- Email: [email protected]
Charles Darwin's letters: A selection
multiple oscillators, then on to CAMP oscillations in Dictyostelium, pulsatile hormone release, calcium oscillations, the mitotic oscillator and circadian rhythms. Readers needing the last word, or wanting the full story, on any of these biological systems will be disappointed, but those needing a readable entrhe to the modeling of these oscillatory processes (one that is grounded in biochemistry and molecular biology) will be rewarded. Taken as a whole, Biochemical Oscillations and Cellular Rhythms is a very credible work. Goldbeter is to be congratulated for persevering in pulling together an enormous and disparate body of literature in a coherent and readable manner. In the author’s words, ‘The book is devoted to the study of the molecular bases of simple and complex patterns of temporal organization in biochemical and cellular systems. The approach followed relies on the analysis of models whose temporal behavior is governed by a set of chemical kinetic equations.’ Overall it works quite well; I predict that this book will remain useful for a long time. J. Dunlap
Archaeological Chemistry. By A.M. Pollard and C. Heron. Pp. 75. Royal Society of Chemistry, 1996. ISBN 0 85404 523 6. Archaeologists have always worked handin-hand with scientists in other fields. Chemistry brings to archaeology an ability to examine materials in new ways. Traditionally, archaeologists looked at artefacts in terms of size and form, decorative and functional detail and composition, determined at best with an optical microscope. The same is true for biological material, including human remains. Chemical and biochemical analyses can now provide detailed information about the composition of both organic and inorganic substances, and both natural and artificial materials. At the beginning of Archaeological Chemistry, the authors give ‘a brief but largely non-mathematical introduction to some of the many analytical techniques used in modem archaeological chemistry’. This chapter of 60 pages is mainly devoted to spectral analysis of elements, with a shorter section on chromatographic techniques and brief mention of techniques such as electron spin resonance and differential thermal analysis. The remaining chapters show how chemistry is being used to solve archaeological problems, to authenticate ancient artefacts and to guide the conservation of archaeological materials. Chemical analysis is encountered most often in the study of provenance. A chapter on Mediterranean Neolithic and Bronze Age obsidian artefacts illustrates the effectiveness of geochemistry in pinpointing the source outcrops of this culturally important
134
rock type. The chemical signatures of a&icial materials such as ceramics, metals and glass are less easy to interpret. These materials are separately considered in Archaeological Chemistry with proper emphasis on major interpretative problems. Firstly, the chemical signature of raw materials which might indicate the place of origin is often overprinted by the chemical effects of the manufacturing process. Thus, the provenancing of metal objects remains a controversial area, illustrated here in a thorough account of the use of lead isotope analysis. Secondly, chemical changes occur after manufacture through use and ultimately through burial. Such changes, encountered in the conservation of early glass, illustrate both these points. Biochemical analyses are important in the recognition of substances used in ancient cultures for practical, domestic and ritualistic purposes. A chapter on the biochemistry of resins examines the sources of adhesives used in the production of stone age tools and weapons, and notes the widespread importance of resins as medicinal and psychoactive substances. Biochemists have also explored the potential of amino acid racemization as a basis for relative dating. The authors use the history of this work in North American archaeological studies to illustrate the intellectual hazards associated with the introduction of neti scientific technologies. Archaeological Chemistry is published by the Royal Society of Chemishy. The authors come from the highly respected Department of Archaeological Sciences at Bradford. The volume is well-produced, has useful appendices containing basic chemical information, and each of the chapters has a separate list of references. This book is cheap enough to be accessible to students of either chemistry or archaeology at levels of interest from undergraduate upward. It will be invaluable to both chemists and archaeologists, particularly those in either discipline who are keen to broaden their vision of their subject. Christopher Green
The Thread of Life. By S. Aldridge. Pp. 258. Cambridge University Press, 1996. f16.95NS$24.95. lSBNO521 46542 7. This book is about DNA. The text begins with a recipe for extracting DNA from an onion at home. The author then gives an historical account of how DNA was discovered and how its structure and functions were deduced. The progression from single cellular organisms to multicellular organisms is discussed along with the idea of endosymbiosis. The first few chapters are the most difficult part of the book to read: there are too many anecdotes, so at times tbe purpose of the text (to explain what DNA is) is lost. However, the book has many good points.
