570-579: Biology. River out of Eden, by Richard Dawkins, and The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Muherjee

When I had to pick a book on biology in the midst of the 2020 Covid-19 nationwide shutdown, without access to a public library, I was hard-pressed to even know where to begin. E-book libraries are not organized by Dewey Decimal number, sadly, and the entire topic of "Science" yielded only about 150 titles-- less than I would expect my local library to carry on biology alone!

Fortunately, my husband is a science buff, and as he perused the limited offerings, he got very excited about The Gene. After all, it's just been released as a Ken Burns documentary. All the usual suspects are raving about it. Just two problems: it was waitlisted at the library (yes, e-books have waitlists; licensing issues, don't ask), AND it's a jillion pages long.

Both problems were easily solved by a certain mega-retailer's policy of providing samples of e-books free of charge. In this case, the entire first section, focused on history, was available. I think that was a solid 150 e-book pages and got me all the way from Aristotle to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and the Feeble-Minded. That was plenty to be going on with.

My husband's other suggestion was that I read a book by Richard Dawkins. "Why in the world would I want to do that?" I asked, mindful of Dawkins' reputation as a militant evangelist for atheism. My husband answered that the book in question had been given to him by a medical doctor we went to church with, following a conversation about creation and evolution. "Oh, if Dr. Palmer recommended it, that's all right," I thought, observing also the book's blessed brevity, and took the plunge.

Muherjee and Dawkins make surprisingly good companions. Both have highly readable styles and clear agendas. Muherjee wants you to understand what DNA is, how genes were discovered, and no doubt many other fascinating facts about the mechanics of heredity... featured in the five sections that I was too cheap to pay for and too impatient to read (I'm still in the 500's, people, and I'm not getting any younger!).

Dawkins, who I'm going to focus on from here on out, just wants to prove one thing: that God is unnecessary. Why does he use a Bible word in the title of his book and pepper the whole thing with references to Eve and perfection and "God's utility function"? Maybe to get the attention of people like Dr. Palmer and then me... or maybe because the world just intuitively appears to be... designed. Just saying.

He writes, "Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation." This quote makes it very clear what Dawkins wants to do: not prove that gradual evolution was and is, in fact, the only mechanism of speciation, but to prove that it is a sufficient explanation for all the complexity of the life we see around us.

However. I didn't read the book to argue with it. I don't have the background. I read it because I had to read something, and it seemed like a book of general knowledge that general people ought to have. Looked at as an introduction to the concept of the origin of species via evolution, I would say it was pretty helpful. It cleared up some misunderstandings for me, even as it raised other questions.

One thing it didn't do was challenge my faith. In fact, I enjoyed knowing more details about how evolution could produce such detailed organisms as the eye. I loved the analogy of DNA as digital  information that works like a computer program, because it enabled me to see God not only as a great artist and a great engineer, but also as a great information technologist.

I even appreciated learning about the difference between analog and digital information. Turns out analog is like waves or spectrum colors or anything else that seems clear until it's not. So we all know what blue is and what green is. But what happens in between? Shades of grey indeed! Well, even though life is analog, it seems the DNA that programs cells is digital! I guess it's just like this photo, which uses binary code to depict an analog gradient. Maybe I'm just easily amused, but I think that's cool!

As I'm writing this, I sit in my yard listening to birds and watching bees visit flowers. Thinking of evolution as an ongoing process, I consider whether the wildflowers that I allow to grow in my lawn may evolve in response to the pressure not only of pollinator and animal activity, but also to my actions with the lawnmower. Will only the showiest flowers, the ones in sheltered places, or those that grow lower than the mower blade survive to reproduce? If the same lawn is tended in the same way for generations, will the violets be shorter and the buttercups even taller and brighter?

