杏吧原创

VARIETY is the watchword for this year鈥檚 Aventis science book prizes, all the more so, perhaps, thanks to the absence of popular science staples like cosmology. Philip Ball鈥檚 Critical Mass, pursuing new insights into group behaviour, offers variety in a single book. As Ball tracks his quarry into many unexpected corners of politics, economics and sociology, he offers a novel take on the links between the history of political philosophy, Newtonian physics and statistical mechanics. The overarching idea that there may be an emerging physics of society is perhaps not completely persuasive, but the journey is intriguing.

With the UK鈥檚 general election campaign over, perhaps there is a slim chance that British politicians will take note of Griffith Edwards鈥檚 Matters of Substance, in which he attempts to inject some facts and history into the discussion of drugs and why we like them. He distils his lifetime study of drugs in all their forms into a book that combines clarity, sense and even wisdom. Anyone who thinks we should wage a 鈥渨ar on drugs鈥� should be made to read it, as should those who support total legalisation.

More concerned with individual humans is Robert Winston鈥檚 The Human Mind. He makes the most of this opportunity to use research that did not make it into the successful BBC TV series. It all slips down easily enough, but suffers from the lack of a clear organising idea. There are a lot of trees here for the reader trying to get a clear picture of the wood.

Douwe Draaisma鈥檚 Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older won prizes when it appeared in Dutch, and is a treasure. Draaisma鈥檚 exploration of how our lives are shaped by the remembered past is a wry and literate investigation of the history of psychology and of the human condition. The result is informative, amusing and moving. Long after you close it, it leaves a good memory.

The more familiar main contenders are the two Richards, Fortey and Dawkins. Fortey鈥檚 The Earth: An intimate history is an extended tour of how the surface of the planet, and human cultures, have all been shaped by the slow drama of plate tectonics. Fortey tours the sites, from Mount Vesuvius to the San Andreas fault, but never loses sight of the geological point.

Fortey describes The Earth, with its emphasis on people and places, as an anti-textbook. Dawkins鈥檚 latest meditation on evolution, tracking it back to its origins through the stories of thousands of earlier organisms, is more like an actual textbook, though an unusually beautiful one. The Ancestor鈥檚 Tale is a remarkable achievement; in parts equalling anything he has written. But its aspiration to completeness means it loses out on readability at times.

It would be surprising to see the prize not going to one of the Richards. For Dawkins, it would be a deserved lifetime achievement award, but I suspect Fortey has the edge if the judgement turns on this year鈥檚 books. His closing chapter, scanning the whole planet, is a tour de force 鈥� the best single piece of writing here. To paraphrase Darwin, there is grandeur in this view of Earth.