Richard Borshay Lee - The !Kung San: Men, Women & Work in a Foraging Society

Why should we plant, when there are so many mongongos in the world? - /Xashe, a !Kung man from Mahopa

Richard B Lee's classic book on the hunter-gatherer people known as the !Kung San, who call themselves the Juǀʼhoansi, was the product of several expeditions and years of field work by Lee and his associates. But it is also the product of a uniquely radical period for anthropology. Lee first visited the !Kung in the mid-1960s and left to become part of the anti-Vietnam movement. His later return and further studies mixed with his experiences of US Imperialism and knowledge of the Vietnamese resistance movements, as well as his radical Marxist politics, to produce one of the most insightful and important books ever written about foraging societies.

Lee is careful not to speculate too much about what his studies of the !Kung tell us about other, prehistoric communities. Though he does acknowledge that we can have some insights into how those societies behaved. However Lee visited the !Kung in a period of transition. For tens of thousands of years people had lived in the Kalahari desert, likely in societies similar to the !Kung's contemporary life. But from the 19th century onward the !Kung had encountered new groups of people, in particular those from European colonial communities. More recently the !Kung's foraging life-style was being transformed by their relations with the capitalist market - through wage labour in particular.

In contrast to the tradition view of hunter-gatherers as living a life that was "nasty, brutish and short", Lee shows how the !Kung actually had a life that was marked by low levels of work (compared to Western capitalist society), with a usually (outside of droughts) varied and excellent diet and, perhaps most importantly, a "fiercely egalitarian" self organisation. Lee describes differences with other societies, noting for instance that young people and children did not have to labour to provide food (unlike peasant societies). Describing one group of !Kung he explains:

Their camps... do not consist of a core of males related through the male line [as previous anthropologists had argued]. But neither is the camp a random assortment of unrelated individuals whom adverse circumstances have thrown together. In essence, !Kung camp consists of kinspeople and affines who have found that they can live and work well together. under this flexible principle of organisation, brothers may be united or divided and fathers and sins may live together or apart. Furthermore, through the visiting network an individual may, during the course of his life, live for varying times at many water holes, as establishing residence and one camp does not require one to relinquish a claim to any other.

Lee's book works on a number of levels. Firstly it is a detailed account of the life and labour of the !Kung. Lee demonstrates how the !Kung's mode of production works - their tools, social organisation and relations. But it is also a wonderful example of the use of Marxism to understand how people (and communities) relate to the natural world. But Lee's work is far from the crude understanding of hunter-gatherers that we sometimes hear:

[An] inaccuracy is the view of hunters as having no private property. Land and its resources are collectively owned and utilised, but tools and other belongings are the property of the owner. Nonperishable goods are dealt with differently from foods. Meat many be distributed throughout the camp, but the bow and arrow that killed the animal belongs to the hunter. Material goods are important items of trade, and dyadic trade networks are a key means of cementing social relations; but the 'worker' owns the means of production.

Finally the book is a deeply personal account. Lee describes the dialectical relationship between observer and observed. He knows that his presence changes things, and uses this (to sometimes comic effect) to better understand the people that he is with. A case in point is when Lee provides a cow for a feast when he is leaving, failing to understand why the !Kung mock his gift as being small and inadequate despite it providing a hearty feast for all. Only later does he realise that this is part of how !Kung organise - their mocking of his largesse is an example of how they tackle arrogance, self-importance and any tendency to inequality or hierarchy.

The egalitarian, sharing, non-hierarchical society tells us a great deal about how human societies change. But perhaps of most interest in this book, and high relevance to contemporary discussions, is the emphasis that Lee puts on understanding the role of men and women in !Kung society. Food is always shared beyond the immediate family group. But the food that is shared is provided mostly by the women. There is a division of labour - women tend to forage and gather, and men hunt. Though it is clear that this is not strict. Men do often forage and collect food alongside the women, and women "very occasionally hunt". Lee writes that "the actual productive process may be individual or cooperative. Men may hunt singly or in groups; women may gather alone or with others".

Hunting is tremendously important to the group. Boys are taught from a young age to track and identify animals. Women's input on hunting is sought and is important because "they cover much ground on their gathering trips and because they are as keen observers of the environment as are the men, their observations are sought and taken seriously".  Men actually have a higher work effort than women (even when taking into account the rearing of children), but it is the women who provide most calories for the group. Work is key to Lee's study. He writes:

The beauty of the study of work is that work can be precisely quantified and can be tied into a whole gamut of social and economic variables. underlying the network of social relations anthropologists are so fond of studying is a network of energy relations to which we pay little or no attention. Yet the basic units of social behaviour and interaction have never been satisfactorily defined and isolated, although the basic units of energy relations are relatively easy to define and measure. The advantage of the study of work for anthropology is that it anchors the ephemera of social life on the foundations of the natural sciences.

This is not to say that Lee neglects the "ephemera" of !Kung life. In fact he spends a great deal on their tools, their camp life, their marital relations and how women and men work, play and rest (and they have a lot of rest - far more than those of us who work a 9-5 job have).

Time an again we are reminded of the inter-relations between men and women. Both men and women make tools, that might be used by the other sex. How does the labour break down?

Men clearly have the heavier share of work in subsistence and tool making and repair. Women do more housework than men, but overall the men appear to have a longer work week. The shorter subsistence workday of the women does not result in a lower return in foodstuffs... women provide more food per day of gathering than men provide per day of hunting. Women return to the camp earlier in the day than men. They use the time to ensure that the ostrich eggshell canteens are filled and that some food is prepared.

He continues:

A major category of work... is child care, and to the child's own mother falls 60 to 80 percent of the work with young children, a proportion that more than redresses the apparent disparity between men's and women;'s work... Neither do these figures support the notion that women are the exploited members of !Kung society. Their weekly work effort, including housework, is less than that of the men, and even adding the work of child rearing does not raise the women's total work load significantly above the range of the men's.

As the last quote indicates Lee's arguments are backed up with tremendous amounts of observational data. But this doesn't make the book dry. On the contrary it is readable and engaging. In fact there is so much here that I cannot hope to cover it all in the review. Whether it is the detailed description of how a !Kung hunter makes his most important tool - the arrow quiver, or how they poison their arrows or the spacing that !Kung women have of children and how this relates to hunter-gatherer life the book covers it all. There is also a detailed but extremely important discussion of violence within !Kung communities.

The final part of the book shows how the interaction between the hunter-gatherer communities and capitalist market networks had, at the time of study, begun to break down social relations. Lee shows how other groups' agriculture had encouraged sedentary life for some !Kung. Social relations are transformed with contact with a market economy - the production of commodities to be sold to tourist markets, or !Kung working in the mines. As Lee concludes:

The informal leadership, vague boundaries, and reciprocal access to resources worked well for the !Kung when the land was vast and the people were few. But with the transition to village life the old mechanisms have proved quite inadequate. The process of moving to a new mode of production involved the !Kung not only in changes in the economic base, but also has necessitated the emergence of new kinds of political relations, new forms of leadership and new methods of resolving disputes.

Lee's book is one of the best works of anthropology I have ever read. But that's not simply because his style is accessible, it is because his approach to the !Kung is one that begins from an attempt to study their life as part of a wider understanding of human society in all its forms. Lee's Marxist approach aids this but doesn't obscure it in jargon. His own humanity is written on every page, but the most important story is that of the !Kung whose story is captured at a particularly moment in their history. Richard B Lee's book tells their story but also part of own our history too.

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Matthew Cobb - Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code

There are some iconic "races" in scientific history. US President Kennedy's 1962 challenge to put a "man" on the moon by the end of the decade is perhaps the most famous. More infamous is the US drive to get the atom bomb before the Germans and Russians. Others are less famous, and of these, the story of the rather more elongated race to "crack the genetic code" is probably the most important.

The same year that Kennedy made is speech, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins won the noble prize for their work in understanding the shape of the DNA molecule. The event is well known, particularly in Britain where it's celebrated as a British success story. Ignored at the time, though increasingly better known today, was the work of Rosalind Franklin whose leg work laid the foundations for the discovery which was announced in April 1953.

But this was just one moment in a long, convoluted exploration of the biological structures and processes that allow leaving things to pass on information to their offspring. Matthew Cobb's book is a detailed and entertaining account of that story, which begins long before the discovery of DNA and has a cast of fascinating and sometimes eccentric scientists.

Cobb begins not with the practical science, but the theoretical studies by physicists and mathematicians who hoped to develop understanding of heredity science through understanding flows of information. Surprisingly then we're treated to such diverse, but important, subjects such as the development of automated anti-aircraft guns. Such early attempts to model behaviour formed the theoretical backdrop to latter attempts to understand biological information in genes.
But these approaches ultimately failed. Cobb explains:

None of the hypothetical codes dreamt up by the theoreticians were correct, because they made assumptions that were logical, rigorous and hopelessly wrong. The physicists' appetite for elegance and the biochemists' naive assumptions about natural selection led them to assume that the code had to be extremely economical, that it would look as though it had been designed along logical principles. But that is not how biology works. The genetic code is a product of biology and is messy, illogical and inelegant. It is highly redundant, but to bewilderingly varied degrees...Explaining this patter on the basis of chemical, physical or mathematical principles has so far proved difficult. Whatever logical there may have been has been overlain by billions of years of evolution and chance events. As Jacob put it in 1977, natural selection does not design, it tinkers with what is available.

Cobb points out though, that "at first glance the genetic code does indeed look like an artificial code", which lead many up the wrong path. In the 1950s many scientists tried and failed to crack the genetic code through theoretical approaches because they didn't (or couldn't) understand a key point:

Interpreting the genetic code in terms of precise analogies, strict definitions and exact parallels to artificial systems will almost certainly fail, because the genetic code, like every other aspect of biology, has bot been designed. It is part of life and has evolved. It can be properly understood only in its historical, biological context. That was the lesson of the doomed attempts to break the code in the 1950s and it should guide us today in trying to understand what is in our genes.

Watson and Crick's key moment is recounted quite early on in Life's Greatest Secret. Large chunks of the book are devoted to what happened afterwards as working out the shape of DNA was only one break-through. There are a succession of other noble prize winners in these pages, many of whom were doing science that I found quite difficult to follow. Indeed, one of the problems with this book is that despite Cobb's accessible writing style, if you lack knowledge of biology, much of the science is inaccessible. Personally I'd have found a extra chapter on the basics of genetics and cellular biology, invaluable but to be fair to author and publisher, I doubt that I was the target audience.

That said, this is still a book that contains a great deal of well presented, excellent information (as well as not a few entertaining anecdotes) and insightful comment. The final discussions on contemporary debates around genetics is also very useful. Readers with a better grasp of basic biology than me will find it very stimulating, but even those like me who took other GCSE and A-levels will enjoy the work.

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Angela Saini - Superior: The Return of Race Science

The election, and re-election, of right-wing governments around the world has encouraged the growth and confidence of racists and fascists. Racism is not a rational world-view, but racists, and those who want to encourage them often need to justify and explain their ideologies. Pseudo-scientific racist ideas have been around for some time - arising in particular out of attempts to justify the African slave trade. But, as Angela Saini's important new book explains, there has been a revitalisation of scientific racism and this is helping give confidence to right-wing ideologists today.

That these ideas should return is itself a shock. For most people the scientific justification of racism was closely linked to the Holocaust, and in the aftermath of the defeat of the Nazis, these ideas were banished. In fact, as Saini says, it seems impossible that rational minds could conceive of such ideas. Writing about the Max Planck institute, a prestigious scientific organisation in Germany which, in 2001, had to "accept responsibility for historic crimes committed by its scientists" under the Nazis:

The truth - that it is perfectly possible for prominent scientists to be racist, to murder, to abuse both people and knowledge - doesn't sit easily with the way we like to think about scientific research. We imagine that it's above politics, that it's a noble, rational and objective endeavour, untainted by feelings or prejudice.

She continues, "the answer is simple: science is always shaped by the time and the place in which it is carried out. It ultimately sits at the mercy of the personal political beliefs of those carrying it out." But there is a problem says Saini. The unique horrors of World War Two have made race science abhorrent. But, "were scientists in the rest of the world so blameless?" In fact, as my reference to the slave trade above indicates, "the well of scientific ideas from which Hitler and others... drew their plans for 'racial hygiene', leading ultimately to genocide, didn't originate in Germany alone. They had been steadily supplied for more than a century by race scientists from all over the world, supported by well-respected intellectuals, aristocrats, political leaders and women and men of wealth".

So the book is in two parts. The first deals with the history of race science. The second part looks at how those ideas are used today. But really there isn't a separation between these two halves. As one researcher from the 1970s who studied the far-right commented many years later, "I didn't really understand that there were these structures and networks and associations of people that were attempting to keep alive a body of ideas that I had associated with at the very least the pre-civil rights movement... going back to the eugenics movement... These ideas were still being developed and promulgated and promoted." Saini unpicks these networks, the shadowy sources of funds and the journals that allow those with similar beliefs to publish. Publication in particular gives a sheen of academic veneer to right-wing ideologists who want to push race science.

Today race science isn't solely pushed by those who want to see genocide. It can, as Saini points out, be used for all sorts of ideological arguments, for instance that equal opportunity programmes are "doomed to fail". In fact, one of the problems with contemporary race science, is that it often builds on the work of anti-racist scientists who thought their research (into eg genetics) was undermining the very basis for racism. Writing about the Human Genome Diversity Project, a 1990s programme that tried to understand human evolution and migration through genetics, Saini comments that the well intentioned scientists "failed to connect what they were doing with people's rel-life experience of race, with the history and politics of this deadly idea. They thought they were above it all, when in fact they were always central to it." Discussing one of the scientists who was central to the project, the esteemed scientist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza who at the end of his long life maintained "there are simply no races in humankind", Saini points out that "it is also difficult to read his work and come away convinced that his generation of scientists had fully abandoned race science after the Second World War. Although they had ditched race in name, it wasn't clear that they had necessarily shed it in practice". So some scientists argue that there is so much variation in human genetics that the idea that there are only a few races is incorrect, instead there could be thousands of "social groups" having some biological uniqueness. But, as Saini says:

Canadian philosopher Lisa Gannett has similarly warned about the ethical limits of thinking about race in this new way. To some, it may not seem racist to think about average 'populations' rather than distinct 'types' of people. Certainly, early population geneticists such as Dobzhansky believed that racism was rooted in the assumption that within ethnic groups, people are all the same, whereas those like him believed that, within these groups, people are actually very different. But in the racist mind... it doesn't necessarily matter how differences are distributed, so long as they are there in some form or another. This conceptual loophole in population genetics - the fact that we're all different as individuals but that there is also some apparent order to his diversity - is what has since been seized upon by people with racist agendas. Gannett calls it 'statistical racism.

