D. Hamilton instead referred to them as selfish herds. Those animals that do form societies, such as elephants or primates, rely on individual recognition of all members. This puts a hard limit on size, with groups rarely surpassing 50 members (though multiple such groups can congregate).

“[…] the key breakthrough that allows [ant] and human societies to grow so large is anonymity.”

Social insects such as ants are an exception, and the key breakthrough that allows their and human societies to grow so large is anonymity. An ant “cares” only that fellow ants are his nest mates, he does not need to know them personally. It is much the same for humans. But where ants rely on scent marks to establish identity, humans use a constellation of markers, language and dress being just some of them.

It would be tempting to take the beginning of agriculture and the rise of states as the starting point for his argument. And Moffett gets their eventually, but not before taking the reader through an extraordinarily thorough and largely chronological tour of our deeper prehistory. From primates to hunter-gatherers, this is really the part of the book where he branches out into topics such as archaeology, anthropology, ethnology, linguistics, and psychology to make his many points.

Moffett traces the development of identity badges that allowed for anonymous instead of individual recognition societies to our primate ancestors, speculating that certain vocalisations could have been the first markers (the wonderfully named pant-hoot still seen in chimpanzees and bonobos). As Scott also highlighted in Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, the progression from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled farmers was not neat and linear, with switches between these lifestyles and intermediate forms of settled hunter-gatherers all possible. But where they did settle, the egalitarianism still seen in such societies today started making way for leaders who could intervene when arguments broke out.

“[Violence] seems to have been unavoidable when it came to expanding villages into kingdoms, nations etc. “Societies don’t merge freely”, writes Moffett”

Several doors opened up by settling down, such as accumulation of possessions and developing technology. Scientists often speak of cultural ratchets in this context (see also The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis). But doors also closed: with growing populations suitable space ran out, especially if all the neighbours also started settling, and reverting to nomadism became harder.

But Moffett is equally interested in the psychology that comes with recognition of one’s tribe or clan members and, therefore, categorising those who do not belong as foreign. Many biologists and sociologists have been vehemently combatting the notion of human race as a biologically useful concept (see e.g. The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea and Superior: The Return of Race Science). Moffett largely sidesteps the issue by contending that in the context of societies of people of different lineage coming into contact during migrations, the word race has a distinct meaning, and throughout happily uses this word. Interestingly, he does not address the findings from ancient DNA that reveal our ancestors’ constant mingling and mixing (see my review of Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past). Although I did not get the impression that his use of this shorthand serves any nebulous agenda, I wonder if it will land him in hot water in certain quarters.

Contentiousness aside, it does allow him to highlight our natural proclivity to subconsciously and almost instantaneously classify people when we meet them, something that shows up very early in childhood. We are all biased to some degree. It feeds into how we perceive people; into stereotypes and generalisations, the ignoring of differences between groups of people; into rituals to affirm group membership and cultural markers of national identity such as flags, and the feelings those evoke. It affects how immigrants respond to their host countries and vice versa. The sweep of topics considered here is very broad, going well beyond modern Western societies in both time and space.

“we should think of [the fall of civilizations] more as fractures or dissolutions than wholesale collapses”

It is exactly at these interfaces, of groups meeting other groups, that we are at our most aggressive. Moffett is pleasantly up to date here, touching on Wrangham’s idea of the “peace at home”, “war abroad” dichotomy that characterises humans (see my review of The Goodness Paradox: How Evolution Made Us Both More and Less Violent) as he considers our history of conflict. Although violence does not mark all interactions between groups, it seems to have been unavoidable when it came to expanding villages into kingdoms, nations etc. “Societies don’t merge freely”, writes Moffett, and with it come all the horrors of slavery, warfare, and genocide.

And nor, it seems, do they last. One other big topic is the rise and fall of civilizations over time. As Harper pointed out in The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, & the End of an Empire, we should think of these more as fractures or dissolutions than wholesale collapses (sensu Diamond, see Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive). And, not surprisingly, the fracture lines often follow the old factions from which such societies were build up in the first place. Moffett stops short of going into the topic of environmental history to consider some of the more ultimate causes of the fall of civilizations (see my review of Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations). Given the scope of the book, leaving things is not a bad decision.