The wide use of diverse examples to help explain the effects of different phenomena is commendable. For example, the Central Dogma is discussed, together with exceptions including retroviruses such as HIV and prion diseases such as BSE and CJD. The author gives a good account of the development and many applications of genetic engineering. Several techniques are described, including, of course, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). There is a rather long and misplaced description of Southern blotting. The use of this technique has declined since the development of PCR. A wide range of example applications of genetic engineering are described. These include the long-established method of recombinant insulin production, identification of human disease causing mutations, transgenics and gene therapy, crop disease resistance and even the production of unusual roses. The topic of genome mapping and data bases for several organisms is touched upon. Unbiased accounts of controversial issues are given, including many current media favourites, such as preimplantation diagnosis, presymptomatic testing for diseases such as Huntington’s chorea and breast cancer, the creation of transgenic pigs to provide donor organs for humans, patents, and the plunder of gene pools from developing countries. The author discusses ethical problems and many other questions such as whether surplus transgenie sheep should be allowed to enter the human food chain. The section on biotechnology contains numerous examples of the use of genetically modified organisms. These include the use of a modified bacterium to protect strawberries from frost damage, the development of paint-shipping bacteria, microbial copper mining, transgenic sheep for the production of blood clotting factors, and transgenie plants for polymer production. Other issues such as the development of drugs and vaccines and the need for alternative energy sources to reduce global warming are also covered. This book should provide anyone with little prior knowledge of genetic engineering with a good insight in to this field, provided they skim through the Fist few chapters. E. Green
Charles Darwin’s Letters: A Selectlon. Edited by E Burkhardt. Pp. 249. Cambridge University Press, 1996. f 14.95/US$21.95. ISBN 0 521 562 12 0. More than ten years ago, there began to appear the first volumes of a new comprehensive edition of Charles Darwin’s correspondence. The editorial team is aiming to complete the work in more than two dozen volumes, in time for the year 2009, two hundred years after Darwin’s birth and a century and a half after he published
On the Origin of Species in 1859. Meanwhile, this selection of letters, all written by Darwin himself, covers the years through to that landmark in his life. The same high scholarly standards are observed here as in the seven volumes from which they are drawn. A lively foreword by Stephen Gould makes a good introduction to Darwin and his correspondence. And the reader is served well by maps, family trees, a biographical register, together with notes and bibliographical guidance. The selection of letters is designed to represent the full range of Darwin’s life and work, and this it does as well as can be expected, although there are some surprising omissions, for example, a very instructive letter of Darwin to Lye11 in September 1838. What none of us can do anything about is the fact that Darwin kept all his most interesting thoughts and attitudes to himself during the twenty-one years after he fast became, in 1837, an evolutionist (as we now say) and before he went public as a Darwinian. To have access to those thoughts and attitudes one has to go either to the recent edition of PH. Barrett and others of his Notebooks or to a recent biography, such as that by Adrian Desmond and James Moore or that by Janet Browne. As Gould rightly emphasizes here, a main challenge in understanding Darwin as a whole is to see how he combined radical ideas in science and liberal ideas in politics with a conservative way of life, all within an upper-class family context of manifest respectability. The letters make their contribution to the resolution of this challenge because they are intermediate in their privacy and conversely their publicity: more public than the notebooks, more private than the printed books. Frederick Burkhardt and his collaborators have earned warm praise and gratitude from specialists for their correspondence project. They will earn no less from a wider readership with this admirable selection of Darwin’s letters. J. Hedge
What is Life? The Next Fifty Years. Edited by M. P Murphy and L.A. J. O’Neill. Pp. 191. Cambridge University Press, 1995. f17.95/US$24.95. ISBN 0 521 45509 X. This intriguing book is the result of a conference held in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Erwin S&r&linger’s lecture series entitled What is life? Most students of biology of my generation are probably much more familiar with Schr6dinger as a key figure in the development of quantum mechanics than as an important figure in modem biology. Nevertheless, his speculations about the nature of heredity and about the thermodynamics of living systems inspired many important scientists of the era to look at biological systems in novel ways.