Modern science doesn't back up race science. But, as Saini points out, that doesn't matter, "racists will find validation wherever they can". The problem is exacerbated she argues, because we are increasingly locked into generalisations and categories that have little basis in reality.

We can't help it. We keep looking back to race because of its familiarity. For so long, it has been the backdrop to our lives, the running narrative. We automatically translate the information our eyes and ears receive into the language of race, forgetting where that language came from.

Even well meaning scientists fall into this trap, as do some anti-racists. In her chapter on "Black Pills" Saini shows how pharmaceutical companies are targeting "black" people for specific medical conditions, even though the causes of those diseases and illnesses are entirely social. Such an approach "lets society off the hook. It places the blame for inequality at the foot of biology. If poor health today is intrinsic to black bodies and nothing to do with racism, it's no one's fault."

In other words, it's not society at fault, for treating people differently, but genetics - and that cannot be helped. But as this book demonstrates, the truth is the opposite. Society both causes poverty and inequality, and the racism that is used to justify it. At best race science provides a cover for this, at worst it opens up the door to those who would like to encourage genocide.

Angela Saini's book is an urgent and important read for every anti-racist. But it should also be read by scientists, and not just those in biology departments. It makes it clear that tackling racism and bigotry needs more than just facts, but also requires an approach that understands the origins of these divisive ideas and can challenge them.

Perhaps we need a revival of left wing science - both in practice and organisation. There's a long tradition, particularly in the 1930s, of scientists collectively challenging dominant right-wing narratives. In an era when we see the revival of far-right politics and fascism and growing concern about climate change such networks of radical scientists could come together with anti-racist and environmental movements to push back the right-wing agenda. That would be a powerful weapon in fighting bigotry and the system that causes it. Angela Saini's book is crucial ammunition for that struggle

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Richardson (ed) - Say It Loud! Marxism and the Fight Against Racism
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Lucie Green - 15 Million Degrees: A Journey to the Centre of the Sun

Despite being interested in astronomy for decades I have, like many other amateur astronomers, neglected my studies of the Sun. In part, as the author of this excellent guide to our nearest star makes clear, this is because looking at the Sun is both dangerous and difficult without specialist equipment. But I think a bigger issue is that I don't think I really understood what a wonderfully complex and fascinating body the Sun is.

Lucie Green is a longstanding solar scientist. She is also a well known broadcaster and an excellent communicator of complex scientific ideas. This latter point is important because to understand the Sun requires some getting to grips with some fundamental physics and the concepts are not always easy to understand. So the opening chapter begins with an account of the development of our understanding of electromagnetism - we need to know this because it helps us understand the information we are receiving from the Sun via the light we receive (both visible and other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum). Knowing this helps us understand what's going on inside the Sun. Green then takes us through the history of studies of the Sun and shows how we have built on several centuries of observations and science.

This is science on a massive scale. The Sun itself is big - even just on the scale of what we can see. But the Sun's outer atmosphere (invisible to human senses) extends beyond the Earth itself, and the influence of the Sun, in terms of the solar wind, extends a very long way indeed beyond the outermost planet. I recently enjoyed Jim Bell's account of the Voyager missions The Interstellar Age, and Green explains just why the ongoing science obtained from those two ageing craft is so important. But the Sun is also huge in terms of the energy it produces and the length of time it has been doing this for. Even with my own knowledge of nuclear physics and astronomy I was still fascinated by Green's account of the Sun's formation and the fusion in its core. We are, Green explains, fortunate that our modern scientific era, and especially the space age have coincided with a particularly fascinating era of the Sun's cycles. But we have been, since around 1985 observing the Sun leaving it's "Grand Maximum State" and the Sun is likely to become relatively dimmer in coming decades. Here Green explains precisely why, contrary to the heartfelt beliefs of various commentators on climate change science, this will have no serious impact on global temperatures. One thing that becomes very clear is just how many of the processes that we observe are the result of complex magnetic interactions throughout the different layers of the Sun - I was quite amazed to find out that we have managed to observe the magnetism of other stars, though disappointed not to be told more about how! Despite Green's ability to communicate complex ideas I did struggle to follow some of the descriptions of what was taking place - my advice to other readers is not to worry too much if you can't understand all the detail - the big picture is very much the key issue.

One of the great things about the book is the way that Green links the Sun to our own lives and society. She shows how the Sun is responsible for life (and civilisation) but also the threats it can have to modern technology and society. The end of the book discusses the uniqueness of our Sun, when compared to the billions of other stars. Lucie Green concludes that while the Sun is not that unique in astronomical terms, it is in the sense that it is the one that we can study and that gave rise to life here. So I recommend 15 Million Degrees very much, not just because it's fascinating science, but also because it's subject, the Sun, is part and parcel of our life on this planet.

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Jim Bell - The Interstellar Age

Voyagers One and Two were launched in 1977 and, by a lucky chance of birth, this has meant for much of my life their missions have been a major scientific influence. I was far too young to even know of their encounters with Jupiter and Saturn, though the images they returned were part of the background scientific knowledge for me as I entered my teens and my close interest in astronomy and space sciences. I remember Voyager 2's arrival at Uranus and Neptune in 1986 and 1989, though the latter was overshadowed, in my family, by the massive political upheaval in Eastern Europe taking place that year. The sense of wonder that the two probes brought was enormously influential and, it was only by another lucky chance of timing that the Voyager 2 was able to visit all four of these planets in one trip. In my university studies I was able to draw on some of the Voyager data for a, distinctly, amateur piece of work of the atmospheric physics of gaseous planets.

Jim Bell's history of these missions is "the story of the NASA men and women who flew the forty-year Voyager mission" and it is a profound journey for many reasons. On a personal level it answers some long troublesome questions. For instance, I never understood why the decision was taken by NASA to divert Voyager 1 to Saturn's moon Titan. This meant that the first probe would be unable to visit Uranus and Neptune which always seemed to me to be a major mistake given that Titan was, at least in the Voyager images, distinctly uninteresting. As Bell explains though, scientists knew Titan had an atmosphere and speculation about this, and the possibilities it implied were a point of major discussion in the 1980s. Bell quotes one Voyager scientist as saying that had Voyager 1 failed, the second craft would still have forgone the chance to visit Uranus and Neptune for a glimpse at Titan. However Uranus and Neptune proved far more exciting than expected, but have now only received one visit from a spacecraft. Hindsight, as they say, is wonderful.

More importantly Bell shows just how amazing the missions and the resultant science is. For instance, Voyager actually uses a tape machine to story data and images, before returning them to earth. Few of my tape recorders lasted beyond the 1980s, so to have one, albeit a much more expensive version, survive for the whole of the mission is incredible. Equally impressive is the way that the scientists continually updated the probe's software to compensate for minor damage, fuel limitations and the harsh environments around the gas giants.

Bell has a good chapter on the science behind the famous golden record that sits on both craft. This message to alien civilisations is unlikely ever to be read, but should it be, it has a fascinating store of information designed to maximise information about our civilisation, and instructions on how a relatively scientifically advanced alien society might access the information. I enjoyed the descriptions of which images were selected - in order that they could tell much more about us than simply contained in visual form (eg, an image of a stuck snowmobile tells the aliens that we, acknowledge mistakes, and have a planet that is covered in some form of white stuff). Sadly I doubt these records will ever be found, but they are likely to remain some of the few records of our civilisation long after we have gone. I do, however, consider that Jim Bell's belief that we'll eventually catch up with Voyager and put them in museums a fantasy. As an aside it is notable that despite the scientific endeavour, real world interests influenced the contents of the record. The recording company behind the Beatles was unable to agree copyright exclusions to allow their music to be added to the record - a fantastic example of how capitalism's need to profit from everything shapes the world!