As he considers many topics along the way rather than pushing one central thesis, I did come out of reading it feeling slightly stunned, with that kind of “what just happened?” grin on my face. It is pleasantly dense in information and well referenced and annotated, and I will need some time to digest and ponder it all – I have only touched on some of the book’s topics here. Reviewers elsewhere have put The Human Swarm in the same category as Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years or Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and it is easy to see why. Moffett casts his net wide and knows how to write a captivating book. Recommended if you like big big history books.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Human Swarm paperback, hardback, ebook or audio CD

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“Skeleton Keys: The Secret Life of Bone“, written by Brian Switek, published in the US by Riverhead Books in March 2019 (hardback, 276 pages), and in the UK by Duckworth in August 2019 with the title “The Secret Life of Bones: Their Origins, Evolution and Fate” (paperback, 288 pages)

Switek starts off with a potted evolutionary history of the skeleton, taking the reader all the way back to the Cambrian, some 455 million years ago. The small fossils of Pikaia gracilens are some of the earliest evidence we have of the starting point of skeletal evolution. Looking for all the world like a small worm, it was one of the first creatures to possess a notochord, a cartilage-like structure that is the precursor of the backbone. (For a more technical exposé of that borderline between vertebrates and invertebrates, see my review of Across the Bridge: Understanding the Origin of the Vertebrates.)

He then hops, skips, and jumps to other significant milestones; fossils of the fish Entelognathus primordialis show the transition to jawed fish, while Tiktaalik roseae (see Your Inner Fish: The Amazing Discovery of Our 375-Million-Year-Old Ancestor) shows the transition of vertebrates moving onto land. He considers protomammals, the cynodonts, whose offspring lived through the age of the dinosaurs, and the primordial primates, noting how the changing skeleton acquired more and more traits we now think of as human.

This part is far from a complete overview of the evolution of skeletons (for that, see e.g. Skeletons: The Frame of Life), but that was never the intention. It does allow Switek to exercise his funny bone, wondering whether without the evolution of jaws the book and movie would instead be known as Pharyngeal Slit, or comparing the earliest invasion of land by plants to a prehistoric salad bar. At the same time, he is keen to correct misunderstandings about evolution: “It is easy to make categorical divisions between humans and apes when extinction has removed your ancestors”. Similarly, as Tiktaalik shows, any true invasion of land did not coincide with the origin of fingers and feet, with fish evolving into amphibians only millions of years later. This should do away with the misconception of evolution being goal-oriented (beyond, you know, making it to the next generation).

“Without the evolution of jaws, would the book and movie instead be known as Pharyngeal Slit?“

But we cannot dwell here any longer. Bone as living tissue is fascinating, and Switek introduces the physiology, with osteoblast cells continuously forming new bone while osteoclasts break it down again. Something that goes off kilter when astronauts spend months in space and lose bone mass. That makes hibernating bears all the more of a miracle, how do they not lose bone mass? Switek has the answer. Bone can be moulded in life, as seen by cultures around the world that change the shape of infants’ skulls, while in death it retains a personal history of disease and injury. Archaeologists are becoming increasingly skilful at elucidating these stories (see for example Injury and Trauma in Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Violence in Past Lives and Skeletons in Our Closet: Revealing Our Past through Bioarchaeology).

At this point Switek transitions seamlessly into the cultural significance of bone, and how especially skulls have become emblems of death. Neanderthals appear to have been much more sophisticated than we have long given them credit for, as evidenced by burials (see my review of The Smart Neanderthal: Cave Art, Bird Catching, and the Cognitive Revolution), while his recounting of the exhumation of Richard III’s skeleton in a Leicester car park in 2012 is a fascinating archaeological detective story.

A far darker chapter that Switek tackles with panache is the heritage of anthropology. The pseudoscience of phrenology (where measurements of the bumps on a skull supposedly predicted someone’s mental capacities and traits) was long used to justify white man’s superiority. As he mentions, anthropology may not have invented racism, but it certainly fueled it through the 19th and 20th century. Switek is deeply troubled by the resurgence of the idea that race is biologically meaningful. As has been documented at length, there is more variation within populations than between populations, and the overlap between what we thought of as races is enormous (see strident takedowns in The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea and Superior: The Return of Race Science).

