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On Being the Right Size and Other Essays
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) was one of the great popularizers of science, as well as being a brilliant geneticist who helped found the modern theory of evolution. John Maynard Smith, one of his former pupils, has here selected some of his best popular pieces, including some of his weekly articles for the Daily Worker . They are still remarkable for their explanatory power and the quality of their ideas.
202 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 1985
About the author
J.B.S. Haldane
67 books76 followersJohn Burdon Sanderson Haldane was a British geneticist, biometrician, physiologist, and popularizer of science who opened new paths of research in population genetics and evolution.
Son of the noted physiologist John Scott Haldane, he began studying science as assistant to his father at the age of eight and later received formal education in the classics at Eton College and at New College, Oxford (M.A., 1914). After World War I he served as a fellow of New College and then taught at the University of Cambridge (1922–32), the University of California, Berkeley (1932), and the University of London (1933–57).
In the 1930s Haldane became a Marxist. He joined the British Communist Party and assumed editorship of the party’s London paper, the Daily Worker. Later, he became disillusioned with the official party line and with the rise of the controversial Soviet biologist Trofim D. Lysenko. In 1957 Haldane moved to India, where he took citizenship and headed the government Genetics and Biometry Laboratory in Orissa.
Haldane, R.A. Fisher, and Sewall Wright, in separate mathematical arguments based on analyses of mutation rates, population size, patterns of reproduction, and other factors, related Darwinian evolutionary theory and Gregor Mendel’s concepts of heredity. Haldane also contributed to the theory of enzyme action and to studies in human physiology. He possessed a combination of analytic powers, literary abilities, a wide range of knowledge, and a force of personality that produced numerous discoveries in several scientific fields and proved stimulating to an entire generation of research workers.
Son of the noted physiologist John Scott Haldane, he began studying science as assistant to his father at the age of eight and later received formal education in the classics at Eton College and at New College, Oxford (M.A., 1914). After World War I he served as a fellow of New College and then taught at the University of Cambridge (1922–32), the University of California, Berkeley (1932), and the University of London (1933–57).
In the 1930s Haldane became a Marxist. He joined the British Communist Party and assumed editorship of the party’s London paper, the Daily Worker. Later, he became disillusioned with the official party line and with the rise of the controversial Soviet biologist Trofim D. Lysenko. In 1957 Haldane moved to India, where he took citizenship and headed the government Genetics and Biometry Laboratory in Orissa.
Haldane, R.A. Fisher, and Sewall Wright, in separate mathematical arguments based on analyses of mutation rates, population size, patterns of reproduction, and other factors, related Darwinian evolutionary theory and Gregor Mendel’s concepts of heredity. Haldane also contributed to the theory of enzyme action and to studies in human physiology. He possessed a combination of analytic powers, literary abilities, a wide range of knowledge, and a force of personality that produced numerous discoveries in several scientific fields and proved stimulating to an entire generation of research workers.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 1, 2019
I wish every middle school math student who is learning about squares and cubes read the title essay. It raises cool anthro-physics questions ("why is the universe 3-dimensional?") while also relating to life and observable things like animals, instead of physics, physics, physics, physics.
Haldane also speaks about courage and noblesse oblige, two topics that seem quite important during our own Kali-Yuga.
Haldane also speaks about courage and noblesse oblige, two topics that seem quite important during our own Kali-Yuga.
July 30, 2023
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS, nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics.
He was one of the supreme popularisers of science and helped found the modern theory of evolution.
Haldane was also famous in his day for being a leading communist and a number of the articles in this collection first appeared in the Daily Worker.
He admitted to rather enjoying the First World War, but ended his life in India writing in defence of non-violence.
These essays are all interesting and especially the titular one 'On Being the Right Size' where Haldane states that for every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitability carries with it a change of form.
He was one of the supreme popularisers of science and helped found the modern theory of evolution.
Haldane was also famous in his day for being a leading communist and a number of the articles in this collection first appeared in the Daily Worker.
He admitted to rather enjoying the First World War, but ended his life in India writing in defence of non-violence.
These essays are all interesting and especially the titular one 'On Being the Right Size' where Haldane states that for every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitability carries with it a change of form.
March 21, 2020
Some of the writing is downright revelatory. The responsibility that Haldane takes in shaping the future of society as a scientist, philosopher, and human being, is so admirable. Skip ‘the biology of inequality’ which attempts to refute eugenical thinking but is too muddled to be of use in current conversation.
July 5, 2018
On Being the Right Size- a essay/article on very much complicated science; but, Haldane's encyclopedic knowledge and amazing descriptions made me to feel it like a Beautiful Fairy-Tail?!!
December 2, 2022
Haldane is such a divergent and creative outside-the-box thinker. This book rewards the focused and curious reader, infecting them with a glimmer of Haldane's brilliance.
Read
December 1, 2015I'm not sure if the .pdf file has the same contents as the paperback edition. Certainly, except for a few tables, there're no illustrations.
A note on the text: It's clear that the editor made some guesses as to what some words were. It's also clear to a thorough reader that a lot of the guesses were wrong. What's NOT clear is why there was any difficulty figuring out the text. Perhaps it was typed up from a manuscript?
Even if the readings were NOT clear in the original, many of them were easily derived from context (in some cases, for example, the unclear words are often obviously meant to be 'an' or 'the' or something simple like that).
Worse, there's rarely an indication of where such substitutions take place.
Contents:
I BLURB: (Entered verbatim in the book description (qv) as far as I can tell.)
II INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR (JOHN MAYNARD SMITH): Dispensable; hagiographic, and basically just an explanation for why the editor published this edition, and the reason why particular essays were selected.
III TITLE ESSAY: ON BEING THE RIGHT SIZE: I think there must be more than one version of this. I remember parts of the essay that don't seem to be in this version. Basically this is an explanation on why you'll never see a spider the size of a school bus (on Earth, at least.)
IV WILLIAM BATESON: This essay argues that Bateson, around 1900, independently came to more or less the same conclusions Mendel had come to earlier (c 1865). Which raises a fairly interesting question: Mendel's works are currently believed to be (probably largely unconsciously) fudged (for example, Mendel argued that traits are independently assorted--which they are; if they're located on different chromosomes. So is it coincidence, or just a matter of preconception affecting perception, that the seven traits Mendel observed in sweet peas were coded for by genes on different chromosomes?
V THE FUTURE OF BIOLOGY: Haldane is not unaware of the difficulties inherent in predicting the future of a science. One thing it's unlikely that he did know, however, was the effect of mathematical developments such as fractals and chaos theory. This is a very long essay, and is in need of bibliographic citations. There are also statements that need updating, and some are puzzling. For example, it's clear that this essay was written after aspirin was commonly available, yet one argument seems to argue that opiates are the only effective pain relievers. This may be true for severe pain, but the text implies that it's true for ALL pain, which is a little puzzling.
VI WHEN I AM DEAD: This speculation on the concept of survival after death seems somewhat lacking: for example, at least one Indian commentator pointed out that the fact that one can alter the quality of a radio signal by fiddling with the radio set CANNOT be taken to mean that the signal originates within the set itself. Which leaves open the possibility that the soul INHABITS the body (brain?), and is affected by the environment: but neither originates from, nor is coterminous with, the matrix it is usually observed in.
In fact, there is quite a bit of evidence that the soul is not inextricably confined to the body before death, either.
V SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY AS ART-FORMS:
This is basically a statement about language.
(more later)
A note on the text: It's clear that the editor made some guesses as to what some words were. It's also clear to a thorough reader that a lot of the guesses were wrong. What's NOT clear is why there was any difficulty figuring out the text. Perhaps it was typed up from a manuscript?
Even if the readings were NOT clear in the original, many of them were easily derived from context (in some cases, for example, the unclear words are often obviously meant to be 'an' or 'the' or something simple like that).
Worse, there's rarely an indication of where such substitutions take place.
Contents:
I BLURB: (Entered verbatim in the book description (qv) as far as I can tell.)
II INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR (JOHN MAYNARD SMITH): Dispensable; hagiographic, and basically just an explanation for why the editor published this edition, and the reason why particular essays were selected.
III TITLE ESSAY: ON BEING THE RIGHT SIZE: I think there must be more than one version of this. I remember parts of the essay that don't seem to be in this version. Basically this is an explanation on why you'll never see a spider the size of a school bus (on Earth, at least.)
IV WILLIAM BATESON: This essay argues that Bateson, around 1900, independently came to more or less the same conclusions Mendel had come to earlier (c 1865). Which raises a fairly interesting question: Mendel's works are currently believed to be (probably largely unconsciously) fudged (for example, Mendel argued that traits are independently assorted--which they are; if they're located on different chromosomes. So is it coincidence, or just a matter of preconception affecting perception, that the seven traits Mendel observed in sweet peas were coded for by genes on different chromosomes?
V THE FUTURE OF BIOLOGY: Haldane is not unaware of the difficulties inherent in predicting the future of a science. One thing it's unlikely that he did know, however, was the effect of mathematical developments such as fractals and chaos theory. This is a very long essay, and is in need of bibliographic citations. There are also statements that need updating, and some are puzzling. For example, it's clear that this essay was written after aspirin was commonly available, yet one argument seems to argue that opiates are the only effective pain relievers. This may be true for severe pain, but the text implies that it's true for ALL pain, which is a little puzzling.
VI WHEN I AM DEAD: This speculation on the concept of survival after death seems somewhat lacking: for example, at least one Indian commentator pointed out that the fact that one can alter the quality of a radio signal by fiddling with the radio set CANNOT be taken to mean that the signal originates within the set itself. Which leaves open the possibility that the soul INHABITS the body (brain?), and is affected by the environment: but neither originates from, nor is coterminous with, the matrix it is usually observed in.
In fact, there is quite a bit of evidence that the soul is not inextricably confined to the body before death, either.
V SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY AS ART-FORMS:
This is basically a statement about language.
(more later)
August 23, 2015
Haldane was a remarkable scientist, with encyclopedic knowledge of chemistry, biology, evolution, and even languages, and the ability to pull from all of it to see useful relationships, deepen understanding, and see well into the future. I found it immensely enjoyable reading his essays and watching him cut right through one bit of nonsense after another, across fields, to get to the truth of things (admitting at every turn where he was less than certain of it). He had forward-thinking ideas, too, like that the various races are a lot more similar than they were believed to be in his time, and that we should practice non-violence, ensuring that even animals used in scientific testing are shielded from pain and fear. I was impressed by something on nearly every page, and I'm glad I got to know something of his life and works.
August 27, 2014
There was one major oversight of the editor: He didn't include the original date of publication for each of the essays. Knowing the year Haldane wrote each piece would have been useful to understanding the historical context of the essays (before or after WWII, before or after the discovery of DNA, etc...)
The essays were quirky, imaginative, easy to read. I was surprised how many references to religion and politics there were.
Comparing a bacteriophage to a gene--I had never quite thought of it the first way before:
"In the present state of our ignorance we may regard the gene either as a tiny organism which can divide in the environment provided by the rest of the cell; or as a bit of machinery which the 'living' cell copies at each division."
The essays were quirky, imaginative, easy to read. I was surprised how many references to religion and politics there were.
Comparing a bacteriophage to a gene--I had never quite thought of it the first way before:
"In the present state of our ignorance we may regard the gene either as a tiny organism which can divide in the environment provided by the rest of the cell; or as a bit of machinery which the 'living' cell copies at each division."
Want to Read
August 1, 2016Presumably interesting collection of essays by quotable polymath statistician/geneticist(*). From "On Being the Right Size":
"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."
(*) As well as slavish devotee of Stalin. There's an appalling quote of his on wikipedia regarding poor Vavilov's show trial. Vavilov was merely a friend of his, but The Party was Haldane's God.
"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes."
(*) As well as slavish devotee of Stalin. There's an appalling quote of his on wikipedia regarding poor Vavilov's show trial. Vavilov was merely a friend of his, but The Party was Haldane's God.
Read
May 5, 2009I've seen this essay in several contexts, and I'm not sure this is the collection I read it in. It's always worth reading when you're engaging in the kind of xenobiological fancies that James White was best known for--enables you to understand why there aren't any ants the size of a city bus on Earth--but what if there were a planet with lower gravity and antlike creatures?
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews