Books

CDs

Events/Exhibits

Film/Video

Edited by Wendy Pullan & Harshad Bhadeshia.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2000.
203 pp., illus, hardback.
ISBN:: 0-521-78258-9
Reviewed by David Topper, The University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB R3B 2E9 Canada. E-mail: Topper@Uwinnipeg.ca


This book is based on the 1998 Darwin College Lectures, the 13th in the series, delivered at Darwin College, Cambridge by eight experts in their disciplines. The disciplines constitute a variety of the arts and sciences. Accordingly, the essays are essentially on topics pertaining to art OR science, with only the occasional reference to interdisciplinary matters. The following review is a brief synopsis of each essay.

Simon Conway Morris is a world-renowned paleontologist. Readers of Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life (1989) will remember him as one of Gould's heroes for his work on the Cambrian explosion as revealed in the Burgess Shale. Morris begins by pointing to the recent wave of materialist interpretations of Darwin's evolutionary theory (e.g, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett) which leads him into the issue of structure, from DNA through amino acids to proteins, with evidence of a remarkable order in the structure of these layers. Morris does not use the term "design" - but in light of his introductory anti-materialist discussion, it did come to mind. This interpretation is reinforced by his discussion of the eye, a very complex organ that some have argued cannot be explained by natural selection alone; Darwin himself confessed that the eye made him shutter. Morris presents the evolutionary argument for the eye, yet points to the quasi-leaps in the logic needed to sustain the theory.

Alan H. Cottrell and David G. Pettifor are metallurgists who show how structure plays a role in the properties of metals - from the smallest (electrons) to atoms (atomic bonding) to microstructures (molecular bonding) to the macroscopic (with no visible internal structure). In particular they show that often (but not always) the latter properties are dependent upon the former ("lower") ones.

Shobana Jeyasingh is a choreographer, founder and director of the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company (London), writing on the differences among the classical and modern techniques of both Indian and Western dance. She shows that in dance, spatial structure is always imbedded in time.

John Dixon Hunt is a well-known author and editor specializing in landscape architecture, or "designed landscape" as he calls it. His essay takes as its starting point the 16th century idea of the three natures: 1st, natural geological features; 2nd, human agrarian transformations; and 3rd, human gardens, an aesthetic extension of the 2nd. He argues that since the 18th century, the ruling guide about the 3rd nature stems from Horace Walpole's essay in which he made the case for natural and informal gardens that blended with nature, rather than more formal and overtly structured ones. But Hunt thinks Walpole imposed too rigid a system of constraints upon landscape architecture. Hunt makes his case against a return to an unspoiled nature with three examples - Yosemite, Delphi, and Rochefort sur Mer - showing how the land was restructured by human invention and imagination.

John Meurig Thomas, chemist, writes on the molecular structure of minerals and gemstones as uncovered by x-ray crystallography (or diffraction). He shows how this technique is used in fashioning new materials and substances, from fabrics to fuels. He presents an interesting example of the molecular structure of the catalyst ZSM-5, developed by Mobil Oil, whose pattern is geometrically the same as that displayed on the wall of an 11th century mosque in Baku, Azerbaijan. Interesting, but not surprising: Islamic art is well known for its myriad of geometrical patterns; and both nature and humans are constrained by similar rules.

John Knott's expertise is in metallurgy and engineering, and thus he discusses the stresses and strains of engineering structures. Looking at many spectacular failures of buildings, bridges, planes, and ships - he tries to answer the question, Why did they fail? Some of the discussion is quite technical, such as on the recent method of fracture mechanics to analyze the effects of cracks.

Mary Kaldor is a director of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, and as such she writes about the "structure" of war. It seems to me that including this essay is stretching the term "structure." This also raises the question whether the topic belongs to "art" or "science"? I think neither - but I know that others have spoken (metaphorically, to me) of both the "science of war" and the "art of war." Nevertheless the essay is quite fascinating. Specifically she compares the differences between "old wars" (World War II and before) and the "new wars" (mostly local conflicts) in terms of politics, economics, armed forces, strategies, and technology. A significant statistic: in wars around 1900, the casualty rate between soldiers and civilians was 8 to1; by 2000 this was reversed.

The last essay, by Marina Warner, is on episodes in the history of the "structure" of the human imagination since the 17th century, looking at various figures, such as the quasi-mystics Robert Fludd and Athanasius Kircher, and romantics such as the artist Goya.

top