“[…] anthropology may not have invented racism, but it certainly fueled it through the 19th and 20th century.”

This naturally leads on to the literal skeletons in the closets of many research collections. Lance Grande, a curator at Chicago’s Field Museum, dedicated a chapter to this in his book Curators: Behind the Scenes of Natural History Museums. The repatriation of old skeletons to for example Native American tribes, for whom the bones of the deceased hold particular spiritual significance, is becoming more commonplace. But not all museums are going along with it, as evidenced by Switek’s story of the skeleton of the Irish Giant Charles Byrne, who is still on display. Another one of those eye-opening tidbits in the book is his peek at the online trade in human bones on platforms such as eBay and Etsy (who have since cracked down on it), and now Instagram. You are far better off building your own.

Each chapter opens with a drawing from the 1733 book Osteographia or the Anatomy of Bones. These are lovely, and my only bone of contention (sorry) is that there aren’t more illustrations in the book. I would have loved to see some photos included, as Switek describes many wonderful things. For that, readers will have to turn to, for example, the work of palaeoartist John Gurche (see my review of Lost Anatomies: The Evolution of the Human Form) or, two of my personal favourites, Evolution in Action: Natural History Through Spectacular Skeletons and Skulls: An Exploration of Alan Dudley’s Curious Collection. Other slightly less spectacular but still noteworthy books are The Skeleton Revealed: An Illustrated Tour of the Vertebrates and Skeletons: The Extraordinary Form & Function of Bones.

Skeleton Keys is a multifaceted exploration of bones and their biological and cultural importance that is very absorbing. Far from a macabre gawk-fest (Skeletons! Eek!), Switek capably handles a range of serious topics, smoothly transitioning between them. The narrative sizzles, whether it is with witty jokes or genuine ire at the disrespect to bones and the questionable ideas they are used to prop up. An incredibly enjoyable book that comes highly recommended.

*Note that the book is published in Europe by Duckworth in paperback with a completely different title: The Secret Life of Bones: Their Origins, Evolution and Fate.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

The Secret Life of Bones paperback / Skeleton Keys hardback

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“Lamarck’s Revenge: How Epigenetics Is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution’s Past and Present“, written by Peter Ward, published by Bloomsbury Publishing in October 2018 (hardback, 274 pages)

Lamarck’s Revenge starts with a useful intellectual history that drives home the point that the ideas of Lamarck and Darwin were very much a product of what was intellectually fashionable at the time, and what was still unknown. So, while Darwin was heavily influenced by Lyell’s idea of uniformitarianism (introduced in my review of Cataclysms: A New Geology for the Twenty-First Century) and Malthus’s ideas on overpopulation (see my review of his An Essay on the Principle of Population: The 1803 Edition), the discovery of genetics and DNA were still many decades away. But once these had been made, they eclipsed Lamarck’s idea of the inheritance of acquired characters. Until, some now argue, epigenetics came into the picture.

Epigenetics is the study of changes in an organism caused by changes in gene expression rather than in the genetic code itself. So, up- or down-regulation of gene activity rather than mutations. Chiefly, there are three mechanisms: methylation (the addition of methyl groups to DNA), modification of histones (the proteins that give DNA its larger macrostructure, coiling its double helices around spool-like proteins), and RNA interference (the silencing of gene activity by a small piece of RNA).

These epigenetic changes are apparently heritable, though I was left with many questions as to how. Some explanation is offered for methylation but it is unclear whether we don’t know about the rest, or whether Ward assumes this known on the part of the reader. If methylation is removed from DNA when egg and sperm cells are formed, what happens to epigenetic marks during regular cell division? How, as Ward asserts, are epigenetic modifications turned into permanent changes to DNA a number of generations down the line? And what is the link or the difference between the ability of epigenetics to produce variable phenotypes and the classic mechanism of phenotypic plasticity? He mentions Carey’s The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance as a landmark book summarizing basic processes from a chemical and biological viewpoint, so I have ordered this next. And a quick skim of Duncan et al’s 2014 open-access review paper in the Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution already provides leads to answers.

“It is ironic that Ward, having just lamented that there is so much confused usage of the term epigenetics [invokes] lateral gene transfer. Err, that’s not epigenetics.”