Jim Bell puts across the science of Voyager and our solar system well and in an accessible form. I was inspired to read it partly because I enjoyed Alan Stern & David Grinspoon's book on the New Horizons mission so much. That is a very different book which focuses more on the trials of getting New Horizons off the ground. Voyager had much less of those difficulties and had more planetary encounters. But both missions demonstrate how, even at remarkably low cost (Voyager cost the US taxpayers a few cents each), we can learn a great deal from short flybys. Voyagers One and Two, like New Horizons, have inspired millions of people. It's an impact we should consider more, rather than the penny pinching that such science often gets. For me, reading this felt like I was coming home to events that had shaped me, and my old enthusiasm for the study of the universe returned - and I do hope that Uranus and Neptune are visited someday soon.

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David Reich - Who We Are and How We Got Here

Where did we come from? When I was young I had a book that showed how humans had evolved in Africa and spread outwards, moving left and right into Europe and Asia and then colonising the whole world. At a certain point a few brave souls must have crossed the land bridge into North America and spread through the Americas. Much later in history these groups of people started to encounter each other - and the rest is history. A slightly less crude version of this history sat in my head until I picked up David Reich's book which uses the science of Ancient DNA to uncover the much more complex history of population evolution and movement to clarify much better who we are.

It is a complex book. I'll say at the outset that lacking a background in the biological sciences I struggled to really understand some of what Reich writes about DNA. Precisely how scientists can examine the strands of DNA (modern and ancient) to determine an individual's history is a complex bit of science and understanding it fully will require more than Reich's book. That said you don't need the complete science to get his argument and readers who stumble at that first block should persevere.

Reich covers a lot of ground, and I can only acknowledge some of the discussions - for instance the detailed debate about the interaction between modern-humans and Neanderthals is covered extensively. This is always a favoured point of discussion for people interested in ancient human origins so I'd encourage them to pick it up. More importantly what Reich demonstrates is that humans today are the consequence of wave after wave of migration, encounters and mixing. As he says:

Ancient DNA has established major migration and mixture between highly divergent populations as a key force shaping human prehistory, and ideologies that seek a return to a mythical purity are flying in the face of hard science.

The complexities of these migrations are written into the genes if you know where to look. So regarding the entry of humans into the Americas, it turns out that there were at least four, and possibly five migrations onto the continent that each followed different routes once on the landmass and different genetic legacies. These are written in ancient bones and modern people, and Reich gives a fascinating (though he is very frustrated) discussion of how indigenous communities in the Americas have demanded back ancient remains and refused to give DNA samples because of how they have been treated. Given the treatment of Native Americans today and in the past it should not be a surprise that they have suspicions of researchers aims - not least because sample taken has on one occasion been tied to the promise of social care. But one solution to the frustrations that Reich and other researchers feel might be if some of the communities' grievances and injustices were solved.

Those interested in the development of inequality might be surprised to learn that DNA carries traces of this historical process. Reich writes:

The genome revolution has shown that we are not living in particularly special times when viewed form the perspective of the great sweep of the human past. Mixtures of highly divergent groups have happened time and again, homogenising populations just as divergent from one another as Europeans, Africans and Native Americas. And in many of these great admixtures a central theme has been the coupling men with social power in one population and women from the other.

Later he writes about the Bronze Age when:

Powerful men in this period left an extraordinary impact on the populations that followed them - more than in any previous period - with some bequeathing DNA to more descendants today than Genghis Khan.

In other words the development of a class society which located power in the hands of a small, male, elite has left evidence in the DNA unto modern times, not least because the new class society (though Reich doesn't use this phrase) allowed these individuals to pass on their "social prestige to subsequent generations". This is also true when Reich studies communities in the Americas today - white male slave-owners were able to rape black women and they bore their children and there is a DNA legacy today. Unfortunately I think that Reich is wrong to frame this through the story of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings - which almost implies that these relationships were mutual rather than ones of about the power of owners over slaves.

Finally I understand that Reich has been the subject of criticism about his comments on race. In this book Reich makes his opposition to racism, discrimination and bigotry abundantly clear. He does however argue that studies of ancient and contemporary DNA with the new technology does make it clear there are differences genetically between groups of people. Reich is very clear that he does not say this means that the concept of "race" in its historic, and racist use, is correct. He argues that precisely because some groups of people separated from each other many thousands of years ago, that it is inevitable that differences arise. Indeed he gives several examples - for instance some people of African descent are more likely to have Sickle Cell Anaemia as this arose out of an evolutionary building of resistance to malaria. He also argues that these differences, while they can lead to social effects, are negligible in the context of the influence of wider social conditions. I do, however, think that sometimes Reich minimises the social context. For instance, he argues rightly that:

Suppose you are the coach of a track-and-field team, and a young person walks on and asks to try out for the 100 meter race, in which people of West African ancestry are statistically highly over-represented, suggesting the possibility that genetics may play a role. For a good coach, race is irrelevant. Testing the young person's sprinting speed is simple... Most situations are like this.

Unfortunately what this neglects is the possibility that the coach might be racist, or influenced about racist stereotypes of different people's ability to run. Or that different students have varied access to training, facilities and support because of their skin colour or background. We should treat everyone like this, but society doesn't and that is because racism in society is underpinned by longstanding ideologies. David Reich's book is a good way of demonstrating how racism is scientifically inaccurate and how far-right fantasies about race and history are completely untrue. But this is not enough - confronting racism and racist ideas will not be done just through the use of facts and figures from scientists, but also through confronting and challenging the system that breeds and uses racism to divide and rule.

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Brenda Maddox - Reading the Rocks

In 18th and 19th century Britain there was an explosion of interest in scientific ideas. In this accessible book, a combination of biography and scientific history, Brenda Maddox argues that geology played a central role in developing both an scientific cadre who went on to much wider pursuits, and helped encourage the development of wider sciences. Initially geology was a pursuit of the wealthy - gentlemen who had independent means, that could enjoy examining rocks and finding fossils. Unlike other European countries Britain didn't have any institutions dedicated to mining, so there was no real basis for systematic study of rocks and minerals.

However the study of geology raised big, complicated questions that challenged orthodox religious understanding - particularly over the age of the Earth, but also specific questions from the Bible (was there a global flood?) and with the discovery of progressive fossils, opened up the debate about evolution. This, combined with the needs of industry, and the expansion of the British Empire turned Geology into a serious scientific pursuit that linked many of the most important figures of 18th and 19th century science.

Maddox book is well written. But unfortunately I found it failed as a history of geology, or as an account of the science itself. There are many fascinating individuals here, but the author seems to focus on individual anecdote rather than detailed biography. In the history of geology there are plenty of instances of individual rivalry or contested ideas, and Maddox highlights these, but often the reader is left unclear on what the science was. In short I would have preferred more on the nature of the Great Devonian Controversy between Roderick Murchison and Henry De la Beche, and less humorous anecdote. Indeed the history of geology itself seems to be simply an excuse to show how it ended up influencing Darwin's evolutionary theory - a subject that makes up a good percentage of the book and is clearly the author's real interest.

I was particularly disappointed that the final chapter didn't really integrate earlier science into contemporary geology. Instead today's science felt bolted on, almost like the previous 200 years of work didn't really matter.

