Having just reviewed James T. Costa’s biography of Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, I was keen to read more about one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of science: how two scholars independently hit on the same idea and how history has largely forgotten one of them. Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species brings together many lines of evidence and analysis to argue that Wallace deserves recognition on the same footing as Charles Darwin as the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection. This is a companion book to On the Organic Law of Change, presenting an analysis of this crucial notebook that Wallace kept during his travels around the Malay archipelago. Hence, you are getting a two-for-one as this review continues the previous one.

Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species, written by James T. Costa, published by Harvard University Press in June 2014 (hardback, 331 pages)

Now that you know what Wallace’s Species Notebook contains and why it is interesting, Costa here steps back to look at the bigger picture. One thing that Darwin and Wallace shared was that their arguments were consilient. Coined by 19th-century philosopher William Whewell as “consilience of inductions”, what this means is that they were drawing together many independent lines of evidence to build a convincing argument. It is a powerful way of reasoning and the stuff sound scientific theories are made of. Appropriately, I think Costa applies the same logic in this book, looking at this historical episode from many different sides.

Costa sets the scene by describing why Wallace travelled to the Amazon and the Malay archipelago, who his influences were, and what discoveries and publications his journeys produced. Two papers are of particular importance and are explored further here. Instead of their ornate Victorian titles, science historians refer to them as the Sarawak Law paper (1855) and Ternate essay (1858). In (very) brief, these papers respectively proposed that species change and how species change. Remember that this was when most naturalists, including prominently geologist Charles Lyell, were opposed to transmutation (as evolution was called), maintaining that species were divinely created, unchanging entities. In that sense, Wallace’s Species Notebook is a goldmine of the unpublished arguments he was considering and Costa’s analysis expands on the appendix in On the Organic Law of Change which only considered Wallace’s critique of Lyell.

The superficial narrative that Wallace and Darwin hit on the same idea at the same time is just that: superficial. To refine this story, Costa next compares the Species Notebook with Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (Origin hereafter), his pre-Origin notebooks, and his Natural Selection manuscript^[1]. True, there are striking similarities in their conclusions and how they reached them, but there are also notable differences. Similarly, hindsight has compressed the timeline. Darwin had it figured out 21 years before Wallace but only shared his ideas with a few confidants, possibly made headshy by the strong condemnation of Robert Chamber’s book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Thus, their discovery of natural selection was contemporaneous, but not simultaneous; and it was similar, but not the same. Costa drives home these points because they are “an important first step toward realizing the independent nature of their respective insights” (p. 107).

“One thing that Darwin and Wallace shared was that their arguments were consilient. […] Appropriately, I think Costa applies the same logic in this book, looking at this historical episode from many different sides.”

Until 1857, Darwin and Wallace were unaware of each other’s thoughts on evolution but that would soon change. Darwin did not attach much importance to the 1855 Sarawak Law paper though at Lyell’s urging had started writing his Natural Selection manuscript. This would have become his big book until Wallace unintentionally forced his hand. First contact happened in April 1857 with a letter from Wallace, telling Darwin about his ideas on species change. Darwin sent an encouraging reply, noting they were thinking along the same lines and, “Oh, by the way”, he had been working on the species question for 20 years already and was making good progress on a book. In Radical by Nature, Costa brilliantly summarised what happened next: “If Darwin had a plan, it backfired” (p. 212 therein). By February 1858, Wallace had had his great insight, penned his Ternate essay, and enthusiastically replied to Darwin, attaching the essay with the request to forward it to Lyell if Darwin thought it had merit. When Darwin received this in June 1858 he was shocked, sending several anguished letters to Lyell. He had been scooped! He did not want to see years of hard work go to waste, but how could he possibly publish honourably at this point? In response, Lyell, together with Darwin’s other confidant botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, quickly organised the famous July 1st 1858 meeting at the Linnean Society.

To analyse this episode, Costa switches gears again and presents annotated facsimiles of all the key papers: the Sarawak Law paper and the papers read at the 1858 meeting; Darwin’s hastily written extracts of earlier material and Wallace’s Ternate essay. This is followed by a detailed analysis where Costa goes into the weeds on what their respective understanding of evolution was at this point in time. To give you a taste: the key difference Costa highlights is how they envisioned natural selection acts. Darwin thought speciation was primarily sympatric (species overlap in space) and driven primarily by competition leading to e.g. niche partitioning and diversification (his principle of divergence). Wallace, focused as he was on biogeography, thought speciation was allopatric (species are isolated in space) and driven primarily by environmental factors. Darwin was already discussing other modes of selection such as sexual selection (which Wallace long resisted) and colony-level selection in social insects. Reading the original papers is surprisingly fun. Beyond the somewhat flowery language and dated terminology that Costa clarifies, the logic shines through. Especially Wallace’s essays show how clued-in he was. For example, the fittest do not always survive: “there may be many individual exceptions; but on the average the rule will invariably be found to hold good” (p. 204). Environmental change can render well-adapted species less fit, and evolution happens “by minute steps, in various directions” (p. 212). To me, this shows a Wallace aware that evolution has no ultimate goal but is a never-ending game of organisms chasing shifting peaks in a fitness landscape. These are the kinds of subtleties we still need to remind people of today.

“Costa’s analysis next turns to the conspiracies and claims of misconduct. […] showing there is little more to them than the seductive scent of scandal.”

Costa’s analysis next turns to the conspiracies and claims of misconduct. Darwin has been accused of receiving Wallace’s Ternate essay earlier than mid-June, filching details from it, hastily rewriting sections of his manuscript and then using his influence to suppress Wallace’s claim to fame. Well now. Costa instead patiently dismantles these claims, showing there is little more to them than the seductive scent of scandal. He delivers, I think, an even-handed and fair discussion that earnestly explores suspicious-seeming details. What leaves the door open to “speculation and innuendo” (p. 234) is that several key letters are missing. And despite creative sleuthing by historians, Costa concedes that it is possible that Darwin received the Ternate essay earlier than he said. But what of it? He did not hide or destroy the evidence, forwarding it to Lyell as requested. More importantly, Costa’s preceding analysis has highlighted all the ideas Darwin proposed that are absent from Wallace’s essay and the Species Notebook. Thanks to plenty of documentary evidence (notebooks, manuscripts, and correspondence), historians have reconstructed how Darwin developed his ideas over the preceding years. Costa admits that Darwin might have been impressed, even influenced by the Ternate essay, but that “is not tantamount to intellectual theft” (p. 254). Furthermore, he thinks that Lyell and Hooker’s move is unethical by both contemporary and modern standards; they should have asked for permission before presenting these papers.

A final, interesting strand of the analysis considers some counterfactuals. What if Wallace had sent his essay straight to an editor for publication? Would Darwin still have published his book? Though we cannot know, Costa offers insightful speculation here. This all leads to the question of why we have forgotten Wallace but remember Darwin. There are several likely factors. The Darwin family was already famous thanks to grandfather Erasmus, and Darwin was admittedly poor at acknowledging others. Simultaneously, as Costa tells in Radical by Nature, Wallace’s generosity was near-pathological and he never stopped deferring to Darwin. He also championed questionable and controversial causes that raised eyebrows in scientific circles. Costa feels it is high time to right this wrong: “the scientific and broader intellectual community needs to do better by Wallace” (p. 262). However, as stated here and reiterated recently in Radical by Nature: “honoring Wallace certainly need not come at the expense of Darwin” (p. 414 therein).