On the one hand, a physicist’s arguments about the nature of living organisms served to make obvious the principle that what we believe about the nature of biological systems must be compatible with everything else we believe about the physical nature of the universe in which we all live. On the other hand, Schrodinger’s reductionist views fuelled the ongoing debate among scientists and philosophers of science over the relationship between biology and physics. Many of the papers contributed for this volume reflect the tension between the desire for unity in scientific explanations and the general anti-reductionist views held by most modem evolutionary biologists. Some of the most innovative and influential thinkers in the sciences were asked to contribute their ideas on the current problems central to biology. One can discern two major themes among their contributions. Several papers argue for broadening our view about the physical dynamics underlying complex biological systems. Steven J. Gould, Manfred Eigen and Walter Thining argue that modem biology has defeated the reductionist, determinist, purely causalmechanical view of the world. According to Gould, the hierarchical and historically contingent nature of natural selection renders the reductionist understanding of biological phenomena Schrodinger advocated implausible. Stuart Kaufman, J.A. Scott Kelso and Herman Haken, and Eric Schneider and James Kay all contribute fascinating papers arguing for the importance of recent work in the physics of self-organizing systems for understanding both the origin of life and the nature of the human brain. This latter set of papers contains a significant amount of quantum mechanics, but any scientifically literate person should be able to follow the technicalities involved. The other major problem for biology in the coming years will be the inclusion of human language, thought and consciousness in an evolutionary account of the species. The sociobiology of the 1970s and 1980s has by now been thoroughly discredited. Nevertheless, the human mind is the product of biological processes and any unified explanation of biological systems must be able to account for it. According to several of the contributors to this volume, the place to start is with language. In his paper, Jared Diamond argues that it is the genes underlying language ability that make humans significantly different from all other primates. Roger Penrose also emphasizes the relative uniqueness of human consciousness. He argues that conscious events should be identified with the complex interaction of the quantum states of large numbers of particles unique to the organic brain. Thus, contra much of recent AI-based cognitive science, there are mental phenomena that can never be even simulated by a computer. For my money, I have no doubt that the problem of human consciousness will occupy many of the best biologists in the
years to come. I would also bet that, like Schrodinger’s original book, the speculations contained in this volume will serve as motivation for much of that work. Christopher D. Horvarh
Speaking Minds - Interviews with Twenty Eminent Cognitive Scientists. Edited by P Baumgarlner and S. Payr. Pp. 342. Princeton University Press, 1995, ISBN 0 691 03678 0. Few scientific enterprises can have aroused so much controversy as Artifical Intelligence, The attempt to endow machines with quasi-human intellectual powers dates from the advent of the electronic computer, and it was the father of digital computing, Alan Turing, who first proposed an operational definition of machine intelligence. An interrogator sits at two teletype terminals. One is connected to a human being who wants to convince the interrogator of this fact, and the other is linked to a computer that has been programmed to simulate such a person. If, after conversing with both parties, the interrogator mistakenly identifies the computer as the human being, the program is deemed to be intelligent. The Turing test raises a whole range of fascinating issues in philosophy, linguistics, logic, psychology and computer science often referred to collectively as the cognitive sciences. All the contributors to Speaking Minds are well-known practitioners of one or more of these disciplines. Faced with a computer that had just passed the test, three questions would immediately occur to a cognitive scientist. First, does this machine have ideas of its own? Secondly, is there anything we might learn about the brain by studying how the machine works? Thirdly, how does it work, anyway? Among the philosophers interviewed, Dreyfus is famous for doubting whether a machine could ever beat a chess master. Searle argues that computers can’t have intentions, beliefs and so on; Dermett is equally sure they can. Paul Churchland embraces ‘eliminative materialism’, which gets rid of such problems. Putnam abandons ‘functionalism’ - the idea that it’s the logic, not the implementation, that distinguishes a thinker from a zombie. Their disagreements make excellent heavy reading. The psychologists are a less disputatious lot. Newell and Simon recall their groundbreaking work in automatic problem solving; Fodor and Lakoff are sceptical about the relevance of AI to cognitive psychology. But their backward glances serve only to contirm that the torch of theoretical psychology has now passed to the ‘connectionists’, represented most impressively by Terry Sejnowski - ‘The Hardware Really Matters’ - whom I would back to achieve the major breakthrough in brain studies we’ve all been awaiting for decades.
