John Lynch (4)

This book accompanied the BBC's mini-TV series (2002), which illustrated the earliest human history, following the wildly popular ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’ (1999). In the TV series, the presentation was annoyingly enough outsourced to Robert Winston who walks among the prehistoric people like a kind of cartoon character in safari gear. Fortunately, you are spared of that in the book. But that contains plenty of other goofs. This series uncritically follows a number of speculative theories that, although launched by paleontological scientists, are highly controversial in their own midst. For example, homo erectus (about 1.5 million years ago) is without hesitation attributed the capacity for language and the beginning of monogamous relationships; and our own species, homo sapiens, is endowed with the unique faculty of imagination, a faculty apparently completely lacking in all previous species.

Even more annoyingly, the whole series is permeated with an absolutely old-fashioned anthropocentrism, portraying modern man as the culmination of evolution, through his ability to step outside the limitations of life (meaning nature). This leads to a very teleologically loaded storyline, in which especially the 'journey towards us' is highlighted. This kind of approache seems detrimental to a balanced understanding of human evolution. I guess the authors and creators of this series were completely guided by the laws of the TV genre, which forced them into a positive, progressive storyline, without sense of nuance and criticism. I do not understand that scientists such as Steven Mithen and Chris Stringer contributed to this.… (more)

35. [The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion (BBC)] by Michael Mosley & John Lynch (2010, 274 pages, read Feb 18 - Aug 5)

I picked this up at half-price books hoping for an easy interesting read for times when I couldn’t quite focus. There are six sections on the cosmos, matter, life, power, the body and the mind. Each is made up of a series one-to-two page blurbs and lots of photos. The feel is like a magazine. I really enjoyed the first two sections, especially parts on Antoine Lavoisier, who I hadn’t heard of before and who was far ahead of his time and understood the significance of Joseph Priestly’s discovery of Oxygen far better then Priestly did. But the rest of the book was too skimpy, skipping hundreds of years as it stumbled through the scientific highlights, which left no sense of flow...or connections. Also the bibliography in the back is disappointing, just a short list of popular science books (five to ten per section), and not all good. I have not seen the BBC TV series this was derived from, maybe it worked better in that medium.

2013
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