Readers who want a deep understanding of the Earth's history will need to look else where - Richard Fortey's book Earth is a good start. While Brenda Maddox's book is a quick overview, readers might then want to follow it up with other books on geology and the history of science.

Related Reviews

Fortey - Earth: An Intimate History
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Alan Stern & David Grinspoon - Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto

The arrival of the New Horizon space probe at Pluto in July 2015 was the scientific highlight of the decade. It made headlines across the world, and through social media was followed avidly by millions of people. Despite expectations that Pluto and its moon Charon would be rocky, crater ridden bodies it turned out that they both had a wealth of surface features, with stunning geological formations, huge ice mountains, and shiny plains. The images became some of the most shared pictures on the internet - one of them is the backdrop to the PC that I'm writing this review on now - and continue to inspire and enthuse.

But the New Horizon's mission almost didn't happen. In fact, as this fascinating study shows, it had an extremely long gestation period. The trip to Pluto took just over nine years - but the roots of the mission began much earlier in the 1980s in the aftermath of the Voyager probes to the outer-solar system. The Voyager missions that both visited Jupiter and Saturn with one craft going on to Uranus and Neptune through the 1980s. In their own time they were as inspiring to scientists and the public as New Horizons was to be. But Pluto, at that time still designated as a planet, was not on either of the Voyager's itineraries. For some young aerospace engineers and scientists, this was a challenge and they set about convincing NASA that a visit to Pluto was worth the money, time and resources.

Pluto and one of its moons, Charon. Credit: NASA

With hindsight it is easy to say that New Horizons was well worth the cost. But that was certainly not the case. Alan Stern, one of the authors of this book drove the project forward and it details the ups and downs of the project. Despite proving time and again that a trip to Pluto was worth it in terms of science and value for money, politicians and NASA bureaucracy repeatedly conspired to try and cancel it. Any public sector project suffers from lack of resources and the whims of politicians who can end programmes with a pen stroke, but spaceflight is on a much larger scale.

As the 1980s became the 1990s and then the 2000s, successive US governments and NASA administrators blew hot and cold on the Pluto project and so when the programme finally got the it was a race against time to ensure that the engineering and technology could be in place for a very tight launch schedule. Due to their different orbits Pluto is currently moving away from Earth and any delay made the complex manoeuvres through the solar system harder. In addition Pluto was moving away from the sun and if scientists wanted to study it's atmosphere they'd have to get a probe there earlier rather than later.

I was also struck by the limitations imposed on the selection process through the way that NASA outsources projects to private companies, and secondary institutions, all of whom are in competition for contracts. A good chunk of the story tells how Stern put together a team at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to make a Pluto proposal against their competitors at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The story of the competitive edge highlights different technological solutions to the problem of getting a package of scientific instruments to Pluto, but in my view also the limitations of this sort of selection process.

Three different manufacturers made the rocket stages and spacecraft propulsion systems and while some 2,500 women and men worked on the New Horizons mission, many were from different companies and institutions:

This workforce stretched far beyond SwRI [Southwest Research Institute] and APL, with more than a hundred participating companies and universities, plus NASA, and other government agencies in the mix. Major subcontracts under APL, SwRI or NASA included Ball Aerospace, which built the "Ralph" camera spectrometer instrument; JPL which provided the Deep Space Network... Lockheed Martin, Boeing... Aerojet... [etc]

Each of these added extra costs, bureaucracy and personal to the project. This is the limitations of doing huge science projects based on a system dominated by private multinationals.

Artists impression of New Horizons at Pluto. Credit: NASA

Given the enormous amount of time (nearly 15 years) that it took to get a Pluto mission into space before the decade long flight, it is no surprise that the crew were enormously emotional at their success. The final sections of this book that deal with the preparations and arrival at Pluto read like an adventure story, particularly when the team have to solve a major critical problem a few days before arrival. The authors give a real sense of the enormous challenges posed by such a project and the marvellous skills of the women and men who made it a success. I was particularly fascinated by the descriptions of how the spacecraft was able to do its observations while travelling at near 30,000 miles and hour through the Pluto system.

Despite the seemingly niche subject matter this is a book that tells an amazing story. It's well written, at places exciting, and always fascinating even when discussing NASA's bureaucracy. As I write this, New Horizons is a couple of weeks away from its next mission target and reading this has given me new insights into what that involves. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting an insight into the work that takes place behind the science missions, but one thing saddened me too. New Horizons demonstrated exactly what humanity can achieve given the resources, but this book showed how all too often achievements like this never get off the drawing board. New Horizons cost approximately $720 million over ten years of flight. The Iraq war cost the US over $1 trillion. One day humanity will decide what its real priorities are.

Related Reviews

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Clegg - Gravity: Why What Goes Up, Must Come Down
Holmes - The Age of Wonder

Fred Pearce - The New Wild: Why Invasive Species will be Nature's Salvation

Fred Pearce has been a longstanding writer and science journalist on ecological questions, and any book by him deserves a serious consideration by radicals and environmentalists. His books have covered topics as diverse as the population question and landgrabbing, and he has a new book out discussing nuclear power. This 2015 book looks at biodiversity and in particular the question of invasive species.

Why I was writing Land and Labour one of the people who read the first draft insisted that I should change the word "alien" when describing species that entered habitats from where they were not normally found. That reader was absolutely right to do so and Pearce's book shows why (though he uses the word himself). Alien implies outsider, but species have constantly moved around. Pearce explains that there is no pristine nature, unchanged since the beginning of time. Rather nature has constantly evolved, adapted and changed. Species come and go, and while humans have been part of doing this, through deliberate planting or accidental transportation, this process is also a natural one. Pearce gives a number of fascinating examples of the natural processes - from animals and plants that have moved across the oceans, to the colonisation of a brand new island created off the coast of Iceland. But humans have a particular socialised view of nature, and that means we often reject, or fear, intruders. But, as Pearce explains, what we think of as natural nature, is often anything but:

We forget that much that appears loveably native is actually foreign. Some vagabond species that we like can become so much part of the landscape that they get local names and even become adopted natives. In the US, old-world meadowgrass was renamed Kentucky bluegrass. Tumbleweed sounds quintessentially American - a metaphor of ghost towns in Western movies as it rolls across the landscape in the wind. But the most common tumble weed species is not native at all. Salsola tragus, Russian thistle, was brought by Ukrainian immigrants in flax seed.

When I was young every public building in the UK was festooned with posters warning of the dangers of the Colorado beetle. Today some local councils warn of the threat from Japanese Knotweed and Pearce's book lists numerous others. Pearce challenges the idea that invasive species like these are as dangerous as the authorities suggest. Often, for instance, such species actually do not spread as far as portrayed, and very often they prefer "disturbed land" such as brown field sites. But, as Pearce concludes, "they rarely invade the countryside" and "some natives are a much greater nuisance. Bracken, brambles, stinging nettles and ivy are all natives... If they were foreign there would be a hue and cry.... Imagine if the stinging nettle was an alien." One scientist quoted by Pearce "found that the locals caused four time more damage to local woodland biodiversity than the aliens".

The question of biodiversity is important in this context because one major accusation against invasive species is that they drive out "native" plants and kill biodiversity. But often the opposite is true. Pearce shows that a "usually-cited" source for an "oft-repeated claim" that invasive species are the second greatest threat to biodiversity is not true. More interestingly he shows that such species, "except in rare cases... bring greater biodiversity". This can be in several ways - new species that enter existing eco-systems and establish a niche, or new species offering existing species new food sources, or toe-holds for protection. When the Suez Canal opened tropical species moved from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, and 250 species established themselves in new areas, but there was only one recorded extinction.

