New Books in Science

For most of our time on this planet, vermin were considered humanity's common inheritance. Fleas, lice, bedbugs, and rats were universal scourges, as pervasive as hunger or cold, at home in both palaces and hovels. But with the spread of microscopic close-ups of these creatures, the beginnings of sanitary standards, and the rising belief that cleanliness equaled class, vermin began to provide a way to scratch a different itch: the need to feel superior, and to justify the exploitation of those pronounced ethnically—and entomologically—inferior.In Getting Under Our Skin: The Cultural and Social History of Vermin (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021), Lisa T. Sarasohn tells the fascinating story of how vermin came to signify the individuals and classes that society impugns and ostracizes. How did these creatures go from annoyance to social stigma? And how did people thought verminous become considered almost a species of vermin themselves? Focusing on Great Britain and North America, Sarasohn explains how the label "vermin" makes dehumanization and violence possible. She describes how Cromwellians in Ireland and US cavalry on the American frontier both justified slaughter by warning "Nits grow into lice." Nazis not only labeled Jews as vermin, they used insecticides in the gas chambers to kill them during the Holocaust.Concentrating on the insects living in our bodies, clothes, and beds, Sarasohn also looks at rats and their social impact. Besides their powerful symbolic status in all cultures, rats' endurance challenges all human pretentions. From eighteenth-century London merchants anointing their carved bedsteads with roasted cat to repel bedbugs to modern-day hedge fund managers hoping neighbors won't notice exterminators in their penthouses, the studies in this book reveal that vermin continue to fuel our prejudices and threaten our status. Getting Under Our Skin will appeal to cultural historians, naturalists, and to anyone who has ever scratched—and then gazed in horror. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Why do newborns show a preference for a face (or something that resembles a face) over a nonface-like object? Why do baby chicks prefer a moving object to an inanimate one? Neither baby human nor baby chick has had time to learn to like faces or movement. In Born Knowing: Imprinting and the Origins of Knowledge (MIT Press, 2021), neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara argues that the mind is not a blank slate. Early behavior is biologically predisposed rather than learned, and this instinctive or innate behavior, Vallortigara says, is key to understanding the origins of knowledge.Drawing on research carried out in his own laboratory over several decades, Vallortigara explores what the imprinting process in young chicks, paralleled by the cognitive feats of human newborns, reveals about minds at the onset of life. He explains that a preference for faces or representations of something face-like and animate objects--predispositions he calls "life detectors"--streamlines learning, allowing minds to avoid a confusing multiplicity of objects in the environment, and he considers the possibility that autism spectrum disorders might be linked to a deficit in the preference for the animate. He also demonstrates that animals do not need language to think, and that addition and subtraction can be performed without numbers. The origin of knowledge, Vallortigara argues, is the wisdom that humans and animals possess as basic brain equipment, the product of natural history rather than individual development.Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Wonder how America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions beginning at the turn of the early twentieth century?American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D (MIT Press, 2021) by Eric S. Hintz presents a candid look into the history behind the phenomenon.During the nineteenth century, heroic individual inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell created entirely new industries while achieving widespread fame. However, by 1927, a New York Times editorial suggested that teams of corporate scientists at General Electric, AT&T, and DuPont had replaced the solitary "garret inventor" as the wellspring of invention. But these inventors never disappeared. In this book, Eric Hintz argues that lesser-known inventors such as Chester Carlson (Xerox photocopier), Samuel Ruben (Duracell batteries), and Earl Tupper (Tupperware) continued to develop important technologies throughout the twentieth century. Moreover, Hintz explains how independent inventors gradually fell from public view as corporate brands increasingly became associated with high-tech innovation.Focusing on the years from 1890 to 1950, Hintz documents how American independent inventors competed (and sometimes partnered) with their corporate rivals, adopted a variety of flexible commercialization strategies, established a series of short-lived professional groups, lobbied for fairer patent laws, and mobilized for two world wars. After 1950, the experiences of independent inventors generally mirrored the patterns of their predecessors, and they continued to be overshadowed during corporate R&D's postwar golden age. The independents enjoyed a resurgence, however, at the turn of the twenty-first century, as Apple's Steve Jobs and Shark Tank's Lori Greiner heralded a new generation of heroic inventor-entrepreneurs. By recovering the stories of a group once considered extinct, Hintz shows that independent inventors have long been—and remain—an important source of new technologies. Nathan Moore is a history Ph.D. candidate and graduate assistant at Auburn University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

