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The Kindly Dr. Guillotin: And Other Essays on Science and Life

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It seems that Dr. Joseph Guillotin has gotten a bum rap. His proposal, which was not even original, for a mechanical executor was inspired by humanitarian thoughts.
According to Professor Harold Morowitz, headsmen often did a careless job with their axes, and all Guillotin wanted was quicker, cleaner death for victims of the French Revolution.
Nor, and this is a surprise, did Guillotin die under the blade of his own suggestion. I must have read in 20 different places that he did, but Morowitz says he died peacefully in 1814.
The death of Dr. Guillotin on the guillotine turns out to be an urban legend, but we may well wonder why it has been so popular in America, where it is hard to commit any crime heinous enough to be killed for it.
Morowitz would have it be impossible and suggests that such a policy be called thurgood, after the late Supreme Court associate justice Thurgood Marshall, who considered the death penalty unconstitutional.
Though Morowitz has published several collections of essays, I did not know that when I picked up "The Kindly Dr. Guillotin." I wanted to hear more from the man who wrote "Beginnings of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis."
That 1993 book by Morowitz is one of the best at explaining how life could have arisen from non-life without the assistance of a Big Spook.
These essays, on the other hand, are much lighter in weight. A good many relate to what he learned on his vacations.
He is probably one of very few visitors to Lahaina, Maui, who spent a lot of time at the library.
He started out to Lahaina Jodo Mission, home of one of the biggest Buddha statues outside Asia, which led him to wonder about the fig tree that the Buddha sat under. That led him to the library, then to Dan's Greenhouse, and he ended up taking a bonsai back home.
Some of his essays are a little more consequential than that. He makes several attempts to deal with the question of how we educate our young.
This leads him to some plausible, trendy ideas that, perhaps, do not bear close examination.
Back at George Mason University, where he is a distinguished professor of biology and natural philosophy, Morowitz teaches a course called "Biological Themes in Literature."
He has a hidden agenda he admits -- teaching biology to English majors who might otherwise reject science and teaching literature to biology majors who might shy away from the humanities.
One book studied is Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," written, says Morowitz, "in an age of few women authors."
Oh, really? What about Jane Austen? Or Maria Edgeworth, probably the best-selling novelist in England at that time? Another woman, Germaine de Stael, was the best-selling non-fiction writer in all Europe.
What men were writing novels in English then? Sir Walter Scott. Bet you can't name another in 30 seconds.
It makes me glad I finished by schooling before the study of literature ws turned into an intellectual slum in the name of feminism.
I really wanted to like this book, I have several volumes of Morowitz' essays. This is the least of them, though it has its moments.