Troika in biology

About six years ago, popular science literature was a rarity, and the appearance of an interpretation book became a real event. Three years later, such books went uniform stream, the variegation of the authors mainly by English surnames. They could still have time to read. Now there are so many scientific and popular books that it is hardly possible to carefully read them. Every month, a dozen Russian publishers releases volumes about astronomy, anthropology, psychology, physiology (however, some disciplines, such as geology, are completely circumvented by the attention of publishers).

One of the whales on which the popular science literature market is held is biology in the broadest sense of the word. Over the past couple of months, a dozen curious books about this field of knowledge have been published. Three are interesting for their performance. During reading, it seems that these books are missing something. They could take a place on the book shelf next to Dokins or Zimmer. But they did not take it.

Jonathan Belkkomb "What the Fish knows"

This book attracts attention already by appearance. You rarely see such an original and stylish bag: it is translucent, and a figure of red perch shines through the paper. Taking the book in your hands, you are surprised even more. On the super-compass, as expected, enthusiastic responses of all kinds of experts are printed, including ... Dalai Lama. According to him, for the Buddhists of fish - reasonable creatures and the author of the book managed to show that they have feelings. “I hope that this will be another step on the path to respectful handling of animals,” Lama wrote. I wonder what ways the publishing house managed to take an annotation from him?

By the way, the annotations did not fit on the cover, they are busy with two pages inside the book. They are quite common: “one of the best samples”, “penetrating story”, “instructive story”, “amazing”, “amazing”, “inspiring”.

The book itself is a variegated collection of the latest scientific information about the behavior of fish. It turns out that they have stress and joy, some fish are even tamed. The author quite successfully denied the philistine opinion of fish as stupid creatures with tiny brains and a length of three seconds.

Scientists in the book are valuable and important, but do not make a single, whole impression. It resembles an anthology or, rather, even a mountain of bricks on a construction site. What prevented the author from putting bricks in the building is incomprehensible, but the book seems unfinished.

It is revived by a curious dialogue - or still a monologue - a Russian scientific editor, which complements, corrects, corrects and clarifies the author on almost every page. There are also constructive notes of the translator, author, editor. In the modern book, such a medieval set of schisms looks unusual.

Arman Marie Lerois “Laguna. How Aristotle came up with science "

Aristotle is a key character in the Western world. In different stages of history, he either went into the shadow, then ascended to the very tops of culture and philosophy. Now he rises again, but not as a philosopher, but as a natural scientist. This unusual point of view is ardently defended by biologist Arman Leroy. According to him, Aristotle is primarily a biologist and naturalist, and philosophy and logic were a side effect for him and were required to create a full -fledged biological picture of the world.

The “invention” by the Aristotle of Science and Biology is stated on six hundred pages. The book turned out to be protracted, largely due to Leroy’s desire to state all the opinions of Aristotle at once. As a result, the meaning of some chapters remains foggy. The situation is aggravated by the impossibility of an accurate interpretation of a number of places from Aristotle, as well as a lack of biographical information about him.

It remains only to regret that the author did not come across the same literary editor enthusiastic. From reduction and clarifications, she would have won a lot.

In the book, it is worth noting the unusual illustrations of animals that show how the drawings made by Aristotle to his biological works (see ill.). Unfortunately, all these drawings are lost.

Steve Brusatti "Dinosaurs Time"

An exciting book about dinosaurs, similar to a real chronicle. The dinosaurs are described as some interesting and exotic state or dynasty-Incas, Parthian or Borgia. There is no familiar atomism of paleontological books, where it is gradually talking about everything. The reader awaits the whole and fascinating story, going through the entire mesozoic: from the traces of the first dinosavromorphs to the last day of the dinosaurs, when the earth became a trampoline from the blow of the coma and the glass rain spilled. Stories are collected in a whole, exciting and, importantly, understandable picture. Scientific information was sprinkled with bikes and stories about paleontologists, among which there were many eccentric personalities.

The book could become the standard of popular science literature, if not for the style: in some places it borders on graphomania. The subject of the book and its plot are magnificent, like Wagner operas, and stylistic defects look in it like a frustrated violin that does not fall into tonality.

The sense of proportion strongly fails the author, when he begins to engage in decorating the text and calls the trias volcanoes “terrorists” or writes that allosaurs attacked the prey “with jaws of rubbish”, and Tirex's jaws were “a torture camera” ...

It's a shame that in such a brilliant book there were such optional and annoying blots.

Anton Nelikhov,
scientific journalist, historian of paleontology