Pearce isn't arguing that invasive species do not do harm, create problems, or economic costs. What he is arguing is that they are not the existential threat they are often accused of being, and more often than not they bring benefits. This, after all, is why humans have often transported species around the globe - as food sources, for profit, or even for aesthetic reasons. This is a process that began long before farming took place, and we cannot pretend it did not occur - to do so is to believe that there is a pristine nature that can be recovered, or protected like something trapped in amber.

Pearce argues that part of the problem is that the common understanding of ecology is based on the idea of "balance" between species. This, he says, is wrong. As one scientist Henry Gleason, argued (against the grain) in 1926, "every species of plant is a law unto itself, the distribution of which in space depends on its individual peculiarities of migration and environmental requirements." In the late 19th century Frederic Clements came up with the idea of a "matching permanent association of vegetation" (Pearce's words) which he called a climax. Counter to this Pearce argues that "species evolve to get by, not to attain Clementsian perfection". Because of the sort of crudities that Pearce argues against, it struck me that many ecologists would benefit from a dialectical understanding of biology, such as that outlined by Levins and Lewontin in The Dialectical Biologist.

Pearce argues a strong case. However, as the subtitle of his book puts it, he sees salvation in the ability of nature itself to repair and build anew. He concludes:

But the new wild is flourishing, and will do better if we allow it to have its head.... Alien species, the vagabonds, are the pioneers and colonists in this constant renewal. Their invasions will not always be convenient for us, but nature will rewild in its own way.

This is problematic. Pearce appears to be saying here that we should do nothing, and nature will simply rebuild given time. But Pearce also has numerous examples that show how human action - such as industrial farming - is driving biodiversity loss. He argues that climate change will lead to more destruction of nature, but will simultaneously be "a major driver of species migrations" which will lead to renewal. In other words Pearce appears to be trying to have his environmental cake, and eat it as well.

What is missing from his analysis is an attempt to locate the environmental crisis within the wider social relations that humanity exists in. While it is true that humans have always altered nature, capitalism has transformed the scale of the transformation, unleashing changes to the environment that are breaking fundamental ecological relations. Eventually, human driven climate change, will likely create feedbacks that can threaten the very existence of life on the planet. I know that Fred Pearce knows this, because he wrote a very good book about it called The Last Generation. But beware - I am not dismissing Fred Pearce's book, in fact I encourage people to read it. But I think it's flawed in its suggestion that "By seeking only to conserve and protect the endangered and the weak, it [conservation] becomes a brake on evolution and a douser of adaptation. If we want to assist nature to regenerate, we need to promote change, rather than hold it back." Maybe; but we primarily need to stop fossil fuel capitalism to give nature the space to "regenerate". In fact Pearce's dismissal of contemporary conservation reads more like a call to passivity in the face of ecological crisis than a call to action.

Given time, and and end to capitalism, nature will have enormous potential to rebuild damaged regions, part of that will involve invasive species of many sorts and human involvement in moving them. Even today, as Pearce's book shows, a proper understanding of the ecological relationships between species, can help regenerate areas and protect biodiversity. But this will not happen if we sit back and wait for nature to rewild on its own. That's a recipe for a world of utter chaos and complete ecological breakdown.

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Richard Fortey - Survivors: The Animals and Plants that Time has Left Behind

When I was much younger, sometime in the 1970s, I had a picture book of animals and rather fascinatingly to me it had a drawing of a living fossil, the Coelacanth fish. I was captivated by the idea that animals that had been alive in the distant past were still alive today. Around the same time I also watched that terrible film The Land that Time Forgot but I don't think I ever believed that there was anywhere were dinosaurs continued to exist.

The Coelacanth jumped into my mind as soon as I saw Richard Fortey's book. Many years later I was still fascinated by the idea that animals could survive into contemporary times. While this is not a history of evolution Fortey does tell the story in a roughly linear way, and so we begin with very early animals and plants to understand how some examples of these remain alive today.

The first thing to point out is that Fortey never uses the term "living fossil". As he explains, no living thing remains still, a species is in a continuous process of evolution, but with some we can see something very similar to their historical ancestors. Sometimes this is because an organisms "niche" the "place where it fits in, earns a living, reproduces" remains constant and so little change takes place. Quite a few of the organisms in this book are like that, particularly bacteria and so on. Others may have evolved elsewhere but found in radically different environments today. Cacti, Fortey points out "are now specialists for life in arid conditions in the Americas, but did they originate in damp forests in Gondwana?"

Coelacanth

Despite my youthful enthusiasm for the Coelacanth, I was particularly fascinated by the examples of lifeforms that are close to those that existed very early on in Earth's evolutionary history. Of these the Stromatolites must be the most amazing example in this book. They look like "flat-topped cushions and low pillars, or even giant mushrooms expanding upwards like plush stools".  They are built up by tiny organisms, year after year, and so are not a single organism, but a "whole ecology". Usually such microscopic organisms would be eaten away, but in the special conditions where they are found today, a warm shoreline in Australia, would be consumers are absent. Fossil stromatolites have been found from as far back as the Archean era, up to 3.5 billion years ago. They are found in many different places around today's globe (Fortey recounts finding them in Spitsbergen as an undergraduate) and must have been very common. Seeing pictures of them today gives us a tiny insight into what life was like very early on in its evolutionary career.

As with Fortey's other writings this is highly personalised. His career has taken him to many places to

Stromatolites

see many things and this helps make his books highly readable. Unfortunately this book's illustrations are reproduced very badly - in black and white, on paper - and much of the detail is lost. Luckily the internet allows readers to quickly find more useful examples.

Fortey ends the book with a discussion of how these creatures in their niches or Time Havens, face the pressures of environmental change. He points out though, that even if catastrophic climate change wipes out the vast majority of living things on Earth, small bacteria will still be there and that "the wheel of life will have turned full circle". It's a great book that gives an unusual insight into evolutionary history.

Related Reviews

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Emily Winterburn - The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel: The Lost Heroine of Astronomy

When Caroline Herschel was born in 1750 no one would have imagined that she would have become lauded throughout Europe as one of the most important astronomers of the 18th century. Women simply did not do that sort of thing.

As Emily Winterburn says "nothing about Caroline's early life suggested she would grow up to become a pioneering female astronomer". In fact quite the opposite. She grew up in Hanover in a male dominated household. Her father was an accomplished professional musician and her brothers were expected to follow in his footsteps. Caroline was "taught to cook, clean, spin and make clothes, and was required to look after younger children... Caroline and her older sister Sophia were trained to run a household and to be useful and agreeable to her family".

However when her older brother William found a musical job in Bath, England she joined him there and soon became a close partner with him in his astronomical work. William Herschel was catapulted into fame when he discovered the planet Uranus and received a (relatively low paid) job as a royal astronomer. Caroline is often portrayed as William's able assistant. Yet she was a skilled a diligent observer and scientist, and while he was away on a journey delivering a telescope he had sold, she made the first of her discoveries. Her own notes from 1786 detail it:

1st August: I have calculated 100 nebulae today, and this evening I saw an object which I believe will prove to-morrow to be a comet.
2nd August: Today I calculated 150 nebulae. I fear it will not be clear to-night; it has been raining throughout the whole day, but seems now to clear up a little. 1 o'clock; the object of last night is a Comet. I did not go to rest till I had wrote to Dr Blagden and Mr Aubert to announce the comet.

