This marvellous book has a little bit of everything. Steve Jones is an academic geneticist, and has written several books explaining his field, and defending Darwinian theories of evolution, in a similar vein to Richard Dawkins, though without the deliberate and self-aggrandising provocation. In this book, however, he has moved to the history of science, throwing in a pretty comprehensive analysis of the French Revolution along the way.

The basic message of the book is both the pre-eminence of Paris as a centre of scientific endeavour in the late eighteenth century, and the significant participation of those scientists within the Revolution. As with the Russian Revolution(s) of 1917, infighting between the leaders of the movement and their respective factions hampered political progress, and also resulted in the violent demise of many of the principal protagonists. The scientists were not exempt from this, and many went to the guillotine.

Jones writes with great enthusiasm and clarity, and conveys the rabid emotions of the time. he is also in absolute control of the material. As we might expect he is adept at explaining the scientific advances of the age. He is also particularly good at unpicking the political nuances, and his explanation of the factionalism within the revolutionary movement is one of the clearest I have read.

This is, quite simply, an excellent example of cross-disciplinary scholarship. ( )

The concept is to profile science and scientists at the time of the French Revolution. It was the Enlightenment, and all over England and northern Frances “scientists” were inventing, discovering and collaborating as never before. In France, the government supported it. (In England, it was entirely private.) In France, revolutionary courts guillotined them. Those who survived went on to be governors and senators. Several became enormously wealthy for inventing things like tanning for leather and bleach.

The book wanders all over scientific fields, expanding on what the scientists started, describing the state of the art today, pointing out where they were wrong, and the value of what they did. It also describes the context, the surrealist environment of an impoverished and filthy city in the midst of a violent upheaval. All very colorful and engaging. Jones is a scientist, and his enthusiasm and passion make the whole enterprise glide effortlessly.

This is the American edition of the British original, but unfortunately the American publisher didn’t bother to edit it – except for the title, which they changed to Revolutionary Science –without explanation. It was No Need For Geniuses – which is what the judge said when sentencing one very prominent scientist to the guillotine. Jones refers to his original title four times in the course of the book, and it is confusing to say the least. So now you know what he’s talking about.

One point worth remembering came from Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who Jones calls France’s greatest optimist. He actually invented the word biology. He spent his life in biology and paleontology (beating Darwin to the evolutionary punch), and came to the conclusion that Man “is destined to exterminate himself after having rendered the globe uninhabitable.” That was at the turn of the century – the nineteenth century.

David Wineberg ( )