Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This is a sort of cross-cultural book, all about how, even in the age of romanticism, science was an important part of cultural life. I think it would be helpful today if people were happy to embrace difference disciplines and there weren’t such divisions between science and art.
Your last book is The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes.
The reason for picking this is that it is a sort of cross-cultural book. Richard Holmes is a very eminent biographer. He has written biographies of several of the romantic poets including Shelley and Coleridge. And I was intrigued when I saw this book by him sitting in our bookshop, because I didn’t know that he was particularly interested in science. His book is all about how, even in the age of romanticism, science was an important part of culture. And it was, as the title suggests, both beautiful and offering much but also terrifying.
In those days it was considered completely normal to be interested in the arts but also to do scientific experiments. There was no contradiction there. Nowadays we have gone through this whole two cultures thing and many people think there is a massive divide, which I don’t think there is. And do you think it would be helpful today if people were happy to embrace different disciplines and there weren’t such divisions between science and art? Indeed I do, and as part of the 350-year celebrations the Royal Society and Tate Modern invited three artists to work with three scientists on different aspects of climate change and then to have a workshop on what they can do with the subject.
Some people would say that the whole idea of science saving us from the whole mess of climate change is a bit of a cop-out because we should be helping ourselves. I would say, yes, don’t bank on science alone. What is clear is that there is no free lunch, and almost everything we do has consequences of some sort or another. And there are still some things that ordinary people could and should do, and one of the most important things is to waste less.
But on the other hand I don’t think there is any reason to despair. Most of us who are working in this field alternate between optimism and despair on a fairly regular cycle. And people often say, ‘Are we headed for a catastrophe? What do you think?’ The answer is, I think we are in for a bumpy ride but I think there is a lot that we can do about it to make it less bumpy, and we could and should get on with them while we still have time. I don’t agree with the extreme environmentalists who say that all technological solutions should immediately be treated with suspicion. It isn’t science that has got us here. The first people who started burning coal weren’t scientists. They were just ordinary people trying things out. Essentially it’s just people who are responsible for the situation we are in. I do think that science played a part and science can also play a part in solving it, but we need other people as well.
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John Shepherd is a Professorial Research Fellow in Earth System Science in the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, UK. His current research interests include the natural variability of the climate system on long timescales. He has extensive experience of international scientific assessments and advice in the controversial areas of fisheries management, radioactive waste disposal and climate change, and has recently taken a particular interest in the interaction between science and public policy. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999, participated in the Royal Society study on Ocean Acidification, published in 2005, and chaired the study on Geoengineering the Climate, published in 2009.