I also consider the evolution of viruses and of insects that are making headlines today-- "superbugs" in two senses. I remember the mass extinction events I read about when I was in the Dinosaurium-- sort of the opposite side of the same coin. And I wonder: what makes us think that we are living at the end point of the processes God put in place "in the beginning"? Both the direct actions of humans and the pressures that all species put on each other... couldn't they result in further changes in species that we think of as having "arrived" at their final form?

I have a few questions that remain unanswered. I particularly don't understand the course of human evolution so far. Presumably other books address this question: if evolution is driven by survival of the fittest, why are humans so ill-fitted for survival in the wild? Why wasn't astigmatism eliminated from our gene pool millenia ago? What in the world made the absence of fur a survival trait for our ancestors? Why are we so poorly armed, with nails instead of claws and weak teeth instead of nice pointy fangs? What's so great about being bipedal? I'm not saying a theory of special creation particularly answers this question, I'm just saying it's a question!

Dawkins does not address this question, but he does speak to the issue of how the handicaps of aging have survived the pressures of survival. "Everybody is descended from an unbroken line of ancestors all of whom were at some time in their lives young but many of whom were never old. So we inherit whatever it takes to be young, but not necessarily whatever it takes to be old." I have sometimes thought that survival of the fittest was not all it is cracked up to be, leaving intact arthritis, heart disease, and all kinds of other useless and maladaptive conditions. But now I understand that since these things don't typically impact survival until AFTER we have passed on our DNA, they wouldn't be selected against even in the most hostile environments. That still doesn't explain why four-year-olds need glasses, though!

Taken together, both these books taught me more about the mechanics of the origins of species without turning me into a mechanist. They really exemplify the whole reason I undertook this project in the first place: I wanted to learn a little bit about a lot of things, things I might not expect to be interested in. After all, it's the Bible that tells us that "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter." (Proverbs 25:2, NASB)

560-569: Fossils and Dinosaurs. Dinosaurium, by Chris Wormell and Lily Murray

I have been longing to own the whole Welcome to the Museum series ever since I saw Botanicum in a museum gift shop. So closed libraries plus 560 in the Dewey system equals actually buying Dinosaurium with actual dollars, to have and to hold. It's a beautiful book and deserves to be owned and savored.

The first thing I learned upon opening the book  is that it's currently believed that the continents were in a totally different configuration in the whole Mesozoic Era, which includes the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. So, that's weird. I mean, it's one thing to see a news item that says that tropical fossils were found in Antarctica; it's another to look at maps that are allegedly Earth but are pretty much unrecognizable.

The main thing I learned was that it is now believed that many famous dinos, notably Tyrannosaurs, had some kind of covering on their skin more or less like feathers. It's interesting to speculate how something as complex as a feather could be a product of time and natural selection and to learn that feather-like structures could have other benefits even if they don't provide flight. After all, flightless birds do still exist and seem to find their lovely skin coverings useful!

I will also throw in a fun fact that I did not learn from this book but from one of my adult sons: Coelacanths, once associated only with the late Cretaceous period, are still around. They are not dinosaurs but ugly, inedible, rare fish.

Nothing could be finer on a quarantine afternoon than sitting on your porch with an enormous book full of dinosaur pictures on your lap. Well worth the investment!

To See the World in a Grain of: Salt, by Mark Kurlansky

"To see the world in a grain of sand" is the opening line of William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence", which is both irrelevant and impossible not to think of when you read a history of the world through a lens of salt. The author has written two other books, one about cod and the other about Basques, and the topics showcase his unique ability to turn narrow focus on one detail --a mineral, a fish, a small and mysterious people group living in isolation and speaking a language unrelated to any other in the vicinity-- into the long view of world history.

The topics intersect: salt is apparently a strategically important natural resource partly because it can be used to preserve cod. The Basques were great whalers who followed the Vikings to the Faroe Islands to fish cod so they could salt it and build their fortunes on the resulting preserved food. They may have even passed Iceland and reached Newfoundland in search of cod lands. And Mark Kurlansky is right there, letting salt (and Basques, and cod) lead you across the Atlantic Ocean, in his very accurately titled Salt: A World History.

