I thoroughly enjoyed reading Klein’s account of his discussions with these leading natural and social scientists. I came out thinking that there was no real theme, just an account of scientists chatting about what’s important to them, or maybe not so important but fun.

Klein was aware of his own role in these conversations, steering them, giving us introductions to them, and ultimately, of course, enjoying some of them much more than others. And since I didn’t know at the outset that Klein lived in Germany (it’s prepublication, an ebook, no author bio at the beginning), I didn’t understand all the little digs at Germany until about halfway through. It turns out that’s scientist humor. Anyway, with Klein’s role acknowledged, I felt they were great interview reads, allowing us to get a feel for the personalities of these famous scientists and the nature of the work they do.

The scientists have a huge range of outlooks and interests. A couple of them were clearly more, ummm, aware of their own greatness than I was comfortable with, but Klein didn’t have to say it. The rest were surprisingly humble. Science really is a collaborative field, and these folks realize that. Most of them have figured out how to get along with people and how to talk to people. That’s part of why they’re famous.

Just for fun, here are what I thought to be interesting tidbits or uber-short summaries of these interviews, as I read them:

1. Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal and former president of the Royal Society.  According to Rees, you can hold the position of Astronomer Royal posthumously, which gave me a strange visual.  He talks about aliens much the way you would expect a British Baron sipping tea would.
2. Richard Dawkins.  You know who he is.  Everything is Darwinian.  If it isn’t, then it’s dumb Darwinian.  Unless it’s unusually sophisticated Darwinian.  Even things that are anti-Darwinian are Darwinian in a way.  Like super-niceness.  Which is dumb.  But also kinda nice.
3. V.S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist.  We’re wired to have religious experiences.  Which either proves there’s no god, or proves there is a God and He created us to have religious experiences.  Also, I can convince you that this table is part of your body.
4. Jared Diamond.  Wait, what kind of scientist are you, anyway?  One that specialized in gall bladders, but then didn’t want to spend his whole life thinking about gall bladders.  So he thinks about birds and Papua New Guinea, and germs and guns and civilizations and…  And most of the things we think are important probably don’t matter.  But sustainability, which we don’t think about enough, is.
5. Jane Goodall, who speaks for the chimps.  Animals have personalities.. maybe we shouldn’t be so eager to categorize things that we miss this.  And interacting with nature is good for all of us.  And so is humility.  And Jane Goodall is awesome.
6. Steven Weinberg, cosmologist who worked on early particle physics theories.  Particle physics and beauty and harmony and simplicity and meaning.  Go.
7. Elizabeth Blackburn, molecular biologist.  Cell divisions age us.  Telomerase undoes that.  There’s no reason we need to get old and die.  Woah.
8. Peter Singer, philosopher.  Don’t exactly know why he’s in here besides that he’s famous and Klein obviously just really wanted to interview him.  It is important stuff, tho.  Mentions luxury being immoral and then went on to other things..
9. Nocholas Christakis, doctor, sociologist, and Greek.  It’s our interactions with other people that makes us who we are.  And DNA and environment.  But mostly other people.  [Me:  wait, why does everyone think the part they work on is the most important?  Can’t we all agree it’s all important?  But interesting stuff, anyway.  But he claims he never picks his friends keeping this in mind.  Feels contradictory to me.  He says he’s just a friendly person.]
10. Craig Venter, human genome guy.  He was the first (no, not one of the first, he corrects) to have his genome sequenced.  But probably that doesn’t mean anything, because a lot of the interesting stuff is in the interactions of genes, not just the sequencing.  But he was the first, don’t forget it.  *sigh*
11. Roald Hoffman, chemist and poet.  Complicated things like the hemoglobin molecule things are beautiful.  He’s done with the whole simplicity thing.  [The physicist in me can’t get with this.]
12. Hannah Monyer, neurobiologist.  Memories are intricate, changing things.  Amazing stuff.
13. Vittorio Gallese, neuroscientist.  Empathy is built-in and important.  [And finally, finally someone confirms that sympathy is a more intimate connection with others than empathy is.  That’s what I learned a long long time ago, but somehow sympathy got tangled up with pity and no one wants to claim it anymore…]
14. Raghaventra Gadagkar, biologist.  Ropalidia wasps are awesome and could teach us something about altruism.  Also, contrary to popular belief, you can do real science in India.
15. Ernst Fehr.  A refreshing take on ethics and morality, despite the fact the guy is an economist.  Wow.
16. Walter Zieglgansberer, neuropharmacologist and pain researcher.  Talked about pain.  This guy is focused.  Horrifying anecdote about a couple coming home from a night out and discovering that their children had watched soft porn and concluded that sex was extremely painful for women.  Hmmm.
17. Sara Hrdy.  “The Female Side of Evolution”.  Because there are too many vowels and not enough women in the book otherwise.
18. Alison Gopnik, psychologist.  Babies are cool.  Hmmm, got two women in there by talking about motherhood (Hrdy) and babies (Gopnik).  I’m such a cynic.  This one’s a little better read.
19. Leonardo da Vinci.  Wait, what?  This is the whimsical one.  And probably proof that Klein has access to better drugs than I do.

So there’s no real unifying theme, but I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in the philosophy of science, or science and ethics especially. When discussing their lives and influences, many of the interview subjects circled around those questions.   But the book is constructed as though he expects you to start at the beginning and lose interest after a while.  The last 3 or 4 could have been left out.  But the first 15 are definitely worth a read and some thought.  Highly recommended overall.

I got a free copy of this from Net Galley.