By Krishna Dronamraju
J. B. S. Haldane (1892-64) used to be one of many nice scientists--and nice technology writers--of the twentieth century. A polymath who used to be a critical determine within the improvement of recent evolutionary biology, he was once additionally a hugely expert essayist and a unprecedented character--brilliant, witty, idealistic, humorous, and pugnacious.
What I Require From Life brings jointly Haldane's well known technology essays, greater than sixty articles that mirror not just his masterful skill to speak clinical realizing, but in addition his deep dedication to socialism. Readers will locate essays on a thrilling diversity of topics--"Is There existence at the Planets?" "Is guy a Machine?" "Why are You Left-handed?" "Overcrowding on the Zoo," "How Bees Communicate," "The universal Cold."
Edited with an creation through Haldane's final graduate scholar, Krishna Dronamraju, this selection of thought-provoking and beautifully-written items additionally comes with a Preface written by way of the overdue Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who calls Haldane "perhaps the main fantastic technology popularizer of his generation."
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I am a socialist because unemployment, at least during times of depression, is an essential feature of capitalism. I want the workers to see the fruit of their own work not in proWts for others, but in their own and their WHAT I REQUIRE FROM LIFE 21 friends’ well-being. My main personal complaint is that my work is not applied. I discover new biological facts, but no use is made of them, because although the community would beneWt, no individuals would make proWts from their application. I want to see the workers controlling their conditions of work as I control my own to a considerable extent.
A number of the articles which are submitted to me from time to time are far too like examination answers. They give the impression that the author has looked his subject up, and tried to give a condensed summary of it. Such a summary may be all very well in a text-book, but will not hold the attention of a reader of popular articles, who does not contemplate severe intellectual exertion. This does not mean that you must write for an audience of fools. It means that you must constantly be returning from the unfamiliar facts of science to the familiar facts of everyday experience.
Should cargo space be devoted to cheese rather than meat? Need for scientiWc planning of national food supply. How much of this you can get in depends on the length of your article and your capacity for compession. If you are writing for a highbrow journal you may quote the passages on cheese from Euripides’ ‘Cyclops’, if for a lowbrow, any of the jokes about the smell of cheese. That is one way of doing it. But other writers would show cheese as part of the Mysterious Universe. We do not understand protein synthesis, not the extreme speciWcity of some enzyme actions.