You may be left wondering if you can read On the Organic Law of Change by itself. You could, but then it is more of a historical curio. To get the most out of it you need this book. So, could you read Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species by itself? In principle, yes, it is mostly self-contained, but… just look at the two of them, do they not make a fine pair?

Also, note that the online version of the Species Notebook on the website of the Linnean Society has no transcription or annotations. So, to fully immerse yourself in this fascinating chapter of science history I would recommend you read them both. Costa has done a tremendous job on what clearly has been a labour of love. I commend the publisher for seeing the value in it and not forcing this into an abridged format.

1. ↑ Side-note here: Costa’s book acquainted me with a wealth of earlier work by science historians previously unknown to me, something that always increases my enjoyment of a book.

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

Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Having just reviewed James T. Costa’s biography of Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, I was keen to read more about one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of science: how two scholars independently hit on the same idea (evolution by natural selection) and how history has largely forgotten one of them. An important piece of evidence to support this claim is one of several notebooks that Wallace kept during his journeys. In On the Organic Law of Change, Costa unlocks this little gem for a broad audience by providing a facsimile, transcription, and a mountain of annotations to place this work in its historical context. You are getting a two-for-one, as I am reviewing this book simultaneously with its companion book Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species, a book I have long been meaning to read.

On the Organic Law of Change: A Facsimile Edition and Annotated Transcription of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Species Notebook of 1855-1859, written by Alfred Russel Wallace, annotated by James T. Costa, published by Harvard University Press in November 2013 (hardback, 573 pages)

During his eight-year (1854–1862) collection trip around the Malay Archipelago, Wallace kept a number of notebooks in which he recorded data, observations, and musings. Those that survived have ended up in the library and archives of the Linnean Society in London. In 2010, Costa learned of this particular notebook, dubbed the Species Notebook, from a paper by historian H. Lewis McKinney that he was reading while en route to, no less, the Linnean! In case the dictionary definition of serendipity needed updating, I have a candidate… Upon consulting the Species Notebook, Costa was both enthused by its contents and baffled by its near-anonymity, known only to a small circle of historians. Thus was born the plan to publish it as an annotated transcription, which happened in 2013, the centenary year of Wallace’s death in 1913.

At this point, you may wonder what is so special about this notebook. Well, it contains the seeds for a book Wallace was planning to write on natural selection, an Origin before the On the Origin of Species, if you will. An 1858 letter to Henry Walter Bates similarly mentions plans for an extensive work. In Radical by Nature, Costa was rightfully excited about this: “How fascinating it would have been to have not one but two founding books of evolutionary biology” (p. 246 therein). But it was not to be. Upon learning that Darwin was already far ahead with his book, and still in the middle of his expeditions, Wallace seems to have abandoned this plan. Especially after he received a copy of Darwin’s Origin in 1860 and was very impressed with it, he “evidently felt no need to come out with his own book-length statement on the subject” (p. 8). McKinney suggested that Wallace would have named his book On the Organic Law of Change and to honour McKinney and Wallace’s work, Costa has adopted this title here, realizing in spirit the project that Wallace never finished.

Before delving into the contents, let me get a few technicalities out of the way. The original notebook measures 11 × 17.8 cm and is here reproduced in black-and-white facsimile at 8.5 × 13.7 cm or 77% of the original size. Right next to the facsimile you will find the transcription which retains Wallace’s original spelling and uses several typographical conventions to accurately render the text, including strikethroughs for deletions and sub- and superscripts for insertions. On the opposite page, you will find Costa’s annotations, linked to the transcription by superscripted numbers. To fit facsimile and transcription onto one page, the book is square (measuring 22.9 × 22.9 cm), chunky (573 pages), and (frankly) gorgeous. Wallace used his notebooks tête-bêche, that is, writing towards the middle from both sides, effectively using each notebook for two different purposes. Costa here first reproduces the longer recto side that Wallace labelled “Notes Vertebrata”, followed by the shorter verso side labelled “Notes. Insects. 4”. Blank pages have been omitted. My first impression was: “Ye gods, 18th-century handwriting!”; you will be very glad to have a transcription. This is also the point to acknowledge a few others. Michael Pearson had already transcribed the recto part ten years earlier, providing a useful starting point, while student Anita Murrell did a partial second transcription of the recto notebook which Costa completed. Leslie Costa edited this and generated a complete transcription of the verso side.

“[The Species Notebook] contains the seeds for a book Wallace was planning to write on natural selection, an Origin before the On the Origin of Species.”

Technicalities covered, what is actually in this book? The entries are roughly chronological and contain a potpourri of notes, practicalities, observations, and narrative entries. The verso side, especially, stands out for sketches and the insertion of beetle wings, as well as tables tallying daily catches of insects on different islands. There are comments here on books and papers Wallace had read, musings on how best to organise and label his collections upon return to England, and ethnographic notes on some of the people he encountered. There are natural history observations on birds of paradise and, rather painful to modern readers as Costa warns, graphic descriptions of Wallace hunting orang-utans that often fled, wounded, before succumbing to their gunshot injuries. It is a reminder that terms such as “specimens” and “natural history collections” mask the fact that this involved killing animals.

Costa’s annotations are a vital accompaniment to the transcription. Next to highlighting where place and species names have since changed, he provides mountains of context. What do we know today about certain subjects? Who were the other scholars Wallace mentions and what did they do? Where was Wallace prescient in his ideas and where was he mistaken? Where do we see that he later changed his mind on certain subjects? How did these notes later find their way into his publications? Especially on this last point, Costa quotes from numerous books and papers that Wallace would later write, tracing how his observations on this journey influenced his later thinking.

The meat of this book, however, are the several longer narrative sections on e.g. the fossil record, nest-building behaviour in birds (something that also interested Darwin), instinct in humans and animals, and ice ages. The entries that are really of interest to us are where Wallace builds a case against geologist Charles Lyell. This is such a significant section that it is analysed more in-depth in an 8-page appendix.

“[The Species Notebook contains] a potpourri of notes, practicalities, observations, and narrative entries. […] Costa’s annotations are a vital accompaniment to the transcription, [providing] mountains of context.”

Lyell’s religious convictions got in the way of him accepting transmutation (as evolution was then called) and he was so influential that his word was pretty much law. Even so, he opposed biblical explanations of catastrophic floods and was known for his so-called uniformitarian approach to geology: the planet had been gradually shaped by natural causes still in operation. On this point, Wallace in effect out-Lyelled Lyell. If this is how the inorganic world changes, it is “most unphilosophical” (p. 98) of Lyell to invoke special acts of creation to explain new species. And rather than completely new and different creatures repopulating changed environments, Wallace argued that it would be far more logical that new flora and fauna would be modified versions of previously existing forms.

When it came to domesticated species, Lyell asserted that there is a limit to change since they never transmute into new species and will revert to their wild ancestor if left alone (considered a questionable assumption today). You see Wallace explode off the page with a “Wait, what?” response. He argued that there is no evidence of such limits, and outlined a scenario where varieties beget new varieties beget… etc. Though he would later change his mind on the importance of domestic varieties, here he still argued that they are evidence of transmutation. Particularly interesting are Wallace’s thoughts on the fossil record. Most scholars (except Lyell) agreed that it showed patterns of directional change, but Wallace thought it also showed patterns of descent with modification. Still captured by ideas of linear rankings of organisms, people were confused by the purported contradictions that fossils presented. Not so, argued Wallace, these contradictions only arose from the assumption that the highest forms of one group all had to appear before the lowest forms of the succeeding group did. Wallace instead pictured a branching pattern where each group continued developing after another group had branched off.

