The Evolutionary Blackbird

spring books and arts behaviour only after development in a C57 uterus. Ridley’s historical tour of several disci- plines is a delight: the pivotal players in ethology, neurobiology, anthropology and psychology are brought to life in engaging pen-portraits. We encounter anthropologist Franz Boas in 1884 during his first field season among the Inuit of Baffin Island as he notes in his diary: “These are the ‘savages’ whose lives are supposed to be worth noth- ing compared with a civilized European. I do not believe that we, if living under the same conditions, would be so willing to work or be so cheerful and happy.” Konrad Lorenz appears both in his best-remembered guise, pursued by a string of adoring ducklings, and in an altogether more sinister one. While working as a military psychologist in Poland in 1942, Lorenz participated in SS-sponsored research designed to distinguish between inferior Polish and superior German Books by vertebrate palaeontologists are of knowledge about life, from the fauna of characteristics in ‘half-breeds’. Nor does dominated by animals with bones, despite hydrothermal vents to the anatomy of plant- J. B. Watson of behaviourism fame fare too the fact that vertebrates make up a tiny pro- eating birds’ digestive tracts. For the most well in retrospect: his fall from grace was portion of the world’s biodiversity today — part, he has kept abreast of the latest develop- occasioned by an extramarital love affair, not to mention the fact that they didn’t ments in evolutionary research, although and he ended up, appropriately enough, exist for the first 3 billion years or so of life’s from time to time he slips back into comfort- applying his skills in pavlovian conditioning history. The Precambrian expert Andrew able textbook explanations. Describing the to advertising Johnson’s baby powder. The Knoll has looked at those first 3 billion great domains of life, for example, he writes: human detail enriches Nature via Nurture, years in great detail in his new book Life on “The Archaebacteria also fall into two but Ridley by no means subscribes to the a Young Planet (to be reviewed in Nature groups, both of which have lifestyles that are modern dumb-it-down school of science shortly), leaving the details of dinosaurs very unusual, but which could have been writing, in which the science itself becomes a and mastodons to others. For yet another maintained on the ancient earth.” These sideshow to the serious business of prying take, try The Major Transitions in Evolution microbes (which are now generally called into the scientists’ personal lives. by John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry. Archaea, not Archaebacteria) can indeed be Ridley’s book reminds us of the impor- For them, the essence of life’s history is the found in strange places, such as geysers and tance of good science writing. Because he emergence of new kinds of complexity. oxygen-free swamps. But they can also be is not a professional scientist, Ridley is not Instead of fossils, you get equations. found in ordinary places, such as grassland stuck deep in a disciplinary trench and has In The Story of Life, Oxford ecologist soil and the open ocean, where they out- the freedom to range across huge swathes Richard Southwood takes his own look at number bacteria. Archaea got a reputation of intellectual territory. In doing so, he has the evolutionary blackbird. Southwood is a for being bizarre only because scientists dis- given us a rich overview and a compellingly leading figure in ecology, thanks to his covered their more unusual members first. integrated picture of a great deal of science, seminal work on insects and his landmark A more serious shortcoming in The Story both old and new. Make Nature via Nurture book Ecological Methods. For 18 years he of Life is the scant attention paid to DNA, part of your nurture. I taught an introductory course on the history which has revolutionized our understanding Andrew Berry is at the Museum of Comparative of life, and out of that experience has sprung of evolution’s course. The ecological changes Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford Street, The Story of Life. Not surprisingly, South- that Southwood details were made possible Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. wood sees the history of life in an ecological by changes to genes, and scientists are start- light, not as a single-file parade of new life ing to get some hints of what those changes forms but as a network of species whose links were, from the promiscuous gene swapping are being perpetually reworked. between early microbes to the recruitment This network first took shape over 3 billion of old genes to make new structures such as The evolutionary years ago, as early microbes cooperated to jaws and fingers. harness the energy in their environment. Despite these grumbles, I recommend blackbird The network grew more complex as animals The Story of Life to those looking for a The Story of Life and other multicellular organisms evolved, swift, efficient delivery of the most impor- by Richard Southwood and as reefs offered new ecospaces for tant information we have on how life has Oxford University Press: 2003. 272 pp. £19.99 species to colonize. Southwood recounts blossomed on Earth. Southwood is succinct Carl Zimmer how dry land was transformed over hun- and clear, and his narrative rarely gets dreds of millions of years, as bacterial crusts bogged down with historical digressions or The poet Wallace Stevens wrote about 13 gave way to forests that offered a new eco- personal anecdotes. Although this style has ways of looking at a blackbird. Perhaps space as vast as that of coral reefs. Over its strengths, it also has its weaknesses. At the someday another poet will write about 13 time, ecosystems change like gently tapped beginning of his book, Southwood claims ways of looking at the history of life. I can kaleidoscopes, Southwood writes, although that the story of life “provides a bench- certainly think of 13 different scientists who mass extinctions give them a good shake mark for judgments on the environmental have written books on the subject, each of from time to time. problems of today”. But when Southwood which is coloured by its author’s expertise. Southwood displays an impressive sweep finally reaches our own age, he seems almost

