Alice Roberts
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us
Heron Books, 2014
Alice Roberts is Professor of Public Engagement with Science at the University of Birmingham, and is perhaps the outstanding scientific polymath of our age: medic, anatomist, anthropologist, archaeologist, television science presenter and no mean artist. The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being is her latest book and sets out to unfold for us the amazing way in which we develop as an embryo and foetus and some of the ways in which we have probably evolved to this. And what an amazing voyage we are taken on!
I found the book immensely interesting and very readable. Roberts’ style is light, airy and chattily personal, while being scientifically accurate and informative — at times amusing and even ribald: how many authors could get away with a section entitled “Mind the Bollocks”? In fact I found the book so readable I had to ration myself to one or two chapters a night otherwise I would have devoured it in a single all night read.
We are taken on a journey from conception to birth with a look at how all the major systems of the body develop throughout pregnancy from the single egg and the successful sperm to the birth of a baby. Along the way Roberts describes the embryology, including insights from her own two pregnancies and the medical tests she has had done on her in the interests of science.
But more than this, she also discusses the archaeological evidence for how and why evolution has given us the kit of parts we have; how evolution got to produce them; and why they are different from other species. Right at the beginning of the book Roberts discusses the various theories of embryos and how babies are built from Aristotle to the present day. She is at pains to point out that each of these theories was consistent with the state of knowledge at the time so we shouldn’t scoff at them for being ignorant — one day our theories will be considered equally backward in the light of new knowledge.
Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have reservations about it. It is a book for the scientifically (specifically, medically) literate layman. Roberts, rightly in my view, calls things by their correct scientific and medical names but I felt too often missed the opportunity to explain those names; what the part is or does. Of course the downside of providing more explanation is that it could disrupt the flow of the text (and make for a larger, more expensive book).
However I think there is a solution, at least in part, to this problem. The book is illustrated by Roberts’ own delightful line drawings — a very real demonstration of her skill as an anatomist! But there are for my money far too few illustrations. There were many occasions where I felt that a drawing (or other illustration) could have made the text much more powerful: especially in cases where the anatomy of different species, or at different stages of development, is being compared. Yes, some of those drawings are there, but for me too few. And drawings could have been used to explain some of the otherwise unexplained. In this respect I wanted more.
My other gripe is one which I all too frequently have to level at modern publishing (rather than authors): the poor quality of the paper used. Yes everyone wants to keep cost down and at £19.99 for almost 400 pages in hardback this is at the cheaper end of the spectrum. But oh that poor quality paper, which will not stand the test of time.
These are, however, relatively minor complaints about a book which I found informative, hugely interesting and immensely readable. I definitely came out somewhere different to where I went in!
So if you are interested in how babies grow in the womb, and how we got to be the shape we are, then I would thoroughly recommend this book.
It really is just so unlikely that we are all here, and as “normal” as we are!
Overall Rating: ★★★★★