All this sounds both familiar and modern, and the contents of the notebook show Wallace’s mind at work, connecting dots. But, taking a step back, how does it all fit into the bigger picture, and where does it clash or agree with Darwin’s ideas? I am going to rather rudely stop you here and refer you to my next review of Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species where I will continue this topic and conclude my review of these two books.

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

On the Organic Law of Change

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

Are we alone in the universe? For the moment, this question remains unanswered, though there are many ways to tackle it. Just how many was something I did not appreciate until I sunk my teeth into Harvard University Press’s new flagship astronomy title Life in the Cosmos. Written by astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam and theoretical physicist Abraham “Avi” Loeb, this is a book of truly colossal proportions, clocking in at over 1000 pages. It boldly goes where few academic books have gone before by seriously and open-mindedly considering the possibility of extraterrestrial technological intelligence on par with, or far beyond humans. I found myself gravitating towards this book on account of more than just its size.

Life in the Cosmos: From Biosignatures to Technosignatures, written by Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb, published by Harvard University Press in July 2021 (hardback, 1061 pages)

Lingam & Loeb have clustered ten long chapters into three parts, each logically following from the previous: life on Earth, biological signs of extraterrestrial life (biosignatures), and technological signs (technosignatures). Before turning their eyes towards the stars, the authors discuss origin-of-life research and the major hallmarks of life’s evolution. In the context of astrobiology, this is highly relevant material and I strongly agree with their reasoning that the “exploration of Earth’s rich biospheres […] is necessary […] from the standpoint of gaining a better understanding of the paths available for biological evolution on other worlds” (p. 223). If we understand how life evolved on Earth, we might hazard an educated guess where and how it might evolve elsewhere. Similarly, whether life could evolve along radically different paths or whether there are universal biological laws that constrain the possibilities is of particular interest to the matter of convergent evolution on Earth.

For me, the book got off to a flying start: I was prepared for a discussion of the different schools of thought on abiogenesis, while I am familiar with the framework of the major transitions in evolution. More challenging—for a biologist that is—was the part on biosignatures. When examining how parameters of stars and planets influence habitability, the reader can expect extended discussions on various forms of stellar radiation and planetary properties such as plate tectonics, tidal locking, or temperature. The chapter on detecting biosignatures reasonably focuses on remote sensing. Robotic probes will, for now, only go so far. Thus, this entails discussions rich in chemistry and astrophysics when delving into e.g. spectroscopy or the mechanics of exoplanets transiting their stars. The possibility of life in subsurface oceans receives a well-deserved separate chapter. The more speculative third part of the book looks at the likelihood of technological civilizations, including the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox. It asks how we might detect them, not just by radio signals, but also by e.g. optical signals and artefacts. And it considers how life might spread through the universe, discussing both panspermia and futuristic options for propulsion technology.

“Before turning their eyes towards the stars, the authors discuss origin-of-life research and the major hallmarks of life’s evolution. In the context of astrobiology, this is highly relevant material.”

Having spent the last twelve days ploughing through this tome, here are four things that stood out for me.

First, I cannot resist very briefly giving you a few personal highlights, as this book is simply chock-full of interesting topics and insights. Plate tectonics encourages planetary habitability for several reasons, but in our Solar system so-called stagnant-lid worlds—where the entire surface behaves like a rigid shell—are more common. Whether this is the case for exoplanets remains to be seen, but there is more to it than a simple dichotomy between worlds with and without plate tectonics. Then, biosignatures. Searching for life understandably entails the risk of false positives, but also of false negatives. Not all life forms necessarily modify their worlds to such an extent that we could detect them remotely. Even on Earth, the notion of that has thus far escaped our attention is not beyond the pale. Finally, the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt has in the past whetted my appetite with their videos on the Kardashev scale and the Great Filter, so reading more about these was very satisfying.

Second, this book is rich in technical detail. Why are carbon and water suitable universal chemicals? The answer explores bond strengths and water’s dipole moment. Could life have started as self-replicating RNA? Reaction kinetics will provide an answer. The authors go beyond mere qualitative descriptions, providing plenty of quantitative models, mathematical formulae, and chemical equations. Simultaneously, they only scratch the surface of many topics. They give readers, in their own words, “toy models”, cover only a limited number of examples (e.g. of intelligent life forms on Earth, or some of the many solutions to the Fermi paradox), and frequently refer the reader to the extensive 118-page bibliography. This is not to suggest that their discussions are shallow, quite the opposite: they manage to give bird’s-eye overviews in just a few pages, and this characterises hundreds of pages of this book.

“Lingam & Loeb keep an open mind and will not discount anything out of hand. The authors rigorously discuss rather speculative ideas, even by the standards of their own discipline.”

Third, a note on the writing. The book is possessed of a certain, to use an appropriately obscure word, grandiloquence. The authors adumbrate, they explicate, they use fiduciary values in their models, and they regularly use Latin phrases (ipso facto, prima facie, inter alia). Without a hint of irony, they write that “we have opted to eschew an orthodox approach that is exclusively oriented toward the explication of technical details and endeavored instead to enkindle and inculcate a genuine passion for the subject by enhancing the readability of this tome” (p. xvi). Hmmm. Even most academics that I know do not write or talk like this. Now, I do not want to blow this out of proportion, as for a book of this calibre I was not expecting slick pop science either. Once you have reached for the dictionary a few times you quickly get used to it. And, fortunately, the lofty vocabulary is not accompanied by an air of pomposity or self-aggrandisement that I sometimes encounter. By and large, the authors have succeeded in keeping this technical book accessible to a wider academic audience. This also shows in the way they introduce and explain the many mathematical formulae. Rather than drowning the reader in algebraic derivations, they will frequently skip to the final expression.

Astrobiology might seem like a niche affair and the authors readily acknowledge that as long as our sample size is one, informed guesswork is the best we can do. Thus, the final thing I noticed is that Lingam & Loeb keep an open mind and will not discount anything out of hand. The authors rigorously discuss rather speculative ideas, even by the standards of their own discipline. Think hypothetical megastructures such as Stapledon–Dyson spheres, futuristic propulsion technologies, or panspermia: the seeding of different worlds with life via asteroids or other means. Nevertheless, they remain suitably sceptical and circumspect throughout. Notably, when the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua was spotted passing through our Solar system in 2017, Loeb caused a stir by proclaiming that it had to be an alien artefact. Life in the Cosmos has not become a vehicle to promote this idea further, which I think was a wise decision. More relevant is how Lingam & Loeb defend their choice to include such topics. The search for technosignatures can piggyback on that for biosignatures with only a little added expense and effort. Furthermore, I agree that the discovery of technologically advanced life will be even more impactful than that of microbial life. And if we did find signs of life in the solar system, the question of how (dis)similar it is to Earth life means panspermia is immediately back on the table.

In conclusion, the detailed exploration of astrobiology in all its facets will make this a statement that few astrobiologists and astronomers can or will want to ignore. In my opinion, this book gets several difficult balances right: it is technical yet accessible, rigorous yet fascinating, and open-minded yet suitably circumspect about the topics it treats. Life in the Cosmos is a stellar achievement that deserves the undivided attention of readers who are ready to take a deep dive into astrobiology.

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

Life in the Cosmos

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Plants are so drastically different from us mobile mammals that we struggle to fully grasp them. With Lessons from Plants, Beronda L. Montgomery, who is the MSU Foundation Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at Michigan State University, reveals their surprising abilities and connections. Along the way, she reflects on how we as humans can draw lessons from this to live better lives, both for ourselves and for those around us.

