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Review: Time in Antiquity by Robert Hannah
EPISODE OF THE BELGIAN REVOLUTION OF 1830 BY GUSTAF WAPPERS/VINCENT FOURNIER/GALLERY STOCK
For more book reviews go to www.NewScientist.com/topic/books-art
Denis Dutton argues that appreciating art gives people an adaptive advantage
role of visual images. There will be shared elements, but not a rigid set of core criteria. On the biology side, Dutton’s argument depends on a simplistic idea of evolution that does not take on board recent demonstrations of the extreme complexity of gene-to-function correspondence, the role of gene regulatory networks and the levels of functional redundancy in the system, not to mention the thorny issue of group selection Instead, he characterises art in a simple genetic framework as
a central adaptive and selective factor in recent human evolution, diverting Pinker’s idea that artmaking is a by-product of other adaptive traits. There are huge problems with this. The first is that cultural characteristics are learned. Cultures and cultural expressions may be inherited and evolve in the sense that they develop progressively over generations, but it is far better to categorise art as resulting from the development of socially acquired characteristics than from biological evolution. Art is made by intentional agents, from artists to patrons, in social settings, and received by viewers who play purposeful roles not only in what is seen, but also with how it is seen. Intentional agents have no role in Darwinian mechanisms of natural selection. The second difficulty is one of timescale. To posit significant, large-scale genetic selection in favour of art-makers over the relatively short time span that humans have been documented to create art seems to run against what we know of the mechanisms of change in protein-coding genes. And if art-making conveys significant evolutionary advantages, it is strange that the proportion of skilled artmakers does not seem to have increased over time. There is no sign that we are all becoming artists, thank goodness. This is not to say that “art and evolution” is a non-topic, but neither of the terms as they stand serve us well. What we need is a programme to understand how image-making capacity, including art in Dutton’s sense, serves a range of functions, including pleasure in the aesthetic sense, and how these relate to those intellectual, intuitive, inventive, imaginative and memetic capacities that we have indeed evolved. We are only at the beginning. ■ Martin Kemp is emeritus professor of the history of art at the University of Oxford
Patients beware Taking the Medicine by Druin Burch, Random House, £20 Reviewed by Priya Shetty
WHILE physicians pledge to “first, do no harm”, Druin Burch’s alarming history of medicine argues that until quite recently the opposite has been happening. By relying on belief rather than evidence, doctors harmed more often than they healed. His zigzagging flight through the history of doctoring reminds us how remedies with zero medicinal power – such as the practice of bleeding – were adhered to with what now seems like wanton disregard for the patient’s welfare. Only at the start of the 20th century did doctors move towards evidence-based medicine, in which treatments were tested against placebo in randomised clinical trials. But there are still trust issues with trials, and for all the wizardry of modern medicine, with its bionic limbs and targeted drugs, doctors still cannot assume they have all the answers. This book offers a valuable inoculation against complacency. ■
Changing time Time in Antiquity by Robert Hannah, Routledge, £21.99/$39.95 Reviewed by Jo Marchant
BEFORE the invention of clocks, what did time mean to people? Time in Antiquity is a fascinating look at how ancient Greeks and Romans marked the seasons and told the time – from checking the length of their shadows to tracking the rising and setting of the stars. The book is packed with technical
detail that might put some people off, but Robert Hannah peppers his account with lively anecdotes from plays and poems, such as a greedy guest who arrives hours early for dinner when he measures his shadow at dawn instead of dusk. Hannah’s message is that for the ancients, time was inseparable from cosmic cycles: the wheeling of the sun, moon and stars through the heavens. Today, the sun is not deemed accurate enough and clocks are instead set to atomic vibrations. Yet we still talk of “sunrise” and “sunset”, when we know these are illusions. In that sense, says Hannah, we are still children of the ancient world. ■
Whole new worlds The Hunt for Planet X by Govert Schilling, Springer, $27.50/£15 Reviewed by Marcus Chown
“YOUNG man, I am afraid you are wasting your time – if there were any more planets they would have been found long before this,” Clyde Tombaugh was told in 1929. This was both right and wrong: a year later Tombaugh discovered Pluto but, famously, it was demoted to “dwarf planet” status in 2006. The story of the discovery of Pluto and its fellow Kuiper belt objects is told here by science writer and New Scientist contributor Govert Schilling. He travelled the world to interview all the surviving protagonists, including Venetia Burney – the 11-year-old who suggested the name Pluto – and the band of dogged planet hunters who have found such bodies as Eris, Easter Bunny, Buffy and Santa (with its moons Rudolph and Blixen). And the search for Planet X is still on. This is a wonderfully entertaining book which conveys the raw excitement of a fastdeveloping field. I can’t wait to find what else is out there. ■ 31 January 2009 | NewScientist | 45
