Saturday, February 12, 2005
Bryson's Short History
Brilliance and Stupidity

"A Short History of Nearly Everything": A reprise
By Bill Bryson

In a "Short History", Bryson has told a great story of mind-blowing natural wonder and the sometimes crazy people who have sought to understand it. From the origins of all matter (very, very small) to the depths of the universe (very, very big), back down to atoms (smallish), to sub-atomic particles (small), to sub sub-atomic particles (getting smaller all the time) and then a gallop through the geological history of the planet (very old), the birth and near extinction (several times over) of life, the driving force of evolution and its modern synthesis with genetics before, finally, reaching – nearly exhausted - the rise of the human ape, Bryson has managed to squeeze it all in.

In criticism, Bryson does resort to stupendous science-y factoids a little too readily; “atoms are so small you can fit well over a hundred of them on your thumbnail”, or “the entire universe weighs almost twice that of the Springbok’s front-five” or “wow, the explosion at Krakatoa was REALLY loud”, but for the most part his science is as deep, as it is broad, as it is interesting.

Towards the end of the book he recounts the rise of an especially versatile and intelligent ape, which evolved quickly and eventually fanned out to all parts of the globe. Bryson poignantly reflects that this particular ape became capable of such astounding intelligence it was able to begin unravelling some of the universe’s deepest secrets. Yet it was also capable of quite malign carelessness and stupidity.

Extinctions have followed the spread of homo sapiens with uncanny frequency, suggesting it is not exactly a spurious connection. A deficiency in a solid grounding in ecology could forgive the fist human pioneers, who decimated giant sloths, tortoises “the size of fiats”, the moa and the hapless dodo et al. And greed and an ideological commitment to untrammelled capitalism could at least explain some more recent extinctions and the pushing of thousands of species to the verge of disappearance.

But Bryson grimly acknowledges that a fair number of extinctions have been a result of the nothing less than idiocy, on behalf of a species of ape that now considers atomic theory old-hat and has sent a space robot t roam around on the surface of another planet.

But it gets worse:

This is what makes the story of scientific advancement so frustrating. It is capable of breakthroughs in knowledge of enormous magnitude, while at the same time it has – with great irony - led human society to view nature as something that, once vaguely understood, can be subjugated and treated with impunity as something extrinsic to the world we inhabit.

The Bonobo, or pygmy chimpanzee, is homyo sapiens’ closest genetic relative. 5 months ago, the New Scientist magazine reported that a recent study has concluded that no bonobos had been found in a survey of their last remaining habitat in the Democratic Republic of Congo. [See www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424796.300] To all intents and purposes, our closest living relative, it seemed, had been driven to extinction in the wild; another victim in the relentless march of human progress.

The Bonobo, though protected in reserves, was still subject to excessive hunting as a source of meat protein from local people. Locals had been driven to hunting primates for two reasons. Firstly, 10 years of ceaseless civil war has disrupted local supply lines and had led to many tens of thousands being displaced. Secondly, fish, the usual source of protein from many, are becoming scarce, due to overfishing, not by local fisherman, but by international boats from Europe and North America, operating under licence from the DRC government.

Fortunately, a further study of Bonobos let the human race of the hook, as some apes were found; though it is still not certain that the population can sustain itself, with or without continued hunting. [See www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524854.900]

That we can push our closet genetic relative to the brink of extinction suggests that other less visible species don’t really stand a chance. It is estimated that nearly 16,000 known species (including 1 in 3 amphibians) are currently staring into the abyss (figures from the World Conservation Union).

Bryson rightly ends his romp through the history if scientific discovery on a note of caution, maintaining that although life is robust – it had to be to survive this planet, so hell bent on making it difficult – it has not yet faced such a challenge that the domination of homo sapiens entails.

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Science: good, bad and ugly

A Short History of Nearly Everything
by Bill Bryson

Scientists are oft known for their ambition - even their vanity – but most certainly their argumentativeness. Indeed, the scientific method is based on refutation of established paradigms and it takes confident researchers to challenge reputable colleagues and institutions. To gain credibility, papers must be submitted to the most intensive peer-review.

However, geologists are not scientists who are normally characterised as jealous zealots, locked in suspicious battle over the interpretation of fossils and sediments. I think back to my geology teacher at school: Neil "Aye-Eye" Mitchell; a genuine imparter of knowledge, but most of all, an enthusiastic geologist, who at the slightest provocation, would produce a clinometer, H₂SO₄, a magnifier and hammer from his tweed jacket pocket and begin a vivid description of the most obscure piece of rock.

But this has not always been the case; ‘stone-breakers’ have not always been imbued with such sanguine affection. At the dawn of the discipline (oh, alright then, as the discipline was being 'carved out'), in Victorian Britain, geologists were either wealthy amateurs, or more likely, specialists in other fields, such as anatomy or medicine, professions known more for their ambition and status.

At first, I was reluctant to take my science from someone so far renowned only as a travel writer and social commentator. But I was comforted to note that Bill Bryson, for his "A Short History of Nearly Everything" had devoted some three years of his life to research his book – the time it takes to complete a Bachelor of Science Degree, I guess.

But Bryson brings a travel writer’s whimsical wit to the history of the planet and the story of science and the odd-bods who became its pioneers.

Bryson has spent his writing life carefully watching and attempting to understand the people he meets. And, of course, scientists (despite some evidence to refute this) are people. They can be austere or happy, inclusive or (more often) reclusive, but most of all guarded and vindictive, just like everyone else. Especially when some other scientist happens to disagree with them. And that even goes for geologists.

"The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists", by M.J.S.Rudwick (1984) is an account of such a disagreement from the late 1830s. Fierce debate had broken out over exactly how plant fossil rocks appeared in very different geological successions in Wales and Devon. Two leading stone-breakers working in Wales, the Reverend Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, disagreed intensely with another working in Devon, Henry Thomas De la Beche. The debate raged for years over the presence, or otherwise, of an unconformity and of a particular Greywacke sandstone ("Old Red Sandstone").

Rudwick’s account is taken up by Bryson:

"Some sense of the strength of feeling can be gained by glancing through the chapter titles [of ‘The Great Devonian Controversy’]. These begin innocuously enough with headings such as ’Arenas of Gentlemanly Debate’ and ‘Unraveling the Greywacke’ [sic], but then proceed on to ‘The Greywacke Defended and Attacked’, ‘Reproofs and Recriminations’, ‘The Spread of Ugly Rumours’, ‘Weaver Recants his Heresy’, ‘Putting a Provincial in his Place’ and (in case there is any doubt that this was war) ‘Murchison Opens the Rhineland Campaign’."

'Putting a Provincial in his Place' must rank as one of the great scientific put-downs and proves that even characteristically inoffensive geologists can succumb to ruthless stereotyping and dismissive renunciation of observations that don't quite fit the bill. And whoever poor Weaver was, you gotta feel sorry him. All he probably did was mis-name a few specimens.

The controversy was eventually settled - as all battles fought in "Arenas of Gentlemanly Debate" should be – by expedient compromise: inventing an entirely new geological System, the Ordovician, in between the Cambrian and the Silurian.

(Incidentally, Rudwick’s book rates the conduct of scientific method amongst Gentlemanly Specialists (and okay, professionals and industrialists) from this period as substantially more rigorous than the post-WWII consensus resultant of the government funding of research and education, as famously criticised by Thomas Kuhn in "Structure of Scientific Revolutions".)

Whilst I am not generally enamoured to the shenanigans of eccentric aristos from the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, science in this era was really only accessible to the well-to-do. Hence early scientific research tended to be dominated by peculiar Gentlemen who would otherwise have been dismissed as fools had they been born poor. In "A Short History" Bryson recounts all kinds of oddities from the past: The geologist Reverend Buckland – whose ambition in life was to eat at least one of all God’s creations from aarvark to zebra; Henry Cavendish - famed for measuring the weight of the Earth – who was so shy that guests were required to not acknowledge him and to converse only with themselves in the hope that he would overhear through a fear of him running into hiding and Richard Owen, the founder of the publicly accessible Natural History Museum in London, who stole so many ideas, specimens and credit for discoveries (including that for discovering dinosaurs) that he was eventually thrown out of the Royal Society.

Vindictive stone-breakers, xenophobic physicists and carnivorous Reverends are all part of science’s rich narrative and you do feel something went wrong somewhere when more than half of all scientific research became devoted to military technology.

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