135
Archaeological Chemistry. By A.M. Pollard and C. Heron. Pp. 75. Royal Society of Chemistry, 1996. ISBN 0 85404 523 6. Archaeologists have always worked handin-hand with scientists in other fields. Chemistry brings to archaeology an ability to examine materials in new ways. Traditionally, archaeologists looked at artefacts in terms of size and form, decorative and functional detail and composition, determined at best with an optical microscope. The same is true for biological material, including human remains. Chemical and biochemical analyses can now provide detailed information about the composition of both organic and inorganic substances, and both natural and artificial materials. At the beginning of Archaeological Chemistry, the authors give ‘a brief but largely non-mathematical introduction to some of the many analytical techniques used in modem archaeological chemistry’. This chapter of 60 pages is mainly devoted to spectral analysis of elements, with a shorter section on chromatographic techniques and brief mention of techniques such as electron spin resonance and differential thermal analysis. The remaining chapters show how chemistry is being used to solve archaeological problems, to authenticate ancient artefacts and to guide the conservation of archaeological materials. Chemical analysis is encountered most often in the study of provenance. A chapter on Mediterranean Neolithic and Bronze Age obsidian artefacts illustrates the effectiveness of geochemistry in pinpointing the source outcrops of this culturally important
134
rock type. The chemical signatures of a&icial materials such as ceramics, metals and glass are less easy to interpret. These materials are separately considered in Archaeological Chemistry with proper emphasis on major interpretative problems. Firstly, the chemical signature of raw materials which might indicate the place of origin is often overprinted by the chemical effects of the manufacturing process. Thus, the provenancing of metal objects remains a controversial area, illustrated here in a thorough account of the use of lead isotope analysis. Secondly, chemical changes occur after manufacture through use and ultimately through burial. Such changes, encountered in the conservation of early glass, illustrate both these points. Biochemical analyses are important in the recognition of substances used in ancient cultures for practical, domestic and ritualistic purposes. A chapter on the biochemistry of resins examines the sources of adhesives used in the production of stone age tools and weapons, and notes the widespread importance of resins as medicinal and psychoactive substances. Biochemists have also explored the potential of amino acid racemization as a basis for relative dating. The authors use the history of this work in North American archaeological studies to illustrate the intellectual hazards associated with the introduction of neti scientific technologies. Archaeological Chemistry is published by the Royal Society of Chemishy. The authors come from the highly respected Department of Archaeological Sciences at Bradford. The volume is well-produced, has useful appendices containing basic chemical information, and each of the chapters has a separate list of references. This book is cheap enough to be accessible to students of either chemistry or archaeology at levels of interest from undergraduate upward. It will be invaluable to both chemists and archaeologists, particularly those in either discipline who are keen to broaden their vision of their subject. Christopher Green
The Thread of Life. By S. Aldridge. Pp. 258. Cambridge University Press, 1996. f16.95NS$24.95. lSBNO521 46542 7. This book is about DNA. The text begins with a recipe for extracting DNA from an onion at home. The author then gives an historical account of how DNA was discovered and how its structure and functions were deduced. The progression from single cellular organisms to multicellular organisms is discussed along with the idea of endosymbiosis. The first few chapters are the most difficult part of the book to read: there are too many anecdotes, so at times tbe purpose of the text (to explain what DNA is) is lost. However, the book has many good points.