Having introduced epigenetics, the rest of the book addresses a variety of topics, trying to argue the importance of epigenetic inheritance for each of these. It is ironic that Ward, having just lamented that there is so much confused usage of the term epigenetics, and having established that this process by definition leaves the DNA sequence unchanged, then goes and immediately muddles the waters. He examines the origin of life and the blossoming of life after mass extinctions through an epigenetic lens by invoking lateral gene transfer. Err, that’s not epigenetics.

Now, don’t get me wrong: this large-scale exchange of chunks of DNA by viruses and bacteria is very influential (see my review of The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, and yes, lateral and horizontal gene transfer are two names for the same process). It provides a good mechanism for Stephen Jay Gould’s idea of punctuated equilibrium, the idea that evolution consists of long periods of relative stasis, punctuated by short bursts of rapid change (see Punctuated Equilibrium). And it could very well have been a driver of the rapid diversification of life after mass extinctions such as the Cambrian Explosion (see The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity). Ward tries to defend his choice by saying that it is not the slow-and-steady process of random mutation that Darwin proposed, therefore it is Lamarckian, therefore epigenetic. That is presenting a strict, almost caricatured interpretation of Darwin’s ideas that few evolutionary biologists still adhere to nowadays (see for example Extended Heredity: A New Understanding of Inheritance and Evolution). More importantly, this is macro-mutation, plain and simple. It is a wholesale change to a DNA sequence, and therefore by definition not epigenetic.

Ward repeats this in his final chapter on the gene-editing technology CRISPR (see also my reviews of A Crack in Creation: The New Power to Control Evolution and Modern Prometheus: Editing the Human Genome with CRISPR-Cas9). He seems intent on scaring readers with bleak scenarios of human supersoldiers and parallels to the horrors of the atomic bomb that followed the discovery of nuclear fission. Meanwhile, he ignores that, for all of CRISPR’s power and utility, many human traits are complex and polygenic (influenced by numerous genes of small effect, see for example my review of Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are), which makes them little accessible to CRISPR editing. And again, since CRISPR allows direct alteration of the genetic code it is by definition not epigenetic.

“his idea that epigenetics coexists with classic Darwinian selection […] is attractive”

Is this just semantics? I think not. In what is supposed to be a popular science book on epigenetics this will escape the attention of many readers and leave them with the wrong ideas. Ward also misses the truly interesting bits. He briefly mentions that we have recovered signs of methylation on ancient DNA (i.e. DNA recovered from archaeological remains). Now that is revolutionary! And his idea that epigenetics coexists with classic Darwinian selection – the former operating in times of upheaval when rapid adaptation is called for, the latter in times of relative peace when mutation proceeds steadily – is attractive. It could do much to solve the conundrum of “missing links” and the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, a favourite argument of creationists. Maybe the fossil record isn’t so incomplete after all.

The remaining chapters invoke the idea that all sorts of stresses could have played, or are playing, a role in human evolution by inducing epigenetic changes through DNA methylation. Ward poses many interesting questions. What was the epigenetic impact of experiencing the stresses of war or pandemics, or the loss of loved ones to these? What of the epigenetic impact of chemical signals released by the gut’s microbiome during periods of famine? And what of our current exposure to toxic chemicals, many of which are evolutionary completely novel? Ward here mixes research with assertion in short sections that often feel like they could have been further developed, and seems keen to quickly conclude that epigenetics must be important. His citing of both primary research and secondary sources such as blogs, TED talks or news reports seems questionable and sometimes unnecessary. Why cite news items instead of the paper being reported on?

Those familiar with epigenetics will appreciate some of the flashes of insight in this book, but the limited explanation of how epigenetic inheritance actually works, the confusion caused by prominently including non-epigenetic mechanisms, and the firm assertions when so much research is still in its infancy make it hard to recommend this book to novice readers. As my first entry into this topic I found it to be a hit-and-miss affair and will search out Carey’s book next.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

Lamarck’s Revenge hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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“She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity“, written by Carl Zimmer, published in Europe by Picador in August 2018 (hardback, 656 pages)

With the narrative itself sprawling over more than 570 pages, the scope of this book is vast. In the hands of a lesser writer, the prospect of reading such a large book on a technical topic such as heredity might seem daunting. Zimmer, however, is very adept at combining his personal experience as a father with the results from historical and current scientific research, frequently highlighting the many human stories and dramas leading to new findings.

