The Origin of Life: A Warm Little Pond by Clair Edwin Folsome, and: Life: Origin and Evolution: Readings from Scientific American by Clair Edwin Folsome, and: How to Think about Evolution and Other Bible-Science Controversies by L. Duane Thurman (review)

Leonardo, Vol. 14, No.4, pp. 331-348, 1981 Printed in Great Britain BOOKS 0024-094X/81/04033 1-18$02.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd. Readers are invited to recommend books to be reviewed In general, only books in English and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Those who would like to be added to Leonardo's panel ofreviewers should write to the FounderEditor . indicating their particular interests. The Excitement and Fascination of Science. Vol. 2. William C. Gibson, compiler. Annual, Reviews, Palo Alto, CA, 1978.688 pp., illus. Paper, $10.00. Reviewed by Waldo E. Haisley. This title is misleading. The book is defmitely not a 'gee-whiz' production, extolling the wonders of modem science for the casual reader. It is rather a collection of thoughtful, broadly informative and substantial essays, originally intended for professionals. Both Volume I and Volume 2 are reprint collections of the prefatory essays to annual reviews,selected respectivelyfrom the periods 1950-1965 and 1%7-1978. Those in Volume I were drawn entirely from four fields: biochemistry, pharmacology, physical chemistry and physiology. Volume 2 embraces these and nine others (e.g. astronomy/astrophysics, anthropology, geology, fluid mechanics). Most of the 34 selections in Volume 2 are autobiographical narratives, with a varying mixture of the personal/anecdotal, the professionaVoccupational and the conceptual/investigatory. A substantial minority are review essays, dealing with long-range developments in particular disciplines (e.g. a 1973 account by Margaret Mead of changes and developments in anthropological research since World War II). Finally, there are three posthumous biographies and a very few(all too few!)essays by authors who address themselves systematically to larger questions of method and philosophy in science as exemplified concretely in their own research experience. Outstanding among the latter isa contribution, appropriately entitled Discovery and Understanding , by the Swedish physiologist Ragnar Granit, In addition to the professional and neophyte specialists for whom the essays were written, a wide variety of readers willfind in this collection a wealth of valuable material. For historians of modern science there are detailed accounts of 20th-century developments in many fields. Philosophers of science will similarly find up-to-date illustrative material to document their arguments, and research specialists in other areas willfind many opportunities for ur.dating and extending their own general scientific knowledge. To traditionally educated humanists interested in bridging the 'Two Cultures' gap, there will be problems with some essays which either maintain a stiff formality or else switch abruptly from entertaining but irrelevant personal anecdotes to passages of exposition loaded with technical terms. There are, however, nuggets of insightful comment in the essays to reward even the most unitiated reader possessing the patience and skill to skip and skim. For non-initiates, I suggest for initial attention the essays by Adolph, Burton, Granit, Kleiber, Mead, Mudd, van Niel, Visscher and von Euler as particularly accessible and relevant to larger concerns. The posthumous(1976)biography of Theodosius Dobzhansky, written by Francisco Ayala (a colleague in his later years), will require a good deal of puzzlingand frequent recourse to a good dictionary for those unfamiliar with genetics, but the fruits of this labor willbe richlyrewarding for its skillfully presented story, which forms a crucial part ofthe single most significant development in the 2Oth-eenturylife sciencesthe new understanding of heredity.·Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina,Phillips Hall 039A, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, U.S.A. 331 There is one noteworthy theme that recurs persistently-for instance in the essays by Andrewes (virology), Bawden (plant pathology), Mead (anthropology) and Burton (physiology), as well as (implicitly) in the already mentioned general essay by Granit. The theme is that scientific research as now carried on runs an increasing risk of losing its identity and senseof direction in a welter of sub-specialities and an excessive preoccupation with technological 'sweetness'. While the theme is not new, it comes through here with some impressively concrete instances and a strong ring of authenticity. Since the contributors are typically persons not only of eminence but also of advanced years, some might be tempted to dismiss this theme as one coming from tired oldsters. At leasttwo objections may be raised to such...