The wide use of diverse examples to help explain the effects of different phenomena is commendable. For example, the Central Dogma is discussed, together with exceptions including retroviruses such as HIV and prion diseases such as BSE and CJD. The author gives a good account of the development and many applications of genetic engineering. Several techniques are described, including, of course, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). There is a rather long and misplaced description of Southern blotting. The use of this technique has declined since the development of PCR. A wide range of example applications of genetic engineering are described. These include the long-established method of recombinant insulin production, identification of human disease causing mutations, transgenics and gene therapy, crop disease resistance and even the production of unusual roses. The topic of genome mapping and data bases for several organisms is touched upon. Unbiased accounts of controversial issues are given, including many current media favourites, such as preimplantation diagnosis, presymptomatic testing for diseases such as Huntington’s chorea and breast cancer, the creation of transgenic pigs to provide donor organs for humans, patents, and the plunder of gene pools from developing countries. The author discusses ethical problems and many other questions such as whether surplus transgenie sheep should be allowed to enter the human food chain. The section on biotechnology contains numerous examples of the use of genetically modified organisms. These include the use of a modified bacterium to protect strawberries from frost damage, the development of paint-shipping bacteria, microbial copper mining, transgenic sheep for the production of blood clotting factors, and transgenie plants for polymer production. Other issues such as the development of drugs and vaccines and the need for alternative energy sources to reduce global warming are also covered. This book should provide anyone with little prior knowledge of genetic engineering with a good insight in to this field, provided they skim through the Fist few chapters. E. Green
Charles Darwin’s Letters: A Selectlon. Edited by E Burkhardt. Pp. 249. Cambridge University Press, 1996. f 14.95/US$21.95. ISBN 0 521 562 12 0. More than ten years ago, there began to appear the first volumes of a new comprehensive edition of Charles Darwin’s correspondence. The editorial team is aiming to complete the work in more than two dozen volumes, in time for the year 2009, two hundred years after Darwin’s birth and a century and a half after he published
On the Origin of Species in 1859. Meanwhile, this selection of letters, all written by Darwin himself, covers the years through to that landmark in his life. The same high scholarly standards are observed here as in the seven volumes from which they are drawn. A lively foreword by Stephen Gould makes a good introduction to Darwin and his correspondence. And the reader is served well by maps, family trees, a biographical register, together with notes and bibliographical guidance. The selection of letters is designed to represent the full range of Darwin’s life and work, and this it does as well as can be expected, although there are some surprising omissions, for example, a very instructive letter of Darwin to Lye11 in September 1838. What none of us can do anything about is the fact that Darwin kept all his most interesting thoughts and attitudes to himself during the twenty-one years after he fast became, in 1837, an evolutionist (as we now say) and before he went public as a Darwinian. To have access to those thoughts and attitudes one has to go either to the recent edition of PH. Barrett and others of his Notebooks or to a recent biography, such as that by Adrian Desmond and James Moore or that by Janet Browne. As Gould rightly emphasizes here, a main challenge in understanding Darwin as a whole is to see how he combined radical ideas in science and liberal ideas in politics with a conservative way of life, all within an upper-class family context of manifest respectability. The letters make their contribution to the resolution of this challenge because they are intermediate in their privacy and conversely their publicity: more public than the notebooks, more private than the printed books. Frederick Burkhardt and his collaborators have earned warm praise and gratitude from specialists for their correspondence project. They will earn no less from a wider readership with this admirable selection of Darwin’s letters. J. Hedge
What is Life? The Next Fifty Years. Edited by M. P Murphy and L.A. J. O’Neill. Pp. 191. Cambridge University Press, 1995. f17.95/US$24.95. ISBN 0 521 45509 X. This intriguing book is the result of a conference held in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Erwin S&r&linger’s lecture series entitled What is life? Most students of biology of my generation are probably much more familiar with Schr6dinger as a key figure in the development of quantum mechanics than as an important figure in modem biology. Nevertheless, his speculations about the nature of heredity and about the thermodynamics of living systems inspired many important scientists of the era to look at biological systems in novel ways.