It was a brilliant discovery. Her paper announcing the comet at the Royal Society was read by her brother because women could not be members. Winterburn explains how Caroline carefully neutralised her announcement and had it backed up by others to ensure that it was taken seriously. It began, "In consequence of the Friendship I know to exist between you and my brother I venture to trouble you in his absence with the following imperfect account of a comet." At the end of the paper, her brother and a (male) friend both add their confirmation of the discovery leaving no room for excuses.

Winterburn explains that Caroline's careful wording was not the result of meekness but a calculated way of making sure she had to be taken seriously. She was using all the social skills she had been taught to make sure that she could not be sidelined. As a result of this, and her other work, Caroline became the "first high-status woman paid for her science [in England], and almost certainly the first to receive royal patronage". It was an amazing achievement and gave her unprecedented financial independence to continue doing what she loved. She continued to make discoveries and fight to ensure that she was recognised for them, including an amazing horse-ride through the night to announce a different comet discovery (though on this occasion she wasn't quite the first).

Caroline Herschel made many further discoveries and did some incredibly important other work. She became famous as the "Lady Astronomer" and while well known for the comets she found, her cataloguing work was much more mundane but perhaps more important. Winterburn explains:

Caroline's real skill, her gift to astronomy, was being able to see the importance of what she was doing, even as she meticulously sifted through observation after observation searching out the occasional error, omission or duplication. It was a job that not even William could bring himself to do. It took a very specific set of very much undervalued skills.

But Caroline's class and gender in 18th century English society meant she also had to play all the other roles demanded of her. Her brother's eventual marriage and the pressures that this put upon Caroline as she became responsible for two households, in a complicated social hierarchy with Williams wife Mary Pitt, form a core part of Winterburn's book as she explores Caroline's life.

But slowly society was changing. Not everyone believed women could not be part of the scientific establishment. Her brother in particular promoted and supported her. Incredibly, because she was his sister and working with his equipment, it would have been perfectly acceptable for him to claim her discoveries as his own; yet he did the opposite. In fact their relationship was much closer to that of a equal partnership. Winterburn writes:

In writing about women in science... we often tend to get bogged down in trying to extract work that was purely theirs from the record. We try to find something tangible that we can connect with their name so they can be returned to history. What we lose when we do that, however, are the ephemeral stories of process, unminuted discussion, teaching as a way of learning and companionship.

There were other male scientists who were keen to work with and promote women scientists. Caroline was included in an updated edition of Jerome Lalande's Astrronomie des Dames and the scientist and mathematician Nevil Maskelyne was a close friend and supporter of Caroline. He was also one of the first scientists to employ women to work as "computers" doing the complicated calculations that astronomy required.

Caroline had her own way of promoting her scientific work, which would not have met approval from all those arguing for greater equality. Winterburn quotes Mary Wollstonecraft, a pioneer of the fight for women's rights, who attacks those who used "pretty feminine phrases" to make it difficult for men to dismiss them. But Caroline was trying to find a way to fight for her position using the weapons she had, and was remarkably successful, and as Winterburn points out, if Wollstonecraft was criticising the strategy it must have been widespread.

By the end of her life Caroline Herschel had been celebrated across Europe, and won awards of scientific bodies across the world. Still unable to become a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, she, along with Scottish scientist Mary Somerville, was made an "honorary" fellow in 1835. More importantly she became an important "icon" for generations of later women scientists.

If all Emily Winterburn had done in this book was to tell the amazing biography of Caroline Herschel it would have been a great read. But she puts that story in the context of a society undergoing dramatic changes. Firstly, and most obviously, there is the scientific revolution that is opening up new views of the universe and new areas for study. Secondly society itself was changing dramatically, most obviously with the French Revolution which was raising all sorts of questions of equality, freedom and democracy. For a growing number of women (and some men) this meant a belief that women should not be subordinate to men and a small minority of women were beginning to challenge their position in society. How this played out for individuals like Caroline Herschel was complicated and nuanced. Emily Winterburn's biography explores this brilliantly, and I have no hesitation in recommending this brilliant book.

Related Reviews

Holmes - The Age of Wonder
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Dave Goulson - A Sting in the Tale

This is a charming and entertaining book that at its heart has an important ecological message of interest to anyone concerned about a sustainable future, particularly, an environmentally friendly agriculture. Dave Goulson is a world expert on bumblebees, but he is also an enthusiast for the tiny creatures. He has the rare ability that experts often lack, of making his specialist subject both interesting and accessible. A Sting in the Tale begins with Goulson's childhood fascination with animals, plants and insects, his experiments with taxidermy and butterfly collecting, and his growing awareness of the natural world. It is a story that Goulson tells with wit, and a fair amount of self-deprecating humour, and intertwines it with the history of the study of the bumblebee.

There is an oft repeated quote about bees, attributed to Albert Einstein, (though Goulson argues Einstein was unlikely to have said it) which suggests that if bees die out, human society will rapidly follow. Goulson argues that this isn't realistic, but does explain how central bumblebees are to the pollination of key plants - including fruits, nuts and many other crops that we rely on. He explains in detail the evolution of bumblebees, their central position in plant ecology, and how they have been moved around the world to better serve the interests of agriculture.

I don't have space here to summarise everything about bumblebees that he writes about. The "cuckoo" bees that steal other bee nests, the way that bees use chemicals to detect whether a flower has recently been visited by another bee, how they use colour to avoid predators and so on. Though I feel I should mention that I was fascinated by Goulson's detailed explanation of bee reproduction and how this has, in evolutionary terms,  led to their collective behaviour. In short this is because female bees have more DNA in common with their sisters than their children, which helps create a collective interest.

But for me the key part of the book was the question of bees and agriculture. When writing my own recent article on capitalism and agriculture, I noted the way that a bee industry has developed around the almond industry in California. There, monoculture fields, high usage of pesticides and destruction of the sites (like hedgerows) that bees nest in has created fields devoid of insect life, and bees are brought in their millions across the USA to pollinate crops. Goulson shows how this industry has become global, with factories producing packaged nests for farmers to pollinate crops. Interestingly this is not particularly new, though it is on  massively expanded scale. When European farming moved to New Zealand in the 18th century, bees had to be sent over to pollinate the crops. In turn this had an impact on local ecology (though it created a reservoir of bees to potentially replace extinct species in the UK).

But this isn't simply historical - the introduction of bees for the tomato industry has meant farmers can increase profits massively and cut labour, but it can have a tragic impact on local ecology as bees displace "native" species. The problem isn't simply about the disruption of ecologies. But also that factory farming of bees can produce the perfect environment for the spread of disease. So industrial farming has both damaged the natural communities of bees and produced an industry that also threatens bees! As Goulson writes:

Whether or not a European disease is the cause of these terrible declines, the principle remains. Shipping bees around is inherently risky unless they can be guaranteed to be free of disease. Oddly, despite the commercial trade in bumblebees now being well over twenty years old, there is very little regulations. Honey bees cannot be transported between most countries unless they have been certified free of their major diseases, but no such regulations have been applied to bumblebees.

The book concludes with Goulson's role in trying to preserve and save bumblebees by expanding their natural habitats and educating people about the threats to them. One heartening fact is that farmers seem very keen on being part of the solution, demonstrating once again that rural communities aren't somehow anti-environment and only concerned with profit.

