Page 162 - IELTS Preparation Grammar and Vocab

Exam practice

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A A Monk and Two Peas by Robin Marantz lienig C Why Things Bite Bark by Edward Tenner
The work of an Augustinian monk from Brno laid the Subtitled 'Technology and the Revenge of Unintended
foundations of the science of genetics. Gregor Mendel Consequences',Tenner's book is an entertaining look
was born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1822 at the myriad ways in which advances in science and
and entered the monastery at the age of nineteen. technology seem to recoil against us.What we gain
In the mid-1840s he began to conduct a series of on the roundabouts we lose on the swings. Antibiotics
experiments with pea plants grown in the monastery promise release from the perils of major diseases
garclen and he continued these for twenty years. Over and end up encouraging microorganisms to develop
this period, by crossing pea plants which had clear resistance to them.Widespread use of air conditioning
differentiations in height, colour, etc and by carefully results in an increase in the temperature outdoors,
logging the results, Mendel was able to formulate the thus requiring further cooling systems.American
basic principles behind heredity. Mendel's work was Football safety helmets become more efficient but this
only published in obscure journals, he was eventually heralds an increase in more violent play and injuries
led away from science by administrative duties at the actually rise. Tenner mounts up the evidence in a book
monastery and it was only some years after his death designed to appeal to technophile and technophobe
that the significance of his work was appreciated. alike. And remember, the disaster at Chernobyl was
Mendel's life was a quiet one, but a very important triggered during a safety test. Ironies like that just
one to the science of the twentieth century. A Monk aren't Emmy.
and Two Peas tells the story very well, explaining
clearly Mendel's experiments and drawing out their
D A BrijHistory of the Future by John Naughton
significance.
So rapidly has the Internet become an integral part
of many people's lives that it is easy to forget that
B The Maths Gene by Keith Devlin
only a few years ago it was known to the general
For those who are mathematically challenged it's an public, if at all, as a playground for nerdy academics
attractive notion that everybody possesses a latent and that it is one of the most astonishing of all man's
talent for maths and that it is just a question of finding inventions. John Naughton, fellow of Churchill
the right key to access it. Devlin, despite the tide of College, Cambridge and regular journalist on The
his book, is not suggesting that there is a gene for Observer and other newspapers, has been on the net
maths that the Human Genome project might identify for many years himself and is the ideal person to write
but he is saying that we have a natural ability to do a history of what he calls this 'force of unimaginable
maths, that it exists in everybody and there are sound power'. Starting with three little-known visionaries at
evolutionary reasons why this is the case. The ability MIT in the 1930s, Naughton traces the story through
to do maths, clearly, means an ability to handle abstract the engineers like Tim Berners-Lee who realised their
ideas and relationships and this provides advantages in vision, and on into what the future may hold. Written
evolutionary terms. As human language emerged, so with the skill one might expect from a fine journalist
also did a new capacity for abstraction and this formed and informed with the knowledge of an engineering
the foundations on which mathematical thought has professor, this is among the first histories of the net but
been built. Some readers might find Devlin's account is likely to remain among the best for some time to
of the evolution of language debatable but his ideas come.
about the nature of our mathematical powers and his
practical suggestions about how to improve them are
constantly stimulating.

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