He also takes us to ancient China, where impact drills were used to find both salt brine and (accidentally) the natural gas that could be lit to boil it down-- this around 250 B.C. He's where the Celts invented salt pork-- ham-- only to be defeated by the Romans, who claimed all the salt mines and invented salad and salaries. He's where the Anglo-Saxons peppered, as it were, their lands with saltworks, with names ending in -wich like Norwich and Nantwich. He's also where William the Conqueror destroyed these wiches to, as it were, crush rebellion and seal the conquest. The salt-destroying strategy was later used by the Northern forces to weaken the Confederacy during the Civil War-- without salt, the South could not preserve food long enough to get it to the troops. Salt was a weapon of war as late as the Indian independence from Britain, when Ghandi, instead of leading a tea party, led an illegal salt-harvesting expedition (for the same reason-- to protest unreasonable taxes and restrictions on production).

Which brings us to the geology of salt-making. It appears you can get salt two main ways: you can evaporate salty water until it precipitates out, or you can dig it out of rocky deposits that are usually found in veins, like coal. Occasionally, these salt deposits are the size of mountains, either exposed above ground or hidden by layers of other rock. Where they are exposed, of course they are highly subject to erosion; where they are hidden, the capacity to extract the mineral is limited by the weight above the deposit.

Salt mines have even become tourist attractions. They can be adventurous, beautiful, and healthful-- not only is salt a preservative, it's also a disinfectant, and people who spend time in the mines report relief from viruses and bacterial infections. For the same reason, my dentist recommends a salt rinse for irritated gums.

Salt has also motivated the construction of roads and canals, since money could only be made if large quantities of it could be gotten from where it is to where it isn't. Camels were attempted in Nevada, to the dismay of the salt miners, their other animals, and the camels themselves.

There are many kinds of salt. The color is caused by the presence of other minerals and impurities: the clay from the earth the salt evaporates on, iron oxide in Himalayan salt, minerals and even heavy metals not refined out of "natural" sea salt. There are also many different textures that people come to appreciate: the fine, even cubes of commercial table salt are great for baking, while chunkier, uneven "kosher salt" or flaky sea salt may provide a bigger "punch" of flavor. One thing's for sure-- reading this book really makes you want to eat some pretzels or popcorn. Iodine, of course, is an impurity added to salt on purpose as a public health measure, and has greatly reduced the incidence of goiter worldwide.

Salt is a recurring metaphor in the teachings of Jesus. What does salt do? It preserves and disinfects-- it prevents decay and disease. It provokes thirst and is, along with many other minerals, essential to health. It tastes good and enhances the flavor of everything it's added to. And one other thing: it cannot, in fact, lose its saltiness. It can become diluted, it can become adulterated, but sodium chloride will always retain the properties of salt. Those are the facts about salt-- make of them what you will.

550-559: Geology and Meteorology Book Haul

Lesson learned: don't underestimate your local branch library. I thought I did pretty well here.

And this doesn't even include what was too heavy to carry home! I could have chosen books about the exploration of Mars, so I guess all rocks are included, even ones on other planets. Also, water and air are big topics. Sam Kean, who wrote The Disappearing Spoon, which I kind of read last time, also wrote a book about air, which, seriously? NPR called it "breezy" (LOL), and I got enough of that before, so I passed on that one.

So, top to bottom: The Audubon Society, best known for its interest in birds, seems to make field guides for just about every natural phenomenon, 20 in all, at least two found in this section: Weather and Rocks & Minerals. Of course I wanted a full-color enumeration of the 30 pages worth of different kinds of snowstorms and ice storms found on our continent! I won't hold myself to reading the "Essays" at the beginning, but I may have to read some of the "Text Accounts' at the end, especially of  "Mixed Skies,""Optical Phenomena," and "Obstructions to Vision." Those do beg further explanation!

