The Science of Writing

My recent post on Tides, mainly poetic, reminded me of a powerful piece of non-fiction writing - and lead me on to the general subject of science writing.This is something I spend a fair amount of time on, and its fascinating how much really good writing there is now on science, aimed at the intelligent but completely non-specialist reader.  And I'm not talking about books on the uneasy borderline between fact and fiction, but serious writers writing about their specialities in an informative and really entertaining way.  There are of course, some difficulties - without advanced mathematics, it's almost impossible to convey or to apprehend pure mathematics, or parts of physics or even biology - but it is amazing what can be conveyed.

There are some wonderful writers on speciality subjects - Dennett, Feynman, Pinker, Dawkins, E O Wilson, Steve Jones, Weinberg spring to mind - and I might come back to them another time.  But today, anthologies and essays.

Tides put me in mind of Rachel Carson, famous for Silent Spring in 1962 which woke the world to environmental issues, and whose campaign against DDT's indiscrimnate use has saved millions of birds of prey (predators are especially vulnerable, as DDT accumulates up the food chain and weakens their eggs).  Unfortunately, developing countries are robbed of one of the most effective weapons against malaria by unthinking opposition to any DDT use, but that's another story.  Before Silent Spring, however, Carson published The Sea Around Us (1951), a slightly over-written but passionate account of the history and nature of the sea.  It was destined to be quickly utterly out of date by the development and acceptance of plate tectonics, which makes large parts of her book plain wrong and even slightly laughable nowadays.  But the section on tides is high drama, and well worth a read - though I've no idea if it too has been superseded.  But he describes a world in which the moon, just broken off the Earth, is much closer than it is now, and which therefore causes mighty tides - hundreds of feet of rise and fall at every tide, waters therefore rushing many miles inland with enormous speed.

Her book is probably only for the specialist, the curio collector, or the historian of science - but a fine piece about the tides is excerpted in The Faber Book of Science, edited by the reassuringly literary John Carey.  There are about a hundred pieces, ranging across all the scientific disciplines, and starting with Da Vinci and working up to the late twentieth century.  It's a great book for browsing, especially at bedtime.

Other excellent books for browsing, though the pieces are rather longer and more complete, are the collections of essays by Stephen Jay Gould.  He's a fine writer, but also an outstanding scientist - his work on Bahamian land snails (no, don't be put off!) led him to important conclusions about evolution and put him at the forefront of biological studies for decades.  He writes beautifully, he's interested in all sorts of issues, current and historical, and he has an engaging ability to relate his questions to practical everyday things like the size of a chocolate bar or a sportman's averages without being patronising or condescending.  Ever Since Darwin or Eight Little Piggies are probably my favourites, but all the essay collections are worth reading.  For me, he's at his most compelling on evolution - snails, elk, humans, whales, you name it, but he's compelling and compassionate about some of the terrible crimes inflicted on humanity through false science like eugenics, or corrupt tests of IQ or idiocy.  He died at 60, surviving 20 years after being diagnosed with a cancer with a median survival time of 8 months, a subject he tackled in an essay called The Median Isn't the Message! I know you will find something to grab your attention, even if its his amazing ability with titles - what about Male Nipples and Clitoral Ripples, or What, If Anything, Is a Zebra?

Comments

[Peter the flautist]

Dark Puss has many, many wonderful skills (!) but knitting is not one of them. You know that cats just chase balls of wool around the floor! Cornflower also knows how highly her feline friend regards all of her abilities, so I am with "Lindsay" on this one.

[lindsay]

Nonsense, Cornflower! You know that's not true - and anyway, I can't knit, and my Mum always said that the heel of a sock was one of the hardest things to knit. So Dark Puss and I are the inadeqate ones in this (unless he can knit, of course!)

[Karen]

The thing about both Dark Puss and Lindsay Bagshaw is that they are cleverer than the rest of us mere mortals (who can but cook a bit and knit an occasional sock).

[terence]

Dark Puss gets my prize for one of the best (and longest?) posts I have received on this site. I will make a note to read Conway Morris - thanks for the recommendation. And I so agree with the idea that a cultured person should be well read across both sides of Snow's two cultures. But a planned post on a Gould essay looks a bit riskier with such a critic out there!

[Peter the flautist]

As a physicist I certainly have to agree with Feynman as a popular choice, and I'd add Murray Gell-Mann's "Quark and the Jaguar" to your list especially for his less reductionist view of science (compared to Feynman and Weinberg). A book that perhaps doesn't easily fit into any of your categories, but which gave me a great deal of pleasure is Oliver Sacks' "Uncle Tungsten" which surely should be commended to all who think there is no fun or passion in scientific discovery.

Its hard to beat the late Stephen Jay Gould's essays for sheer fun, audacity and the most wonderful titles. It is also well worth reading Conway Morris's criticisms of Gould and Dawkins, especially his book "The Crucible of Creation"

There is so much good science writing out there that rarely seems to penetrate the minds of otherwise intelligent and literate people. Imagine if I said I had never heard of, let alone read read, Shakespear or Burns or Tolstoy or the Brontes or ... I'd be thought a really superficial character, but somehow the reverse is considered entirely acceptable.

Dark Puss will now decend gracefully from his soapbox.