At the heart of human intelligence rests a fundamental puzzle: How are we incredibly smart and stupid at the same time? No existing machine can match the power and flexibility of human perception, language, and reasoning. Yet, we routinely commit errors that reveal the failures of our thought processes. What Makes Us Smart: The Computational Logic of Human Cognition (Princeton UP, 2021) makes sense of this paradox by arguing that our cognitive errors are not haphazard. Rather, they are the inevitable consequences of a brain optimized for efficient inference and decision making within the constraints of time, energy, and memory--in other words, data and resource limitations. Framing human intelligence in terms of these constraints, Samuel Gershman shows how a deeper computational logic underpins the "stupid" errors of human cognition.Embarking on a journey across psychology, neuroscience, computer science, linguistics, and economics, Gershman presents unifying principles that govern human intelligence. First, inductive bias: any system that makes inferences based on limited data must constrain its hypotheses in some way before observing data. Second, approximation bias: any system that makes inferences and decisions with limited resources must make approximations. Applying these principles to a range of computational errors made by humans, Gershman demonstrates that intelligent systems designed to meet these constraints yield characteristically human errors.Examining how humans make intelligent and maladaptive decisions, What Makes Us Smart delves into the successes and failures of cognition. Robert Tosswill is a student the Master of Logic (MoL) program at the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation at the University of Amsterdam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Though trained as a medical doctor, chemist Harvey Wiley spent most of his professional life advocating for "pure food"—food free of both adulterants and preservatives. A strong proponent of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, still the basis of food safety legislation in the United States, Wiley gained fame for what became known as the Poison Squad experiments—a series of tests in which, to learn more about the effects of various chemicals on the human body, Wiley's own employees at the Department of Agriculture agreed to consume food mixed with significant amounts of various additives, including borax, saltpeter, copper sulfate, sulfuric acid, and formaldehyde. One hundred years later, Wiley's influence lives on in many of our current popular ideas about food: that the wrong food can kill you; that the right food can extend your life; that additives are unnatural; and that unnatural food is unhealthy food. Eating—the process of taking something external in the world and putting it inside of you—has always been an intimate act, but it was Harvey Wiley who first turned it into a matter of life or death.In The Chemistry of Fear: Harvey Wiley's Fight for Pure Food (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021), Jonathan Rees examines Wiley's many—and varied—conflicts and clashes over food safety, including the adulteration of honey and the addition of caffeine to Coca-Cola, formaldehyde to milk, and alum to baking powder. Although Wiley is often depicted as an unwavering champion of the consumer's interest, Rees argues that his critics rightfully questioned some of his motivations, as well as the conclusions that he drew from his most important scientific work. And although Wiley's fame and popularity gave him enormous influence, Rees reveals that his impact on what Americans eat depends more upon fear than it does upon the quality of his research.Exploring in detail the battles Wiley picked over the way various foods and drinks were made and marketed, The Chemistry of Fear touches upon every stage of his career as a pure food advocate. From his initial work in Washington researching food adulteration, through the long interval at the end of his life when he worked for Good Housekeeping, Wiley often wrote about the people who prevented him from making the pure food law as effective as he thought it should have been. This engaging book will interest anyone who's curious about the pitfalls that eaters faced at the turn of the twentieth century. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The Problems of Physics, Reconsidered is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Physics Nobel Laureate Tony Leggett. The basis of this conversation is Tony Leggett’s book The Problems of Physics and further explores the insightful plain-speaking itemization that he developed of the physics landscape according to four basic categories—the very small (particle physics), the very large (cosmology), the very complex (condensed matter physics) and the very unclear (foundations of quantum theory)—while providing a thoughtful follow-up analysis from a contemporary perspective to assess how much progress we’ve made and which mysteries remain or have come on the scene since the book was published.Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