For more book reviews go to www.NewScientist.com/topic/books-art
Denis Dutton argues that appreciating art gives people an adaptive advantage
role of visual images. There will be shared elements, but not a rigid set of core criteria. On the biology side, Dutton’s argument depends on a simplistic idea of evolution that does not take on board recent demonstrations of the extreme complexity of gene-to-function correspondence, the role of gene regulatory networks and the levels of functional redundancy in the system, not to mention the thorny issue of group selection Instead, he characterises art in a simple genetic framework as
a central adaptive and selective factor in recent human evolution, diverting Pinker’s idea that artmaking is a by-product of other adaptive traits. There are huge problems with this. The first is that cultural characteristics are learned. Cultures and cultural expressions may be inherited and evolve in the sense that they develop progressively over generations, but it is far better to categorise art as resulting from the development of socially acquired characteristics than from biological evolution. Art is made by intentional agents, from artists to patrons, in social settings, and received by viewers who play purposeful roles not only in what is seen, but also with how it is seen. Intentional agents have no role in Darwinian mechanisms of natural selection. The second difficulty is one of timescale. To posit significant, large-scale genetic selection in favour of art-makers over the relatively short time span that humans have been documented to create art seems to run against what we know of the mechanisms of change in protein-coding genes. And if art-making conveys significant evolutionary advantages, it is strange that the proportion of skilled artmakers does not seem to have increased over time. There is no sign that we are all becoming artists, thank goodness. This is not to say that “art and evolution” is a non-topic, but neither of the terms as they stand serve us well. What we need is a programme to understand how image-making capacity, including art in Dutton’s sense, serves a range of functions, including pleasure in the aesthetic sense, and how these relate to those intellectual, intuitive, inventive, imaginative and memetic capacities that we have indeed evolved. We are only at the beginning. ■ Martin Kemp is emeritus professor of the history of art at the University of Oxford
Patients beware Taking the Medicine by Druin Burch, Random House, £20 Reviewed by Priya Shetty
WHILE physicians pledge to “first, do no harm”, Druin Burch’s alarming history of medicine argues that until quite recently the opposite has been happening. By relying on belief rather than evidence, doctors harmed more often than they healed. His zigzagging flight through the history of doctoring reminds us how remedies with zero medicinal power – such as the practice of bleeding – were adhered to with what now seems like wanton disregard for the patient’s welfare. Only at the start of the 20th century did doctors move towards evidence-based medicine, in which treatments were tested against placebo in randomised clinical trials. But there are still trust issues with trials, and for all the wizardry of modern medicine, with its bionic limbs and targeted drugs, doctors still cannot assume they have all the answers. This book offers a valuable inoculation against complacency. ■
Changing time Time in Antiquity by Robert Hannah, Routledge, £21.99/$39.95 Reviewed by Jo Marchant
BEFORE the invention of clocks, what did time mean to people? Time in Antiquity is a fascinating look at how ancient Greeks and Romans marked the seasons and told the time – from checking the length of their shadows to tracking the rising and setting of the stars. The book is packed with technical
detail that might put some people off, but Robert Hannah peppers his account with lively anecdotes from plays and poems, such as a greedy guest who arrives hours early for dinner when he measures his shadow at dawn instead of dusk. Hannah’s message is that for the ancients, time was inseparable from cosmic cycles: the wheeling of the sun, moon and stars through the heavens. Today, the sun is not deemed accurate enough and clocks are instead set to atomic vibrations. Yet we still talk of “sunrise” and “sunset”, when we know these are illusions. In that sense, says Hannah, we are still children of the ancient world. ■
Whole new worlds The Hunt for Planet X by Govert Schilling, Springer, $27.50/£15 Reviewed by Marcus Chown
“YOUNG man, I am afraid you are wasting your time – if there were any more planets they would have been found long before this,” Clyde Tombaugh was told in 1929. This was both right and wrong: a year later Tombaugh discovered Pluto but, famously, it was demoted to “dwarf planet” status in 2006. The story of the discovery of Pluto and its fellow Kuiper belt objects is told here by science writer and New Scientist contributor Govert Schilling. He travelled the world to interview all the surviving protagonists, including Venetia Burney – the 11-year-old who suggested the name Pluto – and the band of dogged planet hunters who have found such bodies as Eris, Easter Bunny, Buffy and Santa (with its moons Rudolph and Blixen). And the search for Planet X is still on. This is a wonderfully entertaining book which conveys the raw excitement of a fastdeveloping field. I can’t wait to find what else is out there. ■ 31 January 2009 | NewScientist | 45