Customer Reviews

Darwin's Audubon: Science And The Liberal Imagination

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What amazed me about this book - apart from the excellent writing and obvious literary skills of Weismann - was the way the author brought seemingly disparate ideas and themes together: choral music and sanitation; unusual psychological syndromes and military service.

There's an endless imagination drawn on here - maybe a bit clunkily at times - and this is one of Weismann's overarching themes: the importance of imagination.

I enjoyed this - and will keep on dreaming.

Essays by the author provide plenty of insights into science and the liberal imagination, bringing together works from his prior books to accompany seven new works. The author's analysis of art, science, and culture considers influences on all and how the various genres have helped each other to evolve.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure if I was a doctor, biologist, or chemist of sorts, I might have enjoyed the book much more. However, I'm not any of those things, so this book, though very interesting at times, was on the whole a drag and I could have probably spent my time doing something else.

My favorite essays were Puerperal Priority, Science Fictions, Call Me Madame, In Quest of Fleck, Losing a MASH. A lot of the essays I found dull or else I was too lazy to be as imaginative as Weissmann. Like I said, a person more attuned to his field of medecine might care to think about what he's saying while I just let it pass through unnoticed.

Anyways, all in all, I must admit that the author is an excellent writer and his superior education in the sciences and humanities is evident from all of his writings.