I have no difficultly in recommending Dave Goulson's book. It's an easy read, but full of fascinating information and real insights into ecology. I was annoyed at his tendency for unflattering and jokey descriptions of his students - "she had a very loud voice and an astonishing capacity for food" went one, and "a pretty and terribly well-spoken girl" for another. It felt patronising and unnecessary and detracted from the excellent writing. That aside A Sting in the Tale is a recommended read, and I look forward to reading Goulson's other writings.

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Rachel Carson - Under the Sea Wind

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is probably the most famous ecological work every published. Its clarity and its clarion call for action, as well as the way it located environmental crisis in a system that prioritised "the right to make a dollar" helped kick-start the modern environmental movement. Yet Carson was also a author of a whole number of works that looked at the ecological systems she was most familiar with, in particular a trilogy of books about the sea. Carson had worked as a scientist for the US fisheries bureau before becoming a full time writer and her knowledge of the sea and its ecology shines through in this book from the trilogy.

Under the Sea-Wind is a lovely piece of writing. Carson takes a number of key animals who live on, in or above the sea and describes their lives. Looking at individuals she uses a novel style narrative often naming the animal after its scientific name, but this is no work of fiction. Her descriptions of the lives of birds, fish and other animals like crabs are beautiful and often tragic, but this is no Watership Down. Her animals don't speak or have human characteristics; they shape and are shaped by the ecology they inhabit.

That said, some of the stories here are truly epic. We encounter the mackerel first as a tiny living thing, no more than a few living cells clumped together. As it grows it's life radically changes, initially eating other small sea creatures before it can feed on larger prey. Carson describes the luck that keeps our individual fish out of the belly of other predators, and we see how the huge shoals protect the individuals from death. But we also see the cyclical nature of life. The death of animals is usually the life of others.

This is no less true of humans and one of the good things about Under the Sea Wing is that Carson does not pretend the sea's creatures live isolated from human contact. In fact, humans, particularly fishermen are as much part of the world that these animals inhabit. Whether its the harbours that provide hiding places for young mackerel and some of their predators, or the fishermen whose nets threaten large numbers of the fish.

The fisherman who lived on the island had gone out about nightfall to set the gill nets that he owned with another fisherman from the town. They had anchored a large net almost at right angles to the west shore of the river... All the local fishermen knew from their fathers, who had it from their fathers, that shad coming from the channel of the sound usually struck in towards the west bank for the river when they entered the shallow estuary, where no channel was kept open. For this reason the west bank was crowded with fixed sighing gear, like pound nets, and the fishermen who operated movable gear competed bitterly for the few remaining places to set their nets.

Here we see the impact of human interaction with the sea, the potential for over-fishing and the consequent destruction of the ecology. But here is also the importance of the sea to human communities.

Over and again I was struck by how Carson emphasises the continuity of life in the sea. There's a beautiful chapter early in the book where a bird is hunting crabs and other seashore life. In turn the crabs are eating fleas, but one is scared by a fisherman walking on the beach. Fleeing into the surf the crab is eaten by a sea bass, which is then eaten by a shark. Some of the bass' body floats back to the beach where the meat is eaten by beach fleas.

When environmental NGOs campaign to save the tiger or the panda we can forget that these creatures are part of a wider network of interactions. These interactions are never one way, but rather cause numerous onward effects. The crab feeds off the fleas, and sometimes is eaten by a fish. But the fish in turn can be food for other animals or the fisherman casting their nets. Carson gives us the Sea as it really is - a network of interacting animals and plants, whose ecology can be distorted and broken by outside forces. It's a beautiful piece of writing that has much to teach us about how we think about the environment today.

Related Reviews

Carson - Silent Spring
Levins & Lewontin - The Dialectical Biologist
Lewontin & Levins - Biology Under the Influence

Richard Lewontin & Richard Levins - Biology Under the Influence

I am often wary of books that are collections of essays written elsewhere and collected together simply because they are all by one or more authors. Without a theme that holds things together they can become little more than a mix of random ideas. So I was pleased that this collection of essays by two of the world's foremost biologists works very well, despite the variety of subjects and original publications. This is because the essays approach a single question - what is the best way for scientists to try and understand the world they live in, and solve the scientific challenges they face. The subtitle of the book, "Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture and Health" show the authors' approach to this.

Lewontin and Levins argue that a dialectical approach to science is important because it allows us to understand subjects in their widest context; to appreciate the links between things and how some factors affect others and vice-versa. There is an excellent early example of this, when they look at what might cause a cholera outbreak. For some scientists an outbreak would simply be seen as "the coming of a cholera bacteria to lots of people". In a sense this is absolutely correct. But why does it come to lots of people? Why do some get sick and others not? Lewontin and Levins approach it like this:

But cholera lives among the plankton along the coasts when it isn't in people. The plankton blooms when the seas get warm and when runoff from sewage and agricultural fertilizers feed the algae. The products of world trade are carried in freighters that use seawater as ballast that is discharged... The small crustaceans eat the algae, the fish eat the crustaceans and the cholera bacterium meets the eaters of fish. Finally, if the public health system of a nation has already been gutted by structural adjustment of the economy, then full explanation of the epidemic is, jointly, Vicrio cholerae and the World Bank.

Much of the book then is given to understanding how to use this approach. The example above is a good one because it shows how a wider understanding of dialectical systems can allow the scientist to better understand the dynamics of the world they live in. This is particularly applicable, as the essays demonstrate, to medicine, ecology and agriculture and the essays here illustrate the method well.

The dialectics outlined here is not an abstract set of ideas. I was struck, for instance, while reading this, about recent left debates about ecology which have misused dialectics to try and discredit Marxist approaches that use metabolic rift theory. These have argued that such approaches reinforce a dualism between nature and society, because they talk about both these things simultaneously, even though they are inseparable. In a slightly different context Lewontin and Levins write:

No individual human being can fly by flapping his or her arms and legs... Yet human beings do fly as a consequence of social interaction and culture that have created airplanes, pilots, fuel, airports and so on. It is not society that flies, however, but individuals in society. "Parts" have acquired properties contextually.

There is much in this book, but the reader must be warned. Some parts of it are quite difficult, and while every chapter contains real gems of insights, I found some of the subject matter difficult. So the sections that examine Systems Theory or different examples of feedback in systems are hard to follow, even though the authors' do very well in trying to make them accessible.

It is worth concluding by reminding ourselves that the central task of the book is to argue that it would be wrong to approach subjects by stripping them of their context; or understanding issues as part of wider, dynamic, constantly changing systems. You can't understand public health without looking at the state of public health services, the costs of treatment, atmospheric pollution and so on. Its not simply about germs, but the context in which those germs exist. Similarly, hunger is more than simply a lack of food; its also about a entire food system geared to making profit, not feeding people.

The final chapters look at this approach and the way the authors suggest it has tried to inform the practical reality of science, agriculture and medicine in Cuba. Here they argue the nature of the government and its isolation as a result of blockade and embargo has required a different approach. I don't agree with the authors that Cuba is an actual example of socialism in practice. But it is certainly true that their approach to medicine and agriculture has real benefits to the population of the island. I actually found some of this material very interesting and particularly illuminating.

The title of the final chapter, "Living the 11th Thesis" is a demonstration of how the authors' approach to science cannot be separated from their activism. Marx's thesis, that the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it, runs through this book like a red thread. This is not a book about science. This is a book about how to make science a tool of human liberation, and I recommend it to readers, despite the inherent difficulties, as a wonderful example of that practice.

Related Reviews

Levins & Lewontin - The Dialectical Biologist