On the one hand, a physicist’s arguments about the nature of living organisms served to make obvious the principle that what we believe about the nature of biological systems must be compatible with everything else we believe about the physical nature of the universe in which we all live. On the other hand, Schrodinger’s reductionist views fuelled the ongoing debate among scientists and philosophers of science over the relationship between biology and physics. Many of the papers contributed for this volume reflect the tension between the desire for unity in scientific explanations and the general anti-reductionist views held by most modem evolutionary biologists. Some of the most innovative and influential thinkers in the sciences were asked to contribute their ideas on the current problems central to biology. One can discern two major themes among their contributions. Several papers argue for broadening our view about the physical dynamics underlying complex biological systems. Steven J. Gould, Manfred Eigen and Walter Thining argue that modem biology has defeated the reductionist, determinist, purely causalmechanical view of the world. According to Gould, the hierarchical and historically contingent nature of natural selection renders the reductionist understanding of biological phenomena Schrodinger advocated implausible. Stuart Kaufman, J.A. Scott Kelso and Herman Haken, and Eric Schneider and James Kay all contribute fascinating papers arguing for the importance of recent work in the physics of self-organizing systems for understanding both the origin of life and the nature of the human brain. This latter set of papers contains a significant amount of quantum mechanics, but any scientifically literate person should be able to follow the technicalities involved. The other major problem for biology in the coming years will be the inclusion of human language, thought and consciousness in an evolutionary account of the species. The sociobiology of the 1970s and 1980s has by now been thoroughly discredited. Nevertheless, the human mind is the product of biological processes and any unified explanation of biological systems must be able to account for it. According to several of the contributors to this volume, the place to start is with language. In his paper, Jared Diamond argues that it is the genes underlying language ability that make humans significantly different from all other primates. Roger Penrose also emphasizes the relative uniqueness of human consciousness. He argues that conscious events should be identified with the complex interaction of the quantum states of large numbers of particles unique to the organic brain. Thus, contra much of recent AI-based cognitive science, there are mental phenomena that can never be even simulated by a computer. For my money, I have no doubt that the problem of human consciousness will occupy many of the best biologists in the
years to come. I would also bet that, like Schrodinger’s original book, the speculations contained in this volume will serve as motivation for much of that work. Christopher D. Horvarh
Speaking Minds - Interviews with Twenty Eminent Cognitive Scientists. Edited by P Baumgarlner and S. Payr. Pp. 342. Princeton University Press, 1995, ISBN 0 691 03678 0. Few scientific enterprises can have aroused so much controversy as Artifical Intelligence, The attempt to endow machines with quasi-human intellectual powers dates from the advent of the electronic computer, and it was the father of digital computing, Alan Turing, who first proposed an operational definition of machine intelligence. An interrogator sits at two teletype terminals. One is connected to a human being who wants to convince the interrogator of this fact, and the other is linked to a computer that has been programmed to simulate such a person. If, after conversing with both parties, the interrogator mistakenly identifies the computer as the human being, the program is deemed to be intelligent. The Turing test raises a whole range of fascinating issues in philosophy, linguistics, logic, psychology and computer science often referred to collectively as the cognitive sciences. All the contributors to Speaking Minds are well-known practitioners of one or more of these disciplines. Faced with a computer that had just passed the test, three questions would immediately occur to a cognitive scientist. First, does this machine have ideas of its own? Secondly, is there anything we might learn about the brain by studying how the machine works? Thirdly, how does it work, anyway? Among the philosophers interviewed, Dreyfus is famous for doubting whether a machine could ever beat a chess master. Searle argues that computers can’t have intentions, beliefs and so on; Dermett is equally sure they can. Paul Churchland embraces ‘eliminative materialism’, which gets rid of such problems. Putnam abandons ‘functionalism’ - the idea that it’s the logic, not the implementation, that distinguishes a thinker from a zombie. Their disagreements make excellent heavy reading. The psychologists are a less disputatious lot. Newell and Simon recall their groundbreaking work in automatic problem solving; Fodor and Lakoff are sceptical about the relevance of AI to cognitive psychology. But their backward glances serve only to contirm that the torch of theoretical psychology has now passed to the ‘connectionists’, represented most impressively by Terry Sejnowski - ‘The Hardware Really Matters’ - whom I would back to achieve the major breakthrough in brain studies we’ve all been awaiting for decades.
135