Lessons from Plants, written by Beronda L. Montgomery, published by Harvard University Press in April 2021 (hardback, 220 pages)

With Lessons from Plants, Montgomery wishes to raise what she calls plant awareness: a deeper appreciation and understanding of plants. It is a mission she shares with, for example, Matt Candeias from the In Defense of Plants podcast (and now also book) who regularly speaks of his desire to cure plant blindness. That is a term Montgomery is not fond of: “[It] has become increasingly controversial because it is based on a disability metaphor; that is, it reflects deficit-based thinking around blindness” (p. 2). She rather calls it “plant bias”, which I do not think is a great term either. Feel free to skip the following linguistic tangent.

Maybe I am just being a blunt Dutchman, but I have little issue with the term “plant blindness”. Still, one can argue that it is not quite precise. We see plants alright, we have just stopped noticing them. However, without an accompanying preposition, “plant bias” strikes me as an unclear term. Does it refer to a bias against or in favour? Plus, the opposite of having a bias is being neutral—not quite the plant awareness Montgomery is trying to raise. Plant unawareness is also a bit of a mouth full. In a discussion over the kitchen table with my partner, we raided the thesaurus and came up with “plant apathy” or “plant indifference”.

Linguistic tangent aside, what Montgomery does here in six chapters is discuss a plethora of botanical research and conclude with life lessons that we could draw from it. Thus, the fact that plants are rooted in place and need to carefully monitor their environment at all times has taught Montgomery “the importance of intentional self-reflection, or the equivalent of taking time to perceive my environmental conditions” (p. 30). She marvels at how some plants can form synergistic relationships when grown together, paying particular attention to the so-called Three Sisters garden. This is a Native American cultivation practice of planting corn, beans, and squash together. Each plant helps the others thrive by offering protection or structural support. Montgomery finds inspiration in this practice to try and shape her commitments and activities into a synergistic whole, rather than seeing them as mutually exclusive tasks that compete with each other for her time and attention.

“The language and ideas employed here made me think of the glut of mindfulness books that have been published in recent years [though] Lessons from Plants is not a self-help book dressed in green.”

The language and ideas employed here made me think of the glut of mindfulness books that have been published in recent years. Whether Montgomery’s lessons will resonate with you no doubt depends on whether such books appeal to you. It is a genre that normally annoys rather than inspires me, but there was one lesson here that I could strongly relate to from my experience as a student. Asks Montgomery: when we care for a plant and it fails to thrive, do we blame the plant? No, we try and find out how to adjust its environment so it flourishes. How different is our approach when it comes to e.g. mentorship or supervision. Poor outcome here often leads to us judging the individual we are supposed to look after. Yep, been there.

Now, before anyone draws the wrong conclusion, Lessons from Plants is not a self-help book dressed in green. Her lessons are a minor facet and most of the book consists of her regaling the reader with the latest botanical research. She enjoys this so much that fully a quarter of the book is given over to footnotes with references to all the studies that she mentions. I found this part to be particularly enjoyable.

Thus, plants may not be able to move away from adverse environments the way animals can, but they have another trick up their sleeve: phenotypic plasticity. They can drastically alter for instance their biochemistry, physiology, or morphology to cope better. They can grow taller to reach sunny spots or change the ratio of photosynthetic enzymes in response to different light regimes. They can tell apart self from non-self through the release of volatile organic compounds. They can transform their environment by for example liberating trapped nutrients or changing soil chemistry and consistency. That last one is most dramatically shown in pioneering species: the first wave of plants to colonise an environment devastated by a disaster, such as happened after the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens or in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl.

“[…] plants may not be able to move away from adverse environments the way animals can, but they have another trick up their sleeve: phenotypic plasticity.”

This book would be incomplete if it did not ask whether plants have intelligence. Montgomery discusses research that shows plants capable of for instance memory formation, risk analysis, and behaviour (if that is defined as modifying decisions in the face of information gathered from their environment). But how do plants do this without the kinds of organs that animals have? Montgomery does not mention Stefano Mancuso’s mind-blowing insight served up in The Revolutionary Genius of Plants. He argued they do this by distributing vital functions throughout their body in a diffuse fashion rather than concentrating them in organs, which coincidentally makes them virtually indestructible.

The other topic that prominently featured is the underground symbioses plants form with microbes and fungi. Especially the network of threads formed by fungi—mycelium—allows plants to exchange nutrients and information, a notion popularised as the . Some researchers, notably Suzanne Simard, evocatively talk of mother trees supporting younger trees via nutrient transport between them. My impression is that quite a few scientists are sceptical of such interpretations, which is not discussed here. I will, on that note, prominently mention Merlin Sheldrake’s criticism in Entangled Life. He calls these metaphors very plant-centric and points out that mycorrhizal networks are not all about “sharing and caring”.

Scholarly disagreements aside, there is no doubt that plants are marvellous organisms capable of far more than we give them credit for. Lessons from Plants is a neat little book that will appeal to readers of What a Plant Knows or Thus Spoke the Plant, and, given its discussion of what we can learn from plants, particularly to readers of Braiding Sweetgrass.

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

Lessons from Plants

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Something happened to the world sometime after 1945. Something that included the end of World War II and post-war recovery, but was far more fundamental than that.

Humanity went into overdrive.

In my reading on the Anthropocene, this book and this phrase keep cropping up. The Great Acceleration gives a bird’s-eye view of the environmental history of our world since the 1950s. A period when multiple factors—technological, medical, and demographical—converged to propel the human species onto a trajectory of unprecedented growth.

The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945, written by John R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, published by Belknap Press (a Harvard University Press imprint) in April 2016 (paperback, 275 pages)

Let me begin with two pieces of background information to set the scene. First, this book. It was originally published in 2014 as chapter 3 of the book Global Interdependence. This, in turn, is the sixth volume of Harvard University Press’s ambitious book series A History of the World which is almost complete (only the second volume remains in preparation as of this moment). At well over 1,000 pages per volume, these books are no lightweights and notable contributions have been reissued in paperback, as happened for this book in 2016.

Second, the term “Anthropocene”. Coined in the year 2000 by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, it describes the most recent period in human history in which our activities, and especially their unintended consequences, have started significantly impacting, even overwhelming, Earth’s natural biogeochemical cycles. I have previously reviewed The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit which makes the geological case for this term (McNeill contributed to this book). The Great Acceleration draws on environmental history to make the case that the Anthropocene started around the 1950s. In four large chapters, the authors touch on a range of topics to show how this has been “the most anomalous and unrepresentative period in [our] 200,000-year-long history” (p. 5).

“The Great Acceleration gives a bird’s-eye view of the environmental history of our world since the 1950s. […] “certainly the most anomalous and unrepresentative period in [our] 200,000-year-long history“”

First they turn to two of the biggest drivers of the many Anthropocene signatures: energy and population. Fossil fuels unlocked plentiful energy, with the coal-driven Industrial Revolution just a warm-up exercise. In the decades after World War II, several factors converged (the rise of consumer culture, the desire for affluence going global, oil overtaking coal) to explode energy consumption. Of all the quoted numbers I will just mention one: “our species has probably used more energy since 1920 than in all of our prior human history” (p. 9). Cheap energy expanded the scope of what was economically rewarding, bringing into existence new energy-intensive activities, e.g. the Haber–Bosch process to produce artificial fertiliser. Another contributing factor was, of course, population growth, with our numbers more than tripling from 2.3 to 7.2 billion between 1945 and 2015. Of note, though, is McNeill and Engelke’s nuanced attitude on this topic. Through a range of examples they show that the axiom of modern environmentalism, that more people means more environmental damage, “is not true always and everywhere. When and where it is true, the degree to which it is true is extremely variable” (p. 50). That said, our hunger for energy causes environmental problems at every step: during extraction (mining and drilling), refinement, transportation (particularly oil spills), and burning (air pollution).