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky was a "Best Book of 2012" in our little library, so I guess I'm late to this party. It attracted my attention because of course in church we are always talking about salt, as in, being salt. The first few pages have already captured my attention, as the author describes the surprising behavior of a rock of salt he brought back from Spain that reacted to sun, humidity, metals... and licking. So that's why chemistry and geology are right next to each other!

Now take a deep breath before you read the full title of the last book in the pile. Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28.800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them. Donovan Hohn's subtitle reeled me in when he mentioned that he was a character in the story.... because you know I love stunt memoirs! The book is written in a companionable first-person style and seems to touch on everything from the manufacture of plastic toys to the floating garbage island in the Pacific that they end up in, with 350 pages in between and an epilogue that (finally) actually discusses Herman Melville's well-known novel of obsession with another, slightly larger and more useful, denizen of the sea. If I commit to this book, I suspect it may completely talk me out of plastic toys... at least floating ones...

540-549: Chemistry-- The Disappearing Spoon, by Sam Kean

The Disappearing Spoon is not a book about chemistry exactly. There's a basic explanation of atomic structure and why elements combine; there's a bit of unpacking of the structure of the periodic table; and then Kean just riffs for 346 pages. I enjoyed learning that "the noble gases" are those that are self-sufficient, that have a 'closed' outer shell already containing exactly the right number of electrons, so that they don't react with other elements. I was surprised to learn that almost all the elements are considered metals, even those that we call minerals, like calcium, or salts, like lithium. There were many interesting and entertaining stories about idiosyncratic scientists that I didn't learn; that is to say, I can't recall them anymore. But what really made an impression on me was Kean's reference to Mark Twain's interest in chemistry.

It turns out Twain wrote a short story with the dreadful title of Sold to Satan-- well, it's more of a sketch, really, and as it turns out, the point is not to tell a Devil-and-Daniel-Webster story, but to give Twain an excuse to write about that exciting new discovery of the late 19th century, radium. Twain says Satan appeared to the narrator as  "a softly glowing, richly smoldering torch, column, statue of pallid light, faintly tinted with a spiritual green, and out from him a lunar splendor flowed such as one sees glinting from the crinkled waves of tropic seas when the moon rides high in cloudless skies." I won't be giving away much if I say this turns out to be because the Devil is made of radium, contained in polonium, and that the most interesting bit in the story is when-- right at very beginning of the 20th century-- he gives us a news report about Curie's activities in isolating this element and predicts the power-- and the problems-- of radioactivity.

Kurt Vonnegut also liked to throw a little chemistry into his fiction. In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, the title character at one point starts drinking with a group of volunteer firemen and ..."built gradually to a crying jag, during which he claimed to be deeply touched by the idea of an inhabited planet with an atmosphere that was eager to combine violently with almost everything the inhabitants held dear. He was speaking of Earth and the element oxygen." As it turns out, that's a bit of an oversimplification of the phenomenon of fire, but it does the job-- Vonnegut's job, after all, is often to make us pay attention to the basic weirdness of life.

And chemistry is pretty weird, after all-- or rather, the phenomena it studies are pretty weird. For example, it tells us that everything on this inhabited planet including ourselves is made up of millions of tiny solar systems of atoms, spinning around and swapping their electron planets back and forth so that they can all find some kind of stability, and that somehow this all works so that I am me and you are you and we don't spontaneously and violently combine with our atmosphere and go up in flames. So, although we are not "nothing but" chemical reactions, we certainly are that as well as "meat suits" (another Vonnegut phrase) as well as transcendent souls.

So, if you love chemistry, you should probably read some other, more serious book on the subject. If you don't love chemistry, read Twain's story, which is in the public domain. And maintain your sense of wonder about all the invisible processes that surround you!

530-539: Physics. The Shadow Club, by Roberto Casati

Okay, I definitely need to get back to the main library. I come home with the least uninteresting book I can find in the local library, and I still can't finish it! After all, in addition to this project, there are also so many novels, and, in these trying times, reading the news seems like another full-time job. An analysis of shadows in theory and practice, translated from the Italian, can't compete, even when it has pictures and is full of "whoa, have you ever really looked at your hand" moments.

The Shadow Club, by Roberto Casati, is not a bad book. I did appreciate the summary of Piaget's studies of children's beliefs about shadows. I do agree that shadows help us correctly interpret what we are looking at, whether in real life or in art. I can see that it's interesting that a shadow is an absence, and yet is treated like a substance: Peter Pan famously lost his and had to have it sewn on again; people of some cultures do not like their shadows to be stepped on or to touch other shadows. But I'm still not going to finish it, partly because I don't feel like I owe physics anything.

I took physics in high school and didn't mind the inclined planes and what not-- after all, as they say, "Gravity isn't just a good idea; it's the law!" As an adult, I read Brian Greene, and some Richard Feynman, and, most recently, I got a good halfway through a Neil Stephenson book called Seveneves-- the whole chunk that dealt with how to build a space colony in orbit around the earth. And if you've ever read any Neal Stephenson, you know that he throws full topical lectures into the middle of the action the way George MacDonald peppered his romances with chapter-long sermons or Anthony Trollope inserted blow-by-blow accounts of foxhunts into his analysis of Victorian politics. So, thanks to Stephenson, I'm all up on how gravity works in a multicentric orbital system; that should count for something.

The next Dewey topic is Chemistry, which is the one I actually actively dislike. But I bet if I go to the big library, they will have 30 running feet of books to choose from, and I can find one I can finish. Wish me luck!

520-529: When I Look at the Stars

The Flammarion

"When I look at the stars, I see someone else/ When I look at the stars, I feel like myself," sang Switchfoot. "God of wonders beyond the galaxies, You are holy, holy," sang Third Day. That's my relationship with astronomy. The part of outer space I can see, but even more the images that I can't see-- planets, swirling masses of stars and nebulae-- are a window or a gateway to realities beyond the physical.

So I should have known better than to choose Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Apparently it can be read aloud in 3 hours and 45 minutes, but that was about three more hours of detail about the origins of the physical universe than I could pay attention to. I'm sure if I had the right kind of mind I could find transcendence in the chemical formulas that turn hydrogen into carbon, but I don't, so I can't. Discussion of what happened in the first nanosecond of the Big Bang, or exactly how long ago that event was (yeah, I know, everyone is now saying 13.7 billion years ago, but I remember back when it was a mere shmear 6 billion, so don't act like the number isn't going to change again!) makes me feel more like Walt Whitman: 

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, 

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, 

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, 

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, 

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, 

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

So I gave up on Tyson and went back to the library, where I found The Stars: The Definitive Visual Guide to the Cosmos, a DK book. If you know that publisher, you know this book answered my one burning question about the universe, namely: what kinds of cool things are in it? Lots of views like this, for one thing:

Views of the Orion Nebula

Also lots of fun facts! So now I know the difference between a nebula and a galaxy, and that lots of stars are actually two or more stars in some kind of crazy dance, and that galaxies come in all kinds of shapes, and that the whole visible sky is divided(for location purposes) into 88 constellations, each of which contains not just the great big stars that make the picture (like The Hunter or The Big Dipper), but hundreds or thousands of stars, star clusters, galaxies, etcetera. I learned that while the Universe is expanding, the galaxies within it are being drawn towards each other, so there's more and more space between galaxy clusters. In particular, I learned that the Milky Way and Andromeda are on a collision course, but, no worries, the event is scheduled 4 billion years from now, so Earth and the Sun will be long-gone by then. But mainly, I looked at page after page of beautiful pictures of space objects, and "when I look at the stars/ I feel like myself."