- Email: [email protected]
Review: An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage
For more reviews and galleries, visit www.NewScientist.com/books-art
Photography: Jason Smalley
Wings of desire THIS photograph of the wings of a newly emerged dragonfly was taken by the river Ribble in Lancashire, UK, by Jason Smalley. It was selected for the finals of the Wildlife in the Garden category of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition (www.igpoty.com). All the winning photographs will be exhibited at Kew Gardens, London, from 23 May as part of Kew’s 250th birthday celebrations. More images from the competition at www.newscientist.com/books-art
Creation stories The Universe: Order without design by Carlos I. Calle, Prometheus Books, $27.98 Reviewed by Marcus Chown
IN THIS excellent book, NASA physicist Carlos Calle tackles the question of whether the universe requires a supernatural “designer” or whether our cosmological theories can explain the wondrous reality around us. The standard model of cosmology, in which a tiny piece of inflating “false vacuum” decays into a fireball, and stars and galaxies congeal out of the cooling debris, has passed many tests, but problems remain. Where did the false vacuum come from in the first place? And how do the supposedly enormous quantum convulsions of our current vacuum manage to cancel out to almost – but not exactly – zero, leaving behind a piddling “dark energy” that lies in the tiny range
of values that allow life to exist? Physics and cosmology alone may have the answers, says Calle. Combine eternal inflation, in which the primordial false vacuum continuously grows and decays, with string theory and you end up with a multiverse – a vast collection of universes, each of which has a different amount of dark energy. We find ourselves in one where it has just the right value for stars, planets and life because… well, we couldn’t find ourselves anywhere else. Another cosmological model that has emerged from string theory has our universe living on the surface of a “brane” floating in a higher-dimensional space. Our brane collides with a nearby brane over and over again for eternity, triggering an endless sequence of big bangs. This cyclic model may home in on the exact value of the dark energy we measure. The model doesn’t require a beginning, and some theorists suspect that eternal inflation may not either. Certainly, neither requires a designer. Cosmology still has a lot to figure out, Calle contends, but it is in good shape.
History through food An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage, Walker/Atlantic Books, $26/£19.99 Reviewed by Sam Kean
NEVER mind the contradictions, you can buy books proving that curry, oranges, salt or beef each singlehandedly made our world modern. There is a certain P. T. Barnum appeal in this: you are aware codfish or whatever didn’t really transform the universe by itself, but part of the fun is being taken in by the audacious cleverness of tying all of history to one foodstuff. Tom Standage could have written a similar “noun” book. A few, in fact, since he highlights a dozen foods and spices with outsize personalities. But instead of casting backwards for one thread to stitch everything together, Standage sensibly casts a net, writing not a history of any one food but a history through food. Using this approach he
demonstrates how changes in food production, technology and consumption have dragged humanity forwards from its hunter-gatherer days. Then again, “forwards” isn’t the right word. Standage presents evidence that farming ruined human happiness, and plausibly traces the origins of social stratification, the West Indian slave trade and the bubonic plague to “advances” in food production. Perhaps it is good, then, that he also plots a second, implicit history of humans using science to liberate themselves from the toil of scraping food from the land – the truest material sign of our modern world. The emphasis on food as a cultural catalyst differentiates Standage from Michael Pollan, whose plants’ eye view of the world keeps the consumables central. With Standage it is not what changes in food that matters, but rather what food changes. And it’s not just one food lifting and guiding history, but what Adam Smith might have called the “invisible fork” of food economics. 16 May 2009 | NewScientist | 49
Photography: Jason Smalley
Wings of desire THIS photograph of the wings of a newly emerged dragonfly was taken by the river Ribble in Lancashire, UK, by Jason Smalley. It was selected for the finals of the Wildlife in the Garden category of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition (www.igpoty.com). All the winning photographs will be exhibited at Kew Gardens, London, from 23 May as part of Kew’s 250th birthday celebrations. More images from the competition at www.newscientist.com/books-art
Creation stories The Universe: Order without design by Carlos I. Calle, Prometheus Books, $27.98 Reviewed by Marcus Chown
IN THIS excellent book, NASA physicist Carlos Calle tackles the question of whether the universe requires a supernatural “designer” or whether our cosmological theories can explain the wondrous reality around us. The standard model of cosmology, in which a tiny piece of inflating “false vacuum” decays into a fireball, and stars and galaxies congeal out of the cooling debris, has passed many tests, but problems remain. Where did the false vacuum come from in the first place? And how do the supposedly enormous quantum convulsions of our current vacuum manage to cancel out to almost – but not exactly – zero, leaving behind a piddling “dark energy” that lies in the tiny range
of values that allow life to exist? Physics and cosmology alone may have the answers, says Calle. Combine eternal inflation, in which the primordial false vacuum continuously grows and decays, with string theory and you end up with a multiverse – a vast collection of universes, each of which has a different amount of dark energy. We find ourselves in one where it has just the right value for stars, planets and life because… well, we couldn’t find ourselves anywhere else. Another cosmological model that has emerged from string theory has our universe living on the surface of a “brane” floating in a higher-dimensional space. Our brane collides with a nearby brane over and over again for eternity, triggering an endless sequence of big bangs. This cyclic model may home in on the exact value of the dark energy we measure. The model doesn’t require a beginning, and some theorists suspect that eternal inflation may not either. Certainly, neither requires a designer. Cosmology still has a lot to figure out, Calle contends, but it is in good shape.
History through food An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage, Walker/Atlantic Books, $26/£19.99 Reviewed by Sam Kean
NEVER mind the contradictions, you can buy books proving that curry, oranges, salt or beef each singlehandedly made our world modern. There is a certain P. T. Barnum appeal in this: you are aware codfish or whatever didn’t really transform the universe by itself, but part of the fun is being taken in by the audacious cleverness of tying all of history to one foodstuff. Tom Standage could have written a similar “noun” book. A few, in fact, since he highlights a dozen foods and spices with outsize personalities. But instead of casting backwards for one thread to stitch everything together, Standage sensibly casts a net, writing not a history of any one food but a history through food. Using this approach he
demonstrates how changes in food production, technology and consumption have dragged humanity forwards from its hunter-gatherer days. Then again, “forwards” isn’t the right word. Standage presents evidence that farming ruined human happiness, and plausibly traces the origins of social stratification, the West Indian slave trade and the bubonic plague to “advances” in food production. Perhaps it is good, then, that he also plots a second, implicit history of humans using science to liberate themselves from the toil of scraping food from the land – the truest material sign of our modern world. The emphasis on food as a cultural catalyst differentiates Standage from Michael Pollan, whose plants’ eye view of the world keeps the consumables central. With Standage it is not what changes in food that matters, but rather what food changes. And it’s not just one food lifting and guiding history, but what Adam Smith might have called the “invisible fork” of food economics. 16 May 2009 | NewScientist | 49