Closest to home for me was the second chapter which covered climate and biodiversity. Some of the topics discussed here are the rise in atmospheric CO₂, the history of climate science, and its entry into the political arena. But also biodiversity loss, global deforestation, and overfishing. When you plot these in graphs, many of them, though not deforestation, show a clear upward inflection point around the 1950s.

“”The entire life experience of almost everyone now living has taken place within the eccentric historical moment of the Great Acceleration“. […] We take this to be the new normal, but this “brief blip in human history” cannot last.”

Less familiar ground for me was the chapter covering cities and the economy. This discusses urbanisation and its discontents (poverty and slums, and the effect of the car on suburbs) and experiments with green(er) cities. Economic growth was enabled by, again, abundant energy, population growth (more people means more economic activity), and technological inventions. Two particularly influential inventions are highlighted here. First, the humble shipping container that, since its invention in 1956, “did more to promote international trade than all free trade agreements put together” (p. 136). Second, the explosion around WWII in mass production of many new variants of that miracle material: plastic; though that love affair quickly soured when we discovered most of it ends up in the ocean. McNeill and Engelke furthermore consider both global economic patterns (former colonies and socialist countries being brought into the capitalist fold) and regional economic shifts in Asia and Russia, plus the dissenting views of ecological economics and sustainable development that have nevertheless not been able to stem economic growth.

The most interesting chapter for me was the last one on the Cold War and the rise of environmentalism. Noteworthy highlights here are the environmental cost of nuclear weapons production and testing, and how it spawned much of the environmental movement. The insanity of China’s Great Leap Forward that, through failed grain production and Mao Zedong’s fetish for steel production, took a staggering toll on both humans and the environment. Or the environmental legacy of the Cold War in Southern Africa and Vietnam—we all know Agent Orange, but look up Rome plows. When McNeill and Engelke chart the rise of the environmental movement, they look well beyond the cliché of young hippies and the idea that only wealthy Westerners, no longer worried about meeting their basic needs, have environmental concerns. Environmentalism became wedded to social justice movements for many of the world’s poor who found themselves at the receiving end of what Rob Nixon has called the “slow violence” of pollution and climate change. And it became wedded to political dissent in socialist Russia and China where environmentalism was long suppressed.

“”to date, the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration coincide. But they will not for long” […]. Their disentangling heralds a new transition […] for which we are woefully unprepared.”

The most frightening and simultaneously eye-opening insight this book offers is that of shifting baselines: “Only one in twelve persons now alive can remember anything before 1945. The entire life experience of almost everyone now living has taken place within the eccentric historical moment of the Great Acceleration” (p. 5). We take this to be the new normal, but this “brief blip in human history” cannot last. The authors remain agnostic on whether the future holds sustainability or collapse, whether our environmental legacy will haunt us for generations to come or outlive us. However, “to date, the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration coincide. But they will not for long” (p. 208). Their disentangling heralds a new transition, whether to collapse or a steady-state economy, for which we are woefully unprepared.

The range of countries and historical episodes included make The Great Acceleration a deeply informed and refreshingly broad work. If you want to understand how the whole world veered onto a radically new trajectory post-1950s, this compact book is a fascinating and quick read that offers a bird’s-eye view.

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

The Great Acceleration

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Harvard University Press’s A History of the World series:

__________________________________________________________________

This year will probably go down in history as the one we would all rather forget. Fortunately, there were many amazing books being published to take your mind off things for a moment. As I expected, this was a somewhat less productive year, where I read and reviewed 74 books.

For those who do not feel like trawling through that many reviews, here is my personal top 5 of the most impactful, most beautiful, and most thought-provoking books I read during 2020.

1. Owls of the Eastern Ice: The Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl

Easily the most entertaining, captivating, and unbelievable book I read this year. Owls of the Eastern Ice is a spellbinding memoir of conservation at the edge of the world, that was such a compelling epic I had to finish it in one sitting. Read more…

2. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures

It is rare that a book manages to make you see things in a truly new light, but Merlin Sheldrake managed to achieve just that for me. Without stepping off the edge of reason, the beautifully written Entangled Life is a truly mind-altering and perspective-shifting book on fungi. Read more…

3. Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings

This year saw the publication of two amazing books about the palaeontology of trees and it was a hard choice between Zach St. George’s The Journeys of Trees and this one. Ultimately, Valerie Trouet’s Tree Story won the day. A dendrochronological delight, this beautifully written and illustrated book reveals the utterly fascinating world of tree-ring research and how it matters to archaeology, palaeoclimatology, and environmental history. Read more…

4. Army Ants: Nature’s Ultimate Social Hunters

Harvard University Press and its imprint Belknap Press have developed a reputation for serious books about ants, but they outdid themselves this year. Army Ants is simply spectacular! The first book in 25 years to describe this most fascinating of ant species, it is written and illustrated by professor of social evolution and noted insect photographer Daniel J.C. Kronauer. Read more…

5. On the Prowl: In Search of Big Cat Origins

This book impressed as soon I opened it. On the Prowl is a mind-bogglingly beautiful marriage of art and science that refines the rich and complex story of big cat evolution. I called it one of 2020’s must-buy palaeontology books when I wrote my review in July and I still stand by that statement. Read more…

Honourable mention – Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

Six recommendations for the price of five! I would not normally include a book published eight years ago in my year overview, but 2020 was no ordinary year. Of all the books I read in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, David Quammen’s Spillover was surprisingly the most relevant for providing a longer-term perspective. This was the book I recommended to my parents to make sense of what was going on. It remains a magnificent piece of science reporting that weds exceptional clarity to spell-binding storytelling. Read more…

If ants give you the heebie-jeebies, you will want to turn away now, for this book review will deal with the ultimate arthropod nightmare: army ants. If, however, insects are your shtick, stick around, because German entomologist Daniel Kronauer has written a phenomenal book on army ant biology that is chock-a-block with jaw-dropping, award-winning photography.

Army Ants: Nature’s Ultimate Social Hunters, written by Daniel J.C. Kronauer, published by Harvard University Press in October 2020 (hardback, 368 pages)

Ants have been getting under my skin lately. The more I read about ants, the more I want to read about ants. This year, fortunately, Harvard University Press has spoiled myrmecophiles—of the human kind, that is. After Desert Navigator in February, Army Ants is the second big book on ants for 2020. These social insects, cooperatively hunting in swarms of up to millions of individuals strong, epitomise the unstoppable force of nature. But this fearsome reputation hides a truly fascinating story of evolution, collective behaviours, and unlikely insect alliances.

Kronauer has set himself a challenging task with Army Ants. On the one hand, he aims to provide a successor to the books by Theodore Schneirla (1971) and William Gotwald (1995), incidentally both also called Army Ants. There are many new findings from fieldwork and the application of molecular genetic tools that should interest professional entomologists. On the other hand, he wanted a book geared towards a more general audience. And he has certainly struck the right balance. Rather than an exhaustive army ant encyclopaedia, Kronauer focuses on two closely-related species, Eciton burchellii and Eciton hamatus, that he has extensively studied at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica. Still, plenty of other army ant species feature here in detail.

