A Guinea Pig's History Of Biology
The Sunday Age
Sunday July 20, 2008
A Guinea Pig's History Of Biology
Jim EndersbyArrow, $27.95The theme of the book is the development of biology. Endersby's approach is to fix on a detail, and then work outwards. He takes apparently insignificant organisms, from weeds to the titular rodent, and explains how they have enriched our knowledge. His focus is not on divine inspiration, but hard teamwork. As he writes, "the ideas of science come second, in every sense, to the work of science". It is a collaborative, sharing enterprise, and few have worked harder for it than the experimental plants and laboratory animals. The guinea pig has contributed to no less than 23 Nobel prizes, which should earn the species a gong of its own, along with the fruit fly and the zebrafish, for helping scientists unravel genetics. Small things of cultural history, Endersby shows, have big consequences: the repeal of the English tax on glass led to Charles Darwin's greenhouse, and the plant observations in The Origin of Species. He is clear-eyed, but not wide-eyed about science, recognising the ethical problems of vivisection, and the cancer-prone OncoMouse. A fascinating read.
© 2008 The Sunday Age