Lord Winston

Just read an extract from Robert Winston’s book The Story of God [Transworld £18.99]. I’m sure Winston is tip-top at the day job, but who buys this twaddle? It will of course be a best-seller for Christmas, and it’s clearly well researched, but it is equally clearly written for dim and ignorant people who like being heavily patronised. There are millions such, but do they buy books? Especially books about the evolution of the idea God? Maybe there really is a voracious reading public sandwiched somewhere between people who are a little hazy about where their brains actually are, and people who can work out roughly what a neurotransmitter is without having to lie down with a bag of frozen peas on their foreheads. Oh yes? Which leaves this as just another publishing scam; put out a book by a “world renowned scientist”, at Christmas, with the title “The Story of God” and then chortle over the ratio of the number of people who buy it, as a present maybe, to the number of people who read past page 17. 23367 to 5 would be about my guess.
There are classic science books that make you see the world in a different way. Some of mine:
The New Science of Strong Materials and Structures: Why Things Don’t Fall Down by JE Gordon.
After I read these I started looking for the balance of invisible forces in cathedrals, bridges and aeroplane wings as we were taking off, where before I’d just seen masses of stuff.
QED: the strange theory of light and matter by Richard Feynman.
Socially Feynman was probably a bit of a fantasist, but this book makes you feel for a while that you can understand the iridescence on a puddle in quantum terms.
Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennet:
It isn’t explained, of course, but if you want a read that will blow away with a dry desert wind the cobwebs of religious dualism, this is it.
Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins.
The Selfish Gene is the trailblazer, but this book explains an awful lot about evolution, and pre-empts all the impenetrable idiocy of “intelligent design”.
Isaac Newton by James Gleick:
A short and simple book about the unsurpassed achievement of a very strange but somehow sympathetic fellow. The silhouette of an apple by the falling moon explains what is usually the Dandy‘n’Beano image of a bump on the head.
Phantoms in the Brain: Human Nature and the Architecture of the Mind by VS Ramachandran:
Down to earth and mysterious about pain and the brain.

Oh, and while I’m on books that changed the way I see the world, Salman the Solitary by Yashar Kemal. It’s nothing to do with science, it is fiction, it was written years ago, it’s a good read once you get past all the butterflies and eagles at the beginning, and it by the by makes clear that the invasion and occupation of Mesopotamia at the behest of a couple of jerk-off politicians and the weapons and oil money was always unlikely to be a good thing for the rest of us.

All a lightyear beyond Winston. Here’s an example of his writing:
“Some of the genes [for religion] likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain,”
Apart from the general informational slop, when someone says to you in that kindly but maddening voice, “called neurotransmitters,” you know they are patronising you. Either these chemicals are neurotransmitters or they’re not, to me just as much as to you, mate.
And:
“...because of slight changes in spelling of the DNA sequences (a so-called polymorphism)...”
We usually say “so-called” when we mean that the label is a pretence, a sham or a boast. And the twee little metaphor of spelling to make it easier for us poor dears to understand is just bollocks. DNA sequences don’t spell anything. The sentences should read something like:
“...because of slight changes in the DNA sequences (polymorphism)...”
I suspect it is then exposed as further bollocks. Surely a change in a DNA sequence isn’t called polymorphism.
Taxi for the good lord.