The book starts with a history of both the discipline and the species. The discovery of army ants takes the reader back to the 1700s, to the first depictions by famous naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian and subsequent studies by e.g. Mutis, Fabricius, Latreille, Darwin, Wallace, Bates, and William John Burchell after whom E. burchellii is named. The story of their evolution is the story of eusociality: the extreme form of social living where the many forego reproduction so that the few become specialised egg-laying machines, and the whole functions as a superorganism. In particular, it is the story of the ant subfamily Dorylinae, which contains most army ant species.

“amidst all the social insects […] three closely connected traits […] make army ants unique: mass raiding, nomadism, and colony fission”

At the core of Army Ants lies the question of what, amidst all the social insects, makes them special? This is where the book gets really interesting and details the three closely connected traits that make army ants unique: mass raiding, nomadism, and colony fission. Or, as Kronauer puts it plainly: “hunting in massive groups, frequent relocation of the nest, and multiplying by splitting large colonies”.

I will be honest with you, I was spellbound by these three chapters and can only give you a taster here of why army ants are so fantastically fascinating. But consider the anatomy and dynamics of swarm and column raids, the emergence of living architecture when workers link their bodies together to provide bridges and bivouacs for their nestmates, or the many animals that systematically follow army ants to prey on the creatures flushed out into the open when a swarm approaches. Think of the nomadic lifestyle that means regular and complete relocation of nests—eggs, larvae, and everything else included. Add to that the extra layer of complexity that sees colonies oscillate between nomadic and settled (statary) phases in parallel with the reproductive cycle of the egg-laying queen. Or what of the rarely observed phenomenon of colony fission where new colonies are founded by one colony splitting up.

And the book does not run out of steam towards the end either. A final chapter explores the many (many!) insects and other organisms that have made an unlikely home inside or nearby army ant colonies, how they manage not to get eaten alive, and how they have adapted to a nomadic host. Kronauer introduces a veritable travelling circus of evolutionary adaptations that beggars belief.

“let me just point out the exquisite pictures, [Army Ants contains] some of the finest insect photography you will see this year.”

Whereas a book such as Desert Navigator was information-dense and, in places, technical, Kronauer presents his overview of army ant biology in an easy-going, narrative style that only occasionally descends into the nitty-gritty, e.g. when discussing colony fission in the context of inclusive fitness theory. As such, he can get away with including only a handful of infographics and data tables—his clear delivery does not require more. An extensive glossary helps clarify discipline-specific terminology. Simultaneously, his broad overview of the literature and the numerous citations point the reader to all the details in case you want them.

Now, if that was not enough to convince you to read this book, let me just point out the exquisite pictures, for Kronauer is also a gifted photographer. His shot of an army ant bivouac won him the award in the “Insect Behaviour” category of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2019 competition, and he contributed virtually all the photos here. From jaw-dropping pictures taken in the field to phenomenal close-ups in the studio, this book will show you ants in ways you have never seen them before. A nice bonus is that in the figure legends Kronauer can provide unique information on how certain photos were taken.

I was really looking forward to this book when it was announced earlier this year and it far surpassed my expectations. Kronauer writes of army ants in a skilful and reader-friendly way and accompanies it by some of the finest insect photography you will see this year. This is a superb book that will take pride of place on your bookshelf.

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

Army Ants

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

When we think of animal navigation, the dramatic comes to mind: globe-trotting birds, migrating monarch butterflies, and ocean-crossing whales. But on a smaller scale, navigation is no less vital and no less interesting. Take the humble desert ant. Desert Navigator is the culmination of a lifetime worth of study by German zoologist Rüdiger Wehner and his many collaborators. It is an astonishing and lavishly produced book that distils half a century of experiments into a richly illustrated narrative.

Desert Navigator: The Journey of an Ant, written by Rüdiger Wehner, published by Belknap Press (a Harvard University Press imprint) in February 2020 (hardback, 392 pages)

Unless you live in a desert environment, chances are that you have never seen a desert ant. Speedy silver bullets that dart across the sand on long legs, ants of the genus Cataglyphis (cataglyphs to you and me) live in the deserts of North Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. In a beautiful example of parallel evolution, the deserts of Southern Africa are host to the genus Ocymyrmex, while the Australian outback is home to Melophorus ants. Wehner calls them little thermal warriors, as they stand out for their thermophile (heat-loving) behaviour. When pretty much every other living creature tries to find shade, these ants come out at the hottest part of the day to forage in murderous temperatures, tolerating surface values of 57-63°C.

How do they survive such extremes? Wehner appropriately opens the book with an introduction to the biology of desert ants. Here, he details their morphology and behaviour, highlighting how they cope with the heat through for example a thermal shield of silvery hairs that covers parts of their body, clever use of small-scale temperature variations just above ground level, and careful prevention of dehydration. Speed is of the essence to get the most out of their foraging trips, so Wehner examines their locomotion and long-leggedness.

Navigation, however, is at the core of this book. Given that their nest opening is but a small hole in the ground and there is a high price to pay for getting lost, how do these ants navigate such barren and featureless environments? How do they, without fail, find the shortest way home after having wandered about in search of food?

“When pretty much every other living creature tries to find shade, these ants come out at the hottest part of the day to forage in murderous temperatures, tolerating surface values of 57-63°C”

To answer these questions, the book takes a tour through five decades of experimental work, regularly venturing into research on related insect groups and covering a large body of older research published in German. What stands out is just how far you can take various lines of inquiry in that amount of time. Desert Navigator is not a difficult book to read, but it is information-dense. Every section, sometimes every paragraph, summarises a different study. To avoid vague or hasty conclusions, Wehner stresses the importance of careful experimental design and the field biologist in me delighted in the many unusual contraptions and clever solutions to answering questions. In what follows, I can only cover some examples of particularly memorable findings.

Tiny as they are, Wehner shows these cataglyphs to be miracle insects. This starts with the diversity of environmental cues they use to find their way: polarized light* (something humans cannot perceive, but many animals can), gradients in both the intensity and spectrum of light that indicate the azimuth or compass bearing of the sun, the earth’s magnetic field, even wind direction. Just as humans focus images on a tiny pit in their retina called the fovea, the compound eyes of insects have specialised areas too. Blocking different parts of ant eyes has revealed how the dorsal rim area (found towards the top) is both necessary and sufficient to observe polarized light. And we can even trace how this is processed in the brain. Ant brains are incredibly tiny, but certain neurological architecture and pathways are conserved across the family tree of arthropods, so work on the larger crickets and locusts has been enlightening.

Finding your way home involves having a sense of distances. Ants employ an internal step counter and measure optic flow, the speed with which your environment moves past your eyes as you move. This has involved ingenious experiments lengthening (with stilts) or shortening (poor buggers) ants’ legs, or manipulating optic flow using striped conveyor belts, resulting in ants overshooting or undershooting their nest when returning. Why do ants use both? Wehner argues the latter could be an evolutionary hangover as ants are related to flying hymenopterans that use optic flow rather than a step counter to estimate distances.

“To avoid vague or hasty conclusions, Wehner stresses the importance of careful experimental design and the field biologist in me delighted in the many unusual contraptions and clever solutions to answering questions.”

