Carl Zimmer

They blossom out of insects' bodies, turn their hosts into zombies or, again, travel from one organism to another in a frantic race to survive. Behind the discoveries of some major vaccines they are, paradoxically, also able to fool very complex immune systems, sometimes even hijacking them against their poor victims. Microscopic but absolutely fascinating, they change our look upon life -we own them, for instance, some ground-breaking theories from the selfish gene to the Red Queen. Lethal show more and of an extreme virulence, they also help to maintain some ecosystems... In a word, parasites (yes! parasites!) are the real kings of the Earth and, after having for too long a bad press, it was about time to pay them our due respect!

Carl Zimmer has done just that here in a brilliant book which is, honestly, breath-taking. Telling the epic tales of the invisible world, 'Parasite Rex' became in fact one my top favourite read ever! Imagine, like Russian dolls we ourselves are vast ecosystems that are part of another ecosystem. Here's a terrifying yet enthralling vision but which is the key rendering this book absolutely superb: more that leading us into a microscopic world and its weird inhabitants, it humbles us by offering a new look upon nature. Fascinating, if you are even slightly interested in biology you MUST read this one. It is fascinating from beginning to end.

A marvel of pop science. show less

I picked up this book, not expecting much. The book was written in 2000, and these types of books tend to be hit or miss, mostly miss. Instead what I found was a very well written book, that will creep a reader out, as well as keep a reader fascinated. The history of parasite research (Darwin thought they were the lowest of the low) was something I never considered before.

What I found amazing is just how modern this book is. It was written 20 years ago, and parasitology has advanced, but it show more covered many things that are only now been completely understood (such as immune response to parasites might cure certain types of diseases).

The author clearly did his research. The interviews with various scientists, from parasite catalogers to geneticists, cover the spectrum of researchers studying parasites. And some of the parasite techniques, such as changing fish behavior to be more noticeable to birds, is downright scary. This is NOT a book for the squeamish, but give this 20 year old book a chance, it has stood the test of time. show less

It's difficult to think, but for centuries the heart was considered as the ruler of the body - not the brain. When medicine was based all around a set of four humours those unbalance were supposedly the source of all diseases, the brain was seen as just a nest for 'pumps', various ventricules just there to distribute 'vital fluids'. Thomas Willis, a 17th century English doctor and scientist, will radically change all that.

Willis was the first to describe some sort of 'animal spirit' show more travelling through the brain and being responsible for our emotions and various skills (eg. perception...), what we would describe now as the electrical signals travelling through neurons to neurons. Willis was the first to understand that different parts of the brain had different functions. Willis was the first to note that the human brain bears striking similarities with the brains of other animals - which will later make sense in the light of evolutionary biology. Willis had dissected the human body with such careful precision that, his anatomy of the brain and nerves not only led him to coin the word 'neurology' (a new whole science) but, also, discover a crucial set of arteries supplying the brain with blood (a set of arteries named after him -'the circle of Willis'). Willis completely blew away the previous paradigm whereas the heart was the ruler of the body (illnesses the product of an unbalance in four humours) to demonstrate instead that most diseases could be linked to abnormalities in the brain. The shift was massive. As Carl Zimmer asserts:

'Thomas Willis ushered in the Neurocentric Age... His mixture of anatomy, experiment, and medical observation has set the agenda of neuroscience into the twenty-first century.'

Delving into the life of such a bold and curious scientist, whose insights would be radical for our understanding of ourselves, is fascinating enough. Carl Zimmer, on that score, does an amazing job in retracing the biography of this original doctor. Even more remarkable, though, is the context into which Thomas Willis worked and evolved.

England, back then, was indeed at the throat of a Civil War that saw Royalists fighting Parliamentarians, and Christians battling each other (the Church of England against the Puritans against the Quakers). Willis' time was the time of a king being put to death, the two Cromwell, and of the Restoration. Chaotic? Surely. And for a Royalist like him, well, not that great! And yet... Willis was working in Oxford, the University from where he had graduated, and Oxford was then a strange peaceful haven in the surrounding chaos:

'A poor, orphan soldier on the losing side of a civil war, he [Thomas Willis] would struggle for a decade to survive in the turmoil between Puritans and conspiring royalists, in a country still facing years of war and the execution of a king. For Willis and many like him these years would feel like a national insanity.
Yet the political chaos also turned Oxford intellectually into a fizzing vial of spirits, a place where alchemists jostled with Aristotelians, where telescopes were trained at the sky and microscopes at the legs of fleas.'

And Carl Zimmer describes the place superbly: John Wilkins was there, Robert Boyle was there, William Petty was there, Christopher Wren was there, Robert Hooke was there... You get it! That bizarre melting-pot to such brilliant minds of all sorts would be the ferment of the Royal Society, created in 1662 and of which Willis was a founding member.

No matter how radical their ideas, though, these brilliant minds were still pretty much clinging to ancient beliefs and paradigms, Willis included. This is where the author manages to show us a man in all its contradictions: a scientist firmly grounded in experiments, who, yet, also dabbled into mysticism, alchemy, and, as a doctor, used to prescribe weird remedies reminiscent of snake oils! The 17th century might have been exciting and ground-breaking time for science (eg. besides his work on the brain, Willis will also pick up on William Harvey's discovery to experiment with blood transfusion...). It was also the age of Alchemy and superstitions, and, the mix of both makes for a bizarre era to plunge into.

A deep and engaging book, 'Soul Made Flesh' goes way beyond Willis, the Civil War and its impact, and, the burgeoning Royal Society. It depicts how a fascinating bunch of intellectuals of all sort, gathered in Oxford, would radically change the face of science besides greatly impact on modern medicine. Willis was more than a virtuosi, he was the first neuroscientist. Carl Zimmer, surely, does a great job in retelling it all; but be warned: it's so wide-encompassing and detailed, it's at times quite difficult to follow! So many names, so many intricacies, so many bubbling and contradictory ideas! Nevertheless, here's a biography to discover. show less

I didn’t find this as interesting as, say, Entangled Life or The Light Eaters, two other life sciences books I’ve read lately. In order to understand where scientific thought is currently at, Zimmer needs to take us through some science history, and while this was interesting, it wasn’t captivating. The crux of the matter is introduced at the end of the last chapter with the discussion of the Assembly Theory of Life. I found the most thought-provoking thing in this chapter was actually show more the AI robots used to conduct autonomous catalysis experiments. These robots conduct thousands of experiments using drops of chemicals and are trained to identify and pursue interesting results. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the first sentient mechanical life arose from research into the origins of biological life? show less