Starting with our understanding of heredity before Darwin, Zimmer walks us through Darwin’s failed attempt at explaining heredity in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (see also Van Grouw’s recent celebration of that book in Unnatural Selection), the forgotten work of Mendel that was rediscovered decades later, and the “laughably baroque” cell division process of meiosis that results in egg and sperm cells. There is the obsession of many people with genealogy, something that received renewed interest with the falling costs of sequencing technology. Zimmer has his own DNA sequenced and uses this as a hook to talk about ancient DNA recovered from archaeological remains and how this has revealed that we are all complex mosaics of many different ethnic groups, with even some Neanderthal DNA thrown in for good measure! (see also Pääbo’s Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes and my review of Reich’s excellent Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past that goes into much more detail).

“If Charles Darwin were to walk into my office today and ask me: “So, what did I miss?” I think I would sit the good man down with a copy of She Has Her Mother’s Laugh“

Mendel’s principle of inheritance is not the only mechanism though. Zimmer goes into the discovery of the complex inheritance of traits such as height and intelligence that rely on small contributions from many genes, the nature/nurture debate and what studies on human twins have revealed, or the astounding discoveries that our bodies are mosaics of genetic variation due to localised mutation, and that some people are even chimaeras containing genetic material from more than two people.

The concept of heredity becomes even fuzzier once we start adding the discovery of the microbiome (the community of microbes that lives in and on us, see these three books for more), epigenetics (heritable changes due to changes in gene activity rather than sequence, see these three books for more), or the notion that culture is a form of heritability to pass on knowledge (see these three books for more). You can see why Bonduriansky & Day are calling for a reappraisal of the concept of heredity in their recent book Extended Heredity: A New Understanding of Inheritance and Evolution.

But what of this misappropriation? Ah yes, the dark side. Throughout all these various chapters Zimmer weaves the troubled contribution mental institutes have made to our understanding of heredity (see Porter’s book Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity), the subsequent rise of the eugenics movement that hoped to improve the human race through forced sterilization, the horrors of Nazi Germany, and the persistence of the outdated idea of race that for centuries has been used to justify slavery and racism (see strident takedowns in The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea and Superior: The Return of Race Science). Given his own Jewish background, his treatment of these topics is surprisingly dispassionate. Although he obviously opposes all of the above, his assertion that “it’s also a mistake to use Hitler as a label for all of eugenics” (p. 499) and his willingness to discuss Hermann Muller’s ideas on more progressive forms of eugenics shows Zimmer to be open-minded, or at least able to keep his writer’s cool.

“our bodies are mosaics of genetic variation due to localised mutation, and some people are even chimeras containing genetic material from more than two people”

This, of course, brings us to all the ethical quandaries stirred up by the discovery and application of CRISPR (see also my reviews of A Crack in Creation: The New Power to Control Evolution and Modern Prometheus: Editing the Human Genome with CRISPR-Cas9). This new tool to edit genetic material has the ability to cure diseases but could also be used for more questionable ends such as designer babies. There are no simple answers here, and Zimmer gives a great overview of the debates and the rapid pace with which this technique is developing.

As you can see, I have been reading into quite a few of the topics that Zimmer deals with. Even so, the quality of his narrative, the well-placed humorous comparisons, and the human portraits he mixes in make these chapters a joy to read. There were plenty of subjects that were new to me and especially the chapters on human mosaics and chimaeras at times made my eyes widen in astonishment. I envy the reader for who all this material is new – you are going to have a lot of fun reading this book. In that sense She Has Her Mother’s Laugh acts like a portal, introducing you to a huge number of topics relevant to heredity from which you can branch out to read more into areas of interest. The press has heaped praise on this book, calling it magisterial and sweeping. Having devoured the book from cover to cover in a day and a half, I can assure you this is no hyperbole. Zimmer has written an epic book that provides a vast panorama on our current and past understanding of human heredity and genetics.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh paperback, hardback, ebook or audiobook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

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Some recent popular science books on the microbiome:

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Some recent popular science books on epigenetics:

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Some recent popular science books on culture as heredity: