Relearning the basics
Rob Price

If you're like me, you came close to flunking high school chemistry. You also aren't sure whether amino acids contain proteins, or the other way around. And where, you may ask, does DNA fit into all this?

The United States has been in the foreground of scientific progress for at least the last 70 years. But Americans as a rule are woefully ignorant of science. A recent poll showed only 35 percent of American adults believe the theory of evolution is "well supported" by evidence. And how many Americans know the difference between astronomy and astrology?

Fortunately a new book has been published that can bring all of us up to speed on scientific matters, and it can be read in less than a week of leisurely reading. I know this because I read it last week. The book is titled "The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science," and it's written by Natalie Angier, a journalist who covers science news for The New York Times.

I asked my wife to give me a copy of the book for my birthday, on the grounds that my knowledge of basic science peaked sometime in my first year of college, when I got a B in physi and still remembered DNA is contained within a single cell, not the other way around. A lot has happened since those medieval years: We are in the process of mapping the human genome (and discovering in the process it's not all that different from the genome of a mouse), but if you'd asked me what a genome is, I'd have shaken my head. I'd forgotten so much science, although I've become a whizz at calculating property taxes.

I'm happy to report Natalie Angier's book has changed all that, and it can change your life for the better, too. The book is divided into nine chapters that include overviews of physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, geology and astronomy. Having read it from cover to cover, I can testify it has refreshed my deteriorated base of scientific knowledge; it has also expanded that base into areas of science I never paid any attention to.

The important issue, though, isn't my private cache of scientific knowledge. The important issue is your own understanding of things scientific. Like it or not, we live in a world of scientific technology. But who runs the technology? Who is experimenting with stem cells; who is experimenting with the genetic basis of agricultural products. If you don't know what a stem cell is, and if you don't know what a gene is, obviously you're not in charge of these projects. Worse, these projects are in charge of you; they are casting long shadows over your life.

Does that sound like a solid basis for a democracy? I don't think so.

The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently described attending graduation ceremonies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, one of the premier engineering schools in the U.S., and watching as the vast majority of the graduating class turned out to be foreignborn students. The majority of that majority, Friedman speculated, would return to their native countries, taking with them the vital technical knowledge they had gathered in school.

Where are the young American scientists? Friedman wondered. And how can the U.S. maintain its high standard of living if its population is gradually drained of scientific thought?

Natalie Angier's book won't turn any of us into a Rennsalaer-trained engineer, but it can help a reader become familiar again with some of the basic science that is guiding the modern world. I for one am grateful for the mnemonic trick "Kings pour coffee on fairy god-sisters." The first letter of each word is the same first letter of the basic classification system used in evolutionary theory: Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. Take a look at yourself in the mirror and you see an example of the sapien species, a member of the Homo genus, itself a subset of the Hominidae family (which includes chimpanzees and gorillas), which is part of the larger primate order, which is part of the mammalian class, a small part of the primate phylum, and all of these groups are part of the animalia, or animal, kingdom. You animal.

Knowing this doesn't make me any smarter. Possibly, it's even cluttered my brain. But now I'm ready to learn a little more about stem cell research. I can think a little better for myself. That's what's really useful.