Popular Science Books📚🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Popular science books! | PhD in the molecular biology of T2D | Reviews, recommendations & big ideas in biology, physics & more | What are you reading?

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Togetherness by Rowan Hooper focuses on Symbiosis and the Hidden Story of Life’s Greatest Collaborations.

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@SteveBrusatte I’ll eat my own shoes if it’s not.

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The Story of Birds by Steve Brusatte just arrived! Will start ASAP. @SteveBrusatte

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@SteveBrusatte @thetimes Well deserved. Nice to see the books you have on your shelves behind you, too!

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Humans: The Evolution of a Species arrived today and it’s a belter of a book!

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@NintendoUK Looking forward to it!

[Steve Brusatte @SteveBrusatte]

Happy publication day to @rowhoop!

Rowan's book Togetherness is a clarion call for cooperation, at a time when competition, chaos & cruelty seem to rule the day. A joyful book, of hope and wonder, which celebrates community as the true key to success in nature. Check it out!

[Prof.Turi King @Turi__King]

Lovely to pop into @Hatchards to see my book in the wild and sign a few copies!

[Steve Brusatte @SteveBrusatte]

Super Natural by @alexlariley will be published in paperback in just a few days!

Check it out! A celebration of the most extreme, extraordinary & eccentric things life is capable of. Alex writes with joy & passion, & each page brings a new revelation about the resiliency of life

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@CookResearcher @MichaelMindrum Show data.

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@CookResearcher @MichaelMindrum What’s the evidence for this?

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@skydivephil @CosmicSkeptic You’re doing nice work in this area. Be interesting to see what Craig comes up with next to defend his shaky-looking position.

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@JusBrierley @skydivephil @StephenCMeyer Well done, Phil!

[Sanjay Sipahimalani @SanSip]

The full list: https://t.co/oL1Fh8IrRX

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@hairlesschest69 @THawkMedia Strongly disagree.

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@MWeintraubMD Was about to type “I wonder what Dan Lieberman thinks about this”!

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@readswithravi I do. The recent shenanigans from Amazon regarding the older kindles is another good reason to stay physical.

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@SteveBrusatte Dear Steve, just booked my ticket to see your talk at Toppings, Edinburgh on June 23rd. Was wondering if I bring my copies of your other books, do you think you could sign them for me?

[Maarten Boudry @mboudry]

In his celebrated book Dominion, the British historian @holland_tom argues that virtually all the achievements of the modern world are indebted to a moral revolution wrought by Christianity: human rights, social security, science, gender equality — it’s all supposedly there in the Bible, if you read between the lines.

Holland is a brilliant writer and podcaster, and I loved some of his earlier books, but I really hated this one. It’s a long exercise in what I’d call retrorevelation: the annoying habit of religious apologists — mostly Christians — of retroactively claiming credit for all the things they once fought tooth and nail against, or all the things you can find in a gazillion other cultural traditions. The overall argument feels very superficial, attributing all manner of things to Christianity without seriously comparing it to non-Christian cultures and traditions.

Yes, many Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers framed their innovations in Christian terms. But in the suffocating intellectual climate of early modern Europe, Biblical justification was often the only way to make new ideas socially and politically viable, no matter how opportunistic the connection. Besides, early Christians were hardly unique in preaching radical moral ideals like loving your enemy or turning the other cheek. Such counterintuitive ethical systems were common across Axial Age traditions.*

And for one thing, despite its lofty ideals, Christians never seriously considered abolishing slavery for more than a millennium and a half, and there is nothing in the Bible that clearly condemns the institution. On the contrary, slaves are repeatedly instructed to obey their masters. Yes, abolitionists invoked Christian justifications, but so did their pro-slavery opponents (with many Bible verses to back them up). As far as I know, the only ancient authors who explicitly opposed slavery on moral grounds were pagans, not Christians — figures like the Greek rhetorician Alcidamas and the poet Philemon in the 4th century BC. And on the “good side” of antiquity, I can find nothing in the Bible that is even remotely as beautiful, uplifting, and humane as De Rerum Natura by Lucretius, who had never heard of Jesus.

I’ve long wanted to write a critical review of Dominion, but never got around to it. This excellent piece by @RichardHanania is more or less the review I wish I had written myself — though you’ll need a subscription to read the full piece. As Hanania writes: “[Holland’s] method can just devolve into haphazardly associating general concepts that look similar to one another in the service of a narrative that sounds good.”

The book is full of vivid characters and engaging stories, but it becomes increasingly absurd toward the end, when Holland tries to trace virtually everything back to Christianity.

Marxism? Basically secularized Christianity: radical equality, concern for the oppressed, redemption of the outcast.

Nazism? Holland even suggests that the Nazi desire to “purify” the world echoed Christian ideas of cleansing evil and redeeming humanity. He writes:

“Yet Hitler, even as he cast his campaign against them as a matter of public health, would often assimilate it to another narrative: a profoundly Christian one. To be saved, the world had to be cleansed. A people threatened by perdition required redemption.”

Needless to say, wokeness is also Christian to the core.

It’s been a while since I read his book, so apologies to Tom Holland if I’ve simplified or misrepresented some parts of the argument — perhaps I’ll write a proper review one day.

* For the record, I’m not a historian of religion, but this is what Claude had to say about Axial Age religions:

“Yes, this is a well-documented observation among historians of religion and philosophy. The Axial Age (roughly 800–200 BCE, a term coined by Karl Jaspers) saw a remarkable convergence across several civilizations, where thinkers independently developed moral and ethical frameworks that challenged conventional human instincts like tribalism, revenge, and self-interest.

- Buddhism (5th century BCE) is perhaps the most striking example. The Buddha taught mettā (loving-kindness) toward all beings, including those who harm you. The Dhammapada contains passages urging practitioners to overcome hatred with love and to respond to anger with calm — very close in spirit to ‘love your enemy.’

- Confucianism and Mohism in China offered related ideas. While Confucius was more measured (when asked about repaying injury with kindness, he replied ‘repay injury with justice’), Mozi (5th century BCE) went further with his doctrine of jiān ài (universal or impartial love), arguing that people should care for strangers and even rival states as much as their own — a radically counterintuitive position that was widely debated precisely because it cut against natural partiality.

- Jainism developed ahimsa (non-violence) to an extreme degree, extending compassion and non-harm to all living creatures, including insects. This demanded extraordinary self-discipline and restraint even toward those who might threaten you.

- Stoicism in Greece taught that all human beings share in a universal rational nature, and that anger and vengeance are failures of reason. Marcus Aurelius (though later than the Axial Age proper) wrote extensively about responding to hostility with understanding rather than retaliation, building on earlier Stoic foundations.

- Zoroastrianism emphasized the moral duty to actively choose good over evil, framing ethics as a cosmic struggle that required personal sacrifice and integrity beyond mere self-interest.

- The Hebrew prophetic tradition — figures like Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah — challenged their own society with demands for justice toward the poor, the stranger, and the marginalized, often at great personal cost.”

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@JacksonWheat1 @DSternCardinale Will do!