快猫短视频

Complexity was the theme of the first Warwick prize for writing, the only cross-disciplinary writing competition in any format. Four books with science content made the long list of 20. Liz Else asked two of the judges, mathematician and fiction writer , about the formidable task of comparing different genres and picking winners.

CM: Some people were very concerned about the problem of comparing apples and pears. For us that was part of the pleasure. Before I started I expected more fiction or poetry, but as it turned out, non-fiction books rose to the surface more readily. We had to let each book persuade us on its own criteria, and judge accordingly.

As for 鈥渉ard鈥� science, it鈥檚 tricky because although part of the idea of the prize is accessibility, I think that can be a hostage to fortune: you have to be careful accessibility doesn鈥檛 degenerate into some kind of philistinism. I was very keen on entries that took their ideas seriously and weren鈥檛 afraid to make readers work.

鈥淚 was keen on entries that took their ideas seriously and weren鈥檛 afraid to make readers work