Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd
284 pages
Published 2007
Read from February 3 to February 6
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
Scientific
biography isn't my favorite genre of natural history book; I'd prefer
to imbibe my scientific knowledge directly from books dedicated to a
topic rather than to a person. Perhaps eighteen years spent browsing
science sections of bookstores and seeing dozens of variations on
"Darwin's God" and "Darwin's voyages" and "Darwin's life" and "Darwin's
wife" (depriving shelf space from anything interesting or informative)
have primed me to scoff at the idea of placing the scientist before the
science. It positively reeks of fallacious argument from authority. In
my ideal conception of science, the individual scientist only matters as
a potential source of bias and error. The work of many scientists over
many generations is what produces worthwhile knowledge, not the force of
one particular personality, no matter how attractive the latter may be
to the reading public (and, by extension, biographers). You may detect a
slight whiff of snobbery in my attitude: "Oh, those biographies may be all well and good for the unwashed rubes out beyond the gates of academia, but I'll reserve my
attentions for the important matters, thank you." But sometimes it can
be fun to learn about particular scientists, just as it can be fun to
learn about any other specific person. If I happen to resent scientific
biographies for hogging valuable shelf space better filled by real
science books, well, I try not to let that cloud my critical judgment.
The way the publishing world works, I gotta take what I can get.
I
was drawn to this book because I love a) early women scientists and b)
early science and scientists in general. I'd never before heard of Maria
Sibylla Merian. I'm not especially keen on entomology, but this Merian
person sounded interesting, and if I learned something about insects
along the way, all the better.
Unfortunately, as scientific
biographies go, this one was heavy on the biography, light on the
science. This, despite the fact that Merian left behind few personal
documents, consigning her to the fate of a historical cipher. There was
almost no scientific content until the penultimate chapter, which
quickly sketched out a current picture of metamorphosis before segueing
into talk of phenotypal plasticity. The biography was generally
interesting, so the book was still worth the read, but it left me
craving another good, satisfying natural history volume like The Tree.
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