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David Dobbs on science, nature, and culture.
I write on science, medicine, nature, culture and other matters for the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, National Geographic, Scientific American Mind, and other publications. (Find clips here.)
I've also written three books, including Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral, which traces the strangest but most forgotten controversy in Darwin's career — an elemental dispute running some 75 years. Oliver Sacks found Reef Madness "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant." Check it out.
If you'd like, you can subscribe to Neuron Culture by email. You might also want to see more of my work at my main website or check out my Tumblr log.
Category: Culture of science
It was in this unique archipelago that Alexander Agassiz found the evidence he felt proved beyond doubt that Darwin's theory of coral reef formation was wrong, dead wrong.
Posted by David Dobbs at 6:57 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
Adrienne Mayor's riveting (if queasy-making) biography of Mitradates, "Poison King," is a finalist for the National Book Award. It's wonderful to see a skillfully executed and absorbing account of an obscure bit of history get this sort of well-deserved attention.
Posted by David Dobbs at 2:40 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Ricks -- who earlier wrote Fiasco , a devastating indictment of the run-up to the war, makes three things quite clear: The surge was not about more soldiers, but soldiers doing different things -- protecting the populace rather than hunting the enemy. ... First-rate history of science here, and a fascinating look at Harry Harlow, a monkey researcher whose powerful but sometimes disturbing experiments in the middle decades of last century helped replace a cold behavioralist view of infancy and childhood with the theories of attachment and bonding that still rule today.
Posted by David Dobbs at 7:00 AM • 0 Comments •
Category: Brains and minds
Eric Michael Johnson contemplates the hearts, minds, teeth, and claws of bonobos and other primates, while -- no fault of Eric's -- the flu, the end of publishing, and the death of the uninsured march on. Plus some great old surgery footage.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:46 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
Amid the talk on improving such knowledge as part of healthcare reform, a vital and fairly cheap way to generate some of it -- the autopsy -- is going ignored.
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:24 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Books
The coral reef argument was fascinating in its own right, both scientifically and dramatically -- for here a very capable andn conscientious scientist, Alexander Agassiz, struggled to reconcile both two views of science and the legacies of the two scientific giants of the age, one of whom was his father.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:50 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
The turf between science and religion is -- well, it's a gray area. And it seems perfectly fine to me to treat it the way Gray did: as a region not to tread in your day job. Science was empirical, and if it wasn't empirical, it wasn't science. Religion was belief -- a domain beyond proof. That's why they call it faith.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:21 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Brains and minds
Much much much ado on the web this week, on the too-many fronts I try to visit. From my list of notables:
Posted by David Dobbs at 4:51 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Art
Kew Gardens is trying to collect and bank the seeds and pollen from 10% of the world's plants -- a nice 21st-century continuation of a stunning collecting effort that started in the 1700s. The Guardian has put up a nice photo gallery of some of the seeds they've collected so far.
Posted by David Dobbs at 9:58 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture of science
"A bunch of sheep dogs are sent away to another land to protect the sheep from wolves. While there they essentially become wolves in order to survive. They return to the herd of sheep as wolves but are expected to live as sheep dogs again -- or in the case of National Guardsmen, they are expected to become sheep."
Posted by David Dobbs at 3:17 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
