The Science of Biology

Abstract

The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters . By Sean B. Carroll. 2016. Princeton University Press. (ISBN 0691167427). 280 pp. Hardcover. $23.58. Before I launched into The Serengeti Rules , the new book by Sean B. Carroll, I anticipated that I would read about top-down versus bottom-up control of populations and the experiments that scientists have employed to test and explain these patterns. But I should have known that Carroll would also take the reader on a fantastic journey through the history of the scientific discovery of many of nature's most important regulatory mechanisms, from molecules to megafauna. Still practicing as a molecular biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Carroll is also vice president of science education for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In the spirit of Theodosius Dobzhansky, Carroll teaches us in The Serengeti Rules that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of regulation .” And he reveals this truth by way of a skill for which he is already well known: storytelling. Throughout the book, Carroll artfully and with careful research tells the stories of the scientists – and their discoveries – that have given us our current understanding of regulation in nature. But within the stories, Carroll also teaches the reader about the nature of science and scientific reasoning, as well as how scientific discovery is full of determination and success but also frequented by failure. The scientists and their stories are too many to summarize in a short review, but here are some highlights. The book opens with “Part I: Everything is Regulated.” Carroll begins this first section with his own descriptive story of a recent trip he took to the Serengeti, but the focus quickly transitions to 1896 and the questions and experiments of Walter Cannon. I had never heard of Cannon, but I should have. In short, we learn that Cannon was a Harvard University physiologist who questioned why fear and stress affect …