麻豆传媒

THERE is no shortage of books about digital culture and its deleterious effects. The same goes for publications on healing our addicted and distracted minds or that recommend contemplating nature as a mental salve.

How To Do Nothing is different. Author Jenny Odell calls it 鈥渁n activist book disguised as a self-help book鈥� and explains why 鈥渋n an environment completely geared toward capitalist appropriation of even our smallest thoughts鈥� doing nothing is hard鈥�.

The attention economy is well served by technology but isn鈥檛 driven by it. As Odell reminds us, around 306 BC, the Greek sage Epicurus set up his philosophical school on the outskirts of Athens to avoid the centre鈥檚 opportunism, corruption, machinations and military bravado.

From a couple of millennia later, she quotes Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who called busyness a 鈥渟ymptom of deficient vitality鈥�, and observed 鈥渁 sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation鈥�.

What to do? Groups resisting a prevailing cult of urgency quickly become their own little fiefdoms, ruled over by their own little philosopher-kings. Individual acts of resistance, on the other hand, rarely achieve scale. We admire the polite obstructionism of the clerk in Herman Melville鈥檚 short story Bartleby, the Scrivener. But the poor devil still ends up dead in jail.

Odell argues that turning our backs on social media to engage with our immediate environment and its plight may offer us a third, more effective line of resistance. Stirring stuff.
Simon Ings

The eyes of giant and colossal squid grow up to 40 centimetres in diameter, the largest in nature. Why? No adaptive advantage has been found for such huge, expensive jellies. And what about the giraffe? 鈥淚t could be that giraffes evolved long necks to outdo other browsers,鈥� argues philosopher Daniel Milo, 鈥渂ut there is no reason鈥� giraffes should rise two meters , the African elephant.鈥�

Good Enough wonders why evolutionary biologists shun the scientific thinking called the null hypothesis. This states, says Milo, that 鈥渆very relationship between phenomena is, by default, the fruit of chance鈥�. If you think the squid needs big eyes, or the giraffe a long neck, prove it. If you can鈥檛, then chance is a sufficient explanation. 鈥淢ost of what survives was not selected but is just not bad enough to be eliminated,鈥� Milo observes.

Some of nature鈥檚 wonders might be happy accidents, rather than masterpieces of adaptation. The human brain is one such. For most of our history we have been an endangered species 鈥� the only one that gives birth two months later than we physically should, to infants that are 鈥渘eurologically half-cooked鈥�. The intellectual gifts our brains provided were barely enough to drag us, 70,000 years ago, through a population bottleneck that may have seen human numbers fall to 10,000.

鈥淢ost of what survives was not selected but is just not bad enough to be eliminated鈥�

Today, coddled in a warm bath of culture, our brains are no longer useful, says Milo: they just are. 鈥淭he skills our ancestors cultivated for the purpose of survival no longer serve that purpose,鈥� he writes, from the perspective of 21st-century plenty, 鈥測et the skills remain.鈥� The 鈥渁nti-boredom project鈥� we call culture, thrives not because it is selected for through struggle, 鈥渂ut because there is no struggle鈥�.

It is a charming argument, suited to lazy, sunny afternoons: 鈥淲hy should we struggle and strain when we are all good enough?鈥�
Simon Ings

Alexander von Humboldt was one of the greatest scientists of all time, a polymath and explorer who paved the way for Darwin and foresaw climate change and environmental destruction more than 200 years ago. Andrea Wulf won an award for her biography of him; now she has teamed up with artist Lillian Melcher to create a wonderful, rich graphic novel of Humboldt鈥檚 incredible life.

鈥淚 fear that one day man will travel to distant planets,鈥� wrote Humboldt. 鈥淎nd then he鈥檒l take his lethal mixture of vice, greed, violence and ignorance to those planets too 鈥� turning them barren and ravaged as we are already doing with Earth.鈥� Humboldt saw nature as a living whole, a 鈥渨onderful web of organic life鈥�, describing it without resorting to God. After Wulf鈥檚 mission to elevate Humboldt to his rightful place, this beautiful book should bring him to a new audience.
Rowan Hooper

鈥淲hen you look closely at the back of your hand, it is as if you are in a passenger aircraft peering down at the world from 30,00 feet,鈥� writes dermatologist Monty Lyman in one of the few books to tackle skin, our largest, most visible organ. And somehow you know exactly what he means.
Liz Else

An Australian science thriller that centres on an immigrant doctor and a clinical trial that goes horribly wrong. This has its origins in the real-life horror story of the 2006 UK clinical trial of autoimmune drug TGN1412.
Donna Lu

Want to learn how to build a better battery with viruses? How plants are being re-engineered to produce more food? Or how computers will interface with our brains? Your amazing guide to the future of biology is the former president of the Aladdin鈥檚 cave that is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Rowan Hooper

The world is melting. We are on a terrifying path towards the eventual loss of the cryosphere, that part of our world made of ice and snow. Geologist Vivien Gornitz describes all aspects of the science of the thawing world, and of the ecological, climatic, social and economic consequences. Read it, and act before it is too late.
Rowan Hooper

Catch up with the first of two connected novels before the next, Interference, in late autumn. Imagine Kim Stanley Robinson鈥檚Mars Trilogy 鈥� but with sentient alien plants. Gripping and strong on biology and consciousness.
Ruby Prosser Scully

Just the thing for a very, very long train journey: a book of fiendish cryptic puzzles and ciphers. Start with Caeser鈥檚 novel and end with Enigma variation. Good luck!
Liz Else

The Science Vs team aims to put us right by sorting out what is fact, what isn鈥檛 and what is in-between for faddish topics. Hosted by Wendy Zuckerman, the team tackles DNA kits, alcohol and fasting diets. Great fun, offering episode transcripts often featuring more than 100 citations.