NATURE | VOL 422 | 24 APRIL 2003 | www.nature.com/nature © 2003 Nature Publishing Group 815 spring books and arts indifferent as he zips through the ways that Because of ill-health and hearing difficulties, we are altering the climate and the planet’s Mitchell preferred to carry out discussions ecosystems. A little more passion would by lengthy correspondence, which is have been welcome. After all, these days the extensively quoted in this book. The evolutionary blackbird is beginning to look title refers to Mitchell’s comparison more like a canary in a coal mine. I of the human mind to a garden in Carl Zimmer is a freelance writer who lives in which are planted facts and ideas, New York. His most recent book is Evolution: which one keeps on rearranging, even The Triumph of an Idea. when asleep. Mitchell worked in the University of Cambridge as an undergraduate, research student and staff member for 16 years from 1939 to 1955. Metabolic He did not have a particularly distinguished academic gardening record, nor does he seem Wandering in the Gardens of the to have been completely at Mind: Peter Mitchell and the home in the biochemistry depart- Making of Glynn ment, despite its wealth of talent. by John Prebble and Bruce Weber However, in his last few years Oxford University Press: 2003. 344 pp. there he published, together with $65, £45.50 Jennifer Moyle, experiments on E. C. Slater the transport of phosphate into the bacterial cell that foreshadowed the Peter Mitchell was an outstanding theoreti- work for which he became famous. Moyle cal biologist who had what Leslie Orgel remained his scientific collaborator until has characterized as a counterintuitive idea her retirement in 1983. that led to a fundamental shift in the way There are some errors in the description that biochemists viewed energy metabolism. of the Cambridge environment concerning The story of the gradual replacement of the the Molteno Institute of Parasitology and is surprising, considering that I worked chemical hypothesis of energy transduc- Biology, headed by David Keilin, where there from late 1946 to 1955, during which tion, which involved a non-phosphorylated Mitchell is described as having found “shel- time I published the chemical hypothesis of high-energy intermediate (not a phosphate ter” (possibly in late 1945 to early 1946). E. F. oxidative phosphorylation in Nature in 1953. compound, as stated in this book), with Hartree was not a member of the technical It is the overthrow of this hypothesis by the chemiosmotic theory has become, for staff, as stated in this book, but a PhD from Mitchell that is a major theme of this book. historians of science, a classic example of the University of London and co-author of In 1955, Mitchell moved to the Univer- how a paradigm shift occurs. most of Keilin’s classic papers for over 20 sity of Edinburgh, where he developed the In this biography, the story is related years. I am described as an “occasional post- first version of the chemiosmotic theory, again, primarily from Mitchell’s viewpoint. doctoral researcher” in the institute, which which was published in Nature in 1961. Ill- ness soon caused him to move to Cornwall, where he converted a derelict manor house History in the making called Glynn House into a private laboratory as “a quiet haven for untrammelled scientific It was one of the most momentous work and thought”, as he wrote to me in moments in the history of science, 1964. The story of Glynn is the second strand but even those people involved in this biography. In 1966, Mitchell pub- didn’t know for sure just what its lished, in what became known as ‘The Grey impact would be. 50 Years of DNA, Book’, a modified version of the chemi- published by Palgrave Macmillan osmotic theory in which he introduced the this month, tells the story of how the concept of proton motive force and ‘loops’ structure of DNA was discovered, in the electron-transfer chain. and describes its subsequent impact It took about ten years for the chemi- on science, medicine and culture. osmotic theory to be generally accepted, The book includes facsimiles and in 1978 Mitchell received the Nobel of the landmark paper by James Prize in Chemistry. Mitchell was so confi- Watson and Francis Crick (pictured dent that oxidative phosphorylation was far left), along with those by Maurice solved that in 1976 he resolved to cease Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin biochemical research and move into a new (pictured centre) and their colleagues field, perhaps economics. The following that first appeared in Nature on 25 April 1953. their views on the history and significance of year the decision was reversed when he Introductory chapters take the reader on a Watson and Crick’s discovery, along with their considered that his theory was again under journey from the early days of molecular biology predictions of what genetics might achieve in attack. It is worth noting that when the through to the sequencing of the human the next 50 years. Edited by Julie Clayton and chemiosmotic theory became the new genome, incorporating interviews with some Carina Dennis, both former editors at Nature, paradigm, Mitchell was just as resistant to of the key players. The book concludes with a the book celebrates the triumph of the DNA attacks on parts of the theory as the support- collection of essays by prominent experts giving double helix. ers of the old paradigm had been. The first assault came from Mårten