As algorithms become ever more significant to and embedded in our everyday lives, ever more accessible introductions to them are needed. While several excellent technical and critical treatments have emerged in recent years, i had not come across a book for the general public that would provide a deep sense for the intuitions and motivations behind their development. Chris Bleakley's new book offers this and more: conceptual rigor woven into historical vignettes in a style that i believe general readers will find truly enjoyable to read.Poems that Solve Puzzles: The History and Science of Algorithms (Oxford UP, 2020) is itself a quite poetic book, in which echoes of ideas and variations on themes can be heard throughout. Its stories encompass the early hypothetical and mechanical computers, the charactered rise of weather forecasting, the origins (and lulls) of machine learning, and the sensational competitions between master game players and artificial intelligence. The book traverses a long historical arc, but each episode is a quick read, remarkable in their ability to convey depth and rigor in crisp, plain language. It was a delight to talk with Chris about these and other aspects of his book.Suggested companion works:--Simon Singh, The Code Book--George Dyson, Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe--Greg Kohs (director), "AlphaGo"Chris Bleakley is Head of the School of Computer Science at University College Dublin. He graduated with a BSc (Hons) degree in Computer Science from Queen's University, Belfast, and a PhD degree in Electronic Engineering from Dublin City University. After college, he was employed as a software consultant by Accenture and, later, as a senior telecommunications researcher at Broadcom Eireann Research.Cory Brunson is an Assistant Professor at the Laboratory for Systems Medicine at the University of Florida. His research focuses on geometric and topological approaches to the analysis of medical and healthcare data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

How can farmers adapt to climate changes? How can regenerative farmers have livelihoods that nourish themselves and their communities? How can we break free of the commodity mindset and rethink the US food system? Bob Quinn’s remarkable memoir of his decades living and working on a Montana farm offers unique insights into all of these pressing questions, with creativity, intelligence, and a healthy dash of humor.Quinn is a farmer and sustainable business leader. He founded a regional mill for organic and heritage grains, an organic snack company, a biofuel business, Montana’s first wind farm, and Kamut International. Kamut, an ancient grain Quinn revived from a pint jar of seed found in a neighbor’s basement, is now grown on 100,000 acres of certified organic cropland and made into over 3,500 products worldwide.In Grain by Grain: A Quest to Revive Ancient Wheat, Rural Jobs, and Healthy Food (Island Press, 2019), co-written with Liz Carlisle, he shares the stories of these innovative projects. Through his narrative, Quinn offers readers an insightful ground-level look at the history of the organic food movement, as well as hope for the future.Bob Quinn, PhD is a leading green businessman, with successful ventures in both organic agriculture and renewable energy. Raised on a 2,400 acre wheat and cattle ranch in Montana, Quinn earned a Ph.D. in plant biochemistry at UC Davis before coming home to farm in 1978. He served on the first National Organic Standards Board, which spurred the creation of the USDA’s National Organic Program, and has been recognized with the Montana Organic Association Lifetime of Service Award, The Organic Trade Association Organic Leadership Award, and Rodale Institute’s Organic Pioneer Award. Bob remains active in research, and has co-authored pioneering studies on the nutritional benefits of ancient grain.Susan Grelock Yusem, PhD is an independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Over the past seventy years, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, has evolved from a virtually unknown and little-used pamphlet to an imposing and comprehensive compendium of mental disorder. Its nearly 300 conditions have become the touchstones for the diagnoses that patients receive, students are taught, researchers study, insurers reimburse, and drug companies promote. Although the manual is portrayed as an authoritative corpus of psychiatric knowledge, it is a product of intense political conflicts, dissension, and factionalism. The manual results from struggles among psychiatric researchers and clinicians, different mental health professions, and a variety of patient, familial, feminist, gay, and veterans' interest groups. The DSM is fundamentally a social document that both reflects and shapes the professional, economic, and cultural forces associated with its use.In DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021), Allan V. Horwitz examines how the manual, known colloquially as "psychiatry's bible," has been at the center of thinking about mental health in the United States since its original publication in 1952. The first book to examine its entire history, this volume draws on both archival sources and the literature on modern psychiatry to show how the history of the DSM is more a story of the growing social importance of psychiatric diagnoses than of increasing knowledge about the nature of mental disorder. Despite attempts to replace it, Horwitz argues that the DSM persists because its diagnostic entities are closely intertwined with too many interests that benefit from them.This comprehensive treatment should appeal to not only specialists but also anyone who is interested in how diagnoses of mental illness have evolved over the past seven decades—from unwanted and often imposed labels to resources that lead to valued mental health treatments and social services. Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

A Matter of Energy: Biology From First Principles is based on an in-depth filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Nick Lane, Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London and bestselling author. After an inspiring exploration of Nick Lane’s career path, this wide-ranging conversation covers his bioenergetic view of early, evolutionary history, the origin of life and how all complex life is composed of a very particular cell type that we all share, and more.Howard Burton is the founder of the Ideas Roadshow, Ideas on Film and host of the Ideas Roadshow Podcast. He can be reached at howard@ideasroadshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science