Combining distance and direction is known as path integration or dead reckoning. Picking apart this process has involved allowing ants to walk to a feeder and then catching and releasing them elsewhere. They will walk back the right distance in the right direction to where their nest should be. Further work with ants walking part of their route through tunnels showed that only steps taken under an open sky count when calculating the return route though. But ant navigation also incorporates visual landmarks (most likely the general appearance of an ant’s panoramic view), and olfactory cues (the smell of the nest in particular). Young ants have been shown to go on learning walks and do visual scanning maneuvres to observe their nest from various angles. Here, too, further work has tried to link this to brain regions, with the so-called mushroom bodies being likely candidates for the long-term storage of landmark information.

Researchers have even started probing how these systems come together and interact. Presenting ants with conflicting information by moving familiar landmarks leads to compromise trajectories between what path integration and landmark views tell them, while further work shows landmark recognition to become more important closer to the nest. Ants will even employ error correction strategies by purposefully undershooting their target or navigating downwind of nest odour plumes.

Mammals seem to build a mental map of their surroundings, but insects? While some have claimed bees do, Wehner and others contest this, arguing that combining several routines is sufficient for successful navigation. As he puts it succinctly, ants know where to go without necessarily knowing where they are.

“Mammals seem to build a mental map of their surroundings, but insects? [Wehner argues that] ants know where to go without necessarily knowing where they are.”

A highlight of this book are the full-colour illustrations. Text and images complement each other perfectly: you need one to understand the other. No fewer than three graphic designers are credited in the acknowledgements, hinting at the staggering amount of work involved. The vast majority of illustrations have been redrawn from roughly 100 different scientific publications, covering five decades. This will have included everything from hand-drawn illustrations in the early days to those produced with graphic software recently. Had these been reproduced as is, which happens, the mixture of visual styles would have been jarring. Now, the book is presented in such a smooth, uniform style that it almost goes unnoticed, so this is a point of praise worth reiterating.

After Wilson’s and Hölldobler’s book The Ants in 1990 and Tschinkel’s The Fire Ants in 2006 (and with Army Ants also published in 2020), this title joins what is becoming an illustrious line-up of in-depth books on ants published by Harvard University Press. I praise them unreservedly for the lavish production values they have heaped upon it. Desert Navigator is a myrmecological masterpiece and a fitting milestone in Wehner’s long and successful research career. If you have any interest in ants, insect behaviour, or animal navigation you absolutely do not want to skip this astonishing book.

* Since we cannot perceive polarized light, a short explanation is called for. When emitted by the sun, travelling light waves can oscillate up and down, or side to side, or really any angle in between. When light enters the atmosphere and water bodies, it scatters. Air and water molecules filter out waves with certain oscillation directions, leaving only waves oscillating in other directions. The result is called polarized light.

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

Desert Navigator hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Did life arise merely by accident? Many scientists feel uncomfortable with talk of goal-directedness and greater plans, as it reeks more of religion and theology than rational explanation. And with creationists lurking, the risk of “smuggling God in through the back door” under scientific pretences (as Richard Dawkins put it) is something to be wary of. Without descending into this territory, Universe in Creation might skirt dangerously close to it for some. In turns lyrical, unsettling, and, yes, speculative, this book argues that life may be written into the most basic laws of nature.

Universe in Creation: A New Understanding of the Big Bang and the Emergence of Life, written by Roy R. Gould, published by Harvard University Press in May 2018 (hardback, 273 pages)

Roy R. Gould, a Principal Investigator and Education Analyst at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, here takes a two-pronged approach to examine the emergence of life. He follows the cosmological story from the Big Bang forward, and, since life’s origin somewhere in the middle remains impenetrable, he also follows the story of evolution today back in time.

The first part was the more unfamiliar territory for me as it put forward some ideas that I had never heard of. Not being well-versed in cosmology, it is hard to be sure how widely accepted they are. Gould starts with observations by Hubble (the astronomer, not the telescope) that every galaxy in the universe is moving away from us. An expanding universe seems odd, as “gravity should attract, not repel“, writes Gould. Similarly, if the universe started with a cosmic explosion, its light should have sped off into space and be long gone. Instead, astronomers discovered that cosmic microwave background radiation, a leftover from the Big Bang, is coming at us from all directions. So, we need a new idea, and things will get more speculative going forward: “We will put aside our observations about the universe, take a deep breath, and dive into the world of ideas” (p. 42).

See, writes Gould, the terms “Big Bang” and “expanding universe” are somewhat misleading metaphors. Rather than expanding outwards into something, the universe expands inwards. How? Einstein’s model of gravity predicts that: “the universe is continuously creating more space [because] the scale of length is shrinking [with time]” (p. 61). Space is continuously welling up between the galaxies. The universe is fractalizing. This was one of those interesting and, for me, novel ideas. Gould traces its history through the 18th-century discussions between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz (is the universe the same scale everywhere?). Through the mathematician Bernhard Riemann’s questioning of a cornerstone of geometry (is the length of a line independent of its position?). And, of course, through Albert Einstein who argued that mass distorts space and time, an idea that was confirmed with the recent discovery of gravitational waves by the LIGO detector. A logical follow-up question is what happened in the beginning, allowing Gould to recount how the Big Bang theory was conceived.

“Rather than expanding outwards into something, the universe expands inwards. How? […] the universe is continuously creating more space [because] the scale of length is shrinking [with time].”

Where it gets more speculative, and for some readers perhaps questionable, is when Gould asserts that the universe has a building plan. He refers to the universe’s infrastructure: the elementary particles making up atoms, and the forces that animate them (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces). He marvels at the exact proportions in which these forces work: “nature’s specifications guarantee the stability of atoms” (p. 86), and remarks how slight tweaks of these values would have precluded the formation of even hydrogen atoms, and with it life.

“Why is the infrastructure of the universe so hospitable to life?“, asks Gould (p. 88), noting that this is known as the fine-tuning problem. One scientific perspective says this is a leading question and there is no reason: “nature does not “intend” to produce either atoms or life” (p. 88). A more speculative idea is that of the multiverse: “a vast landscape of universes, almost all of which would be stillborn” (p. 89). Our universe is the lucky exception where life flourished. But there is another perspective.

In 1983, physicist John Archibald Wheeler asked a question that Gould revisits throughout this book. In short: Is the universe set up such that intelligent life is guaranteed to arise? Gould thinks yes, and explores several highlights in the universe’s evolution in support. In its infancy, the universe was not completely uniform, it was just the right kind of lumpy for matter to coalesce into stars and galaxies. Had starting parameters been different this would not have happened, so “the universe was built from the start with a clever set of plans” (p. 109). Of the chemical elements forged in large stars that are scattered when stars explode, Gould writes: “it is truly marvellous that they are created in the abundances needed to form planets and to nurture life” (p. 118).

“Gould’s injection of meaning into events does not sit comfortably with me. Is the cosmos miraculously fine-tuned for life, or is life miraculously fine-tuned to the cosmos?”

This is where I found the book at its most unsettling. Gould’s injection of meaning into events does not sit comfortably with me. Is the cosmos miraculously fine-tuned for life, or is life miraculously fine-tuned to the cosmos? There is a subtle difference. Plus, we have no record of all the times life tried to take off and failed. This is a bit reminiscent of the bias that can arise when you exclude zeros and missing values during the statistical analysis of data sets.

The other half of the book looks at evolution today and works backwards. Without resorting to a veiled attempt at scientific creationism, Gould makes two arguments that life arises naturally from the laws of nature and is not just a happy coincidence. One, life’s ability to replicate depends on the molecular properties of its machinery (DNA and RNA) that are ultimately dictated by the fundamental properties of matter (what Gould earlier called the universe’s infrastructure).

Two, chance has a role to play, but random does not mean unpredictable. You can have a system with randomly behaving components that, as a whole, is still predictable. The molecular machinery of life has random behaviours (e.g. mutation and recombination) with a predictable outcome: genetic diversity. “Chance is the engine of diversity, and with enough diversity anything seems to be possible” (p. 183). This touches on some of the hottest topics in evolutionary biology such as convergent evolution, the predictability of evolution, and the origin of evolutionary innovations.

“Gould makes two [evolutionary] arguments that life arises naturally from the laws of nature and is not just a happy coincidence”

That last question touches on one of my favourite books: Andreas Wagner’s Arrival of the Fittest. Elsewhere, I rather verbosely summarised its central thesis as “evolution probing multidimensional spaces of possible protein sequences to rapidly come up with innovative solutions to life’s problems” (one day I will review that book properly, I promise). Gould, the science poet, outdoes me: “The landscape of evolutionary success appears to be very broad; there are many pathways of mutation that preserve function. Nature is wonderfully redundant.” (p. 201)

Compared to the cosmological argument in the first half of the book, I thought Gould makes a more appealing and sound argument here. Also as I consider it an example of life being fine-tuned to the cosmos rather than vice-versa. A final trio of chapters deals with senses and sensations, an exploration of the Mandelbrot set as an example of design without a designer, and the recent that might finally start offering resolutions to the Drake equation and the Fermi paradox. I was already savouring the taste of an argument well made at this point, so these chapters were like a dessert to me.

Gould is an enthusiastic and, at times, lyrical guide, and Universe in Creation is not hard to follow. It elicited contrasting responses, both fascinating and discomfiting me. That, surely, is the hallmark of an intellectually engaging book.

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

Universe in Creation hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

To outsiders, the idea that scientists would forge results might seem counterintuitive. After all, is science not supposed to be about inching ever closer, through endless iterations, to a truer picture of our world? Having worked in academia for ten years I know that the truth is a bit more nuanced. Even so, Fraud in the Lab, written by French investigative journalist Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis, was a shocking, damning and eye-opening exposé.

Fraud in the Lab: The High Stakes of Scientific Research, written by Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis, published by Harvard University Press in August 2019 (hardback, 205 pages)

Originally published in French in 2016 as Malscience by Editions du Seuil, this book has now been translated into English. As I hope to show below, I think this was a decision we should all be grateful for, as this book deserves wide reading by scientists everywhere.

Fraud in science has been around for a long time, and Chevassus-au-Louis opens with four high-profile cases from the 1970s and ’80s that generated wide public attention. He also touches on one of the most classic cases of data doctoring, that by German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, but also the less well-known question of whether Gregor Mendel’s Law of Segregation, which became a cornerstone of genetics, was based on data that were a bit too good to be true.

But, he claims, judging by the explosion in retractions of articles from scientific journals, the issue seems to have grown worse in recent decades. Although the biomedical sciences seem particularly prone to fraud due to the commercial interests involved and the resulting fierce competition and secrecy between research groups, Chevassus-au-Louis shows the problem occurs in virtually all fields of research. The other indication is the reproducibility crisis. Many papers describe research results that, when attempted, could not be replicated, something which should be the gold standard in science.

“Fraud in science has been around for a long time […] but, [Chevassus-au-Louis] claims, judging by the explosion in retractions of articles from scientific journals, the issue seems to have grown worse in recent decades”

So, what forms can fraud in science take? Many will not be that surprising: the faking or doctoring of data, the selective inclusion of only those data that support your hypothesis, the entanglement of corporate interests with those of science. These are the obvious ones.

But Chevassus-au-Louis probes deeper, forcing the reader, especially those working in academia, to engage in painful introspection by claiming that all scientific papers are cases of storytelling and beautification: “the story is often too good, too logical, too coherent”. There is a large grey area of not-quite-fraud but not-good-practice either that many scientists engage in. Omitting outliers in your data, p-hacking (also known as as “torturing the data”, such as stopping data collection once you have a statistically significant result), or subtly restating your hypotheses after the data has been collected to tell a better story.

He casts the net wider by covering other forms of unethical behaviour and misconduct: plagiarism, the stealing of authorship (sometimes by peer reviewers who anonymously read a manuscript), the publishing of the same results in multiple journals. Equally interesting were the chapters on the dark side of open access publishing where researchers rather than taxpayers foot the bill of publishing a paper. This has led to the rise of so-called predatory journals. Though legit-sounding, they will publish anything for the right price (see also my review of Pseudoscience). These are particularly insidious, as it should be noted that these articles get indexed by Google Scholar and other bibliographic databases. If scientists can barely navigate the jungle of predatory journals, how on earth is the general public supposed to differentiate between good and bogus science?

“The rise in predatory journals is particularly insidious, as these articles get indexed in bibliographic databases. If scientists can barely navigate the jungle of predatory journals, how on earth is the general public supposed to differentiate between good and bogus science?”

The book is enriched with unbelievable examples. Serial cheaters who have had hundreds of their papers retracted. Chinese firms who, for the right price, will add author names to papers already accepted for publication or will find you a writer if you deliver the data. Chevassus-au-Louis repeatedly lashes out at scientific journals, revealing the shocking disregard editors at even high-profile journals such as Nature and Science sometimes show for peer review reports when rushing papers into print. The problems extend to all participants in the process of publishing scientific findings.

This has real-life costs. Take the retracted paper that made a link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and autism, which led to deaths that could have been prevented and a vociferous anti-vaccination movement that, perhaps ironically, just refuses to die. But less well known are the clinical studies that rely on poorly executed or false research, leading to an incredible waste of money and time, and sometimes the death of trial participants.

The most obvious reason behind fraud is the enormous pressure to publish (or perish), as scientists are judged by how much research they produce and how often it is cited. Chevassus-au-Louis skewers the simplistic and one-dimensional metrics such as journal impact factors and the h-index (a measure of a researcher’s productivity and citation score).

“Chevassus-au-Louis repeatedly lashes out at scientific journals, revealing the shocking disregard editors at even high-profile journals […] sometimes show for peer review reports when rushing papers into print”

But again, the book moves beyond the easy targets. Reporting fraud when it concerns your superior is challenging to say the least. There is the problem of novelty, resulting in a race to publish first, as journals show little interest in publishing papers that “merely” confirm findings, despite their huge academic value. And there is the problem of significance: studies showing no significant effects are almost impossible to publish, which means that what does not work is rarely reported, leading to the risk of people independently trying to reinvent the wheel. I was pleased to see mention of the grassroots Journal of Negative Results, which was run by some of my departmental colleagues when I was studying at the University of Helsinki.

The discussion on solutions is equally interesting: both the successes and failures of committees established in France and elsewhere to identify and sanction fraud, and the questionable idea of criminalising research misconduct and handing over cases to law enforcement. Above all, Chevassus-au-Louis argues, we need structural reform in how science is planned, executed, and rewarded, and joins philosopher Isabelle Stengers in calling for slow science. Accountability initiatives whereby researchers make public the research questions and hypotheses before doing the research seem particularly promising.

For scientists of any stripe, whether established or beginning, Fraud in the Lab is required reading. But seeing the widespread impact of science on all spheres of our lives, we would all do well to understand the nature and scale of this problem. This eminently readable book will get you up to speed and ventures well beyond the obvious problems.

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

Fraud in the Lab hardback or ebook

Other recommended books mentioned in this review:

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________