The Past Two Million Years (review)

Leonardo, Vol. 7, pp. 365-378. Pergamon Press 1974. Printed in Great Britain BOOKS Readers are invited to recommend books to be reviewed. Only books in English and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Those who would like to be added to Leonardo’s panel of reviewers should write to the Founder-Editor, indicating their particular interests. The Past Two Million Years. Readers Digest Association, London, 1973. 488 pp., illus. f7.50. Reviewed by Berol Robinson* This book is a ‘coffee-table’ book. There are thousands of illustrations, mostly in four-color reproduction, including maps, specially prepared drawings and photographs of monuments and works of art. A useful index is provided and it includes many short index panels covering the major themes running through the book. There are four major parts: (1) Less than a tenth of the book covers more than 99% of the last two million yearsthe prehistoric era; (2) about half of it is devoted to descriptions of 19 great civilizations from their recorded origins to the present. The rest is about equally divided between brief discussions of seven scientific topics (‘scientific’ in the broadest meaning) and an up-to-date gazetteer comprising illustrated descriptions of the nations of the world from their earliest history up to the present. The seven major themes include religion, the physical sciences and invention, writing and counting, human biology, exploration and warfare. All the great civilizations , and some lesser ones, are discussed in turn and this part of the book concludes with a useful bar-chart calendar of the civilizations and a chronological history keyed to a world map. The texts are clear and homogeneously well written but occasionally it is authoritarian in tone, which is particularly grating when, for example, deductions and speculations about prehistory are presented as if they were based upon observations and records. The fallibility of archeological speculation has been delightfully caricaturized by the late Leo Szilard in his short story on the archeological exploration of the sanitary facilities in the Grand Central railway terminal in New York City (in Voiceof the Dolphins and Other Stories (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961)). Regrettably, one must question the accuracy of the texts: they would have been much better if they had been subjected to a final careful reading by technical specialists. As a physicist, I particularly examined those sections of part 3 dealing with the observational sciences and invention . The right names seemed to be mentioned and their contributions are properly, if sketchily, described. However , one deplores the virtual neglect of the contributions of Einstein and Bohr toward the resolution of long-standing intellectual and philosophical questions of the structure of space and of matter, while concentrating upon their contributions to modern warfare. There is a tendency to confuse science with invention. However, it is properly recognized that war has been a main spur for invention. As a veteran of the U . S .Army Air Force during World War 11, I noted two errors on page 352, where it is declared that B-29 bombers raided Germany and that precision bombing ‘brought German war industry almost to a halt in {ate 1944‘. Neither statement is true. One may only hope that this is a bad sample and that there are not two errors on each pagel *1 rue du General Gouraud, 92190-Meudon, France. Artist-readers of Leonardo will appreciate the broadly swept panoramic views and interpretations given by the bookbut theyshould beawareof the fairly liberal sprinkling of jarring minor errors of fact in the text. Civilization and Science: I n Conflict or Collaboration. A Ciba Foundation Symposium. Associated Scientific Publishers , Amsterdam, 1972. 227 pp. $9.00. Reviewed by S. K. Ghaswala** Two decades ago hardly anyone would have thought of asking whether science was in conflict with civilization. But now, ‘it has come to be felt that there is some essential malefaction about the progress of science and technology: that they lurch forward like some great Behemoth trampling down in its pathway almost everything that makes for civilized life’. At this Symposium in London in 1971, various views were presented and they are worth a deep study by the readers of Leonardo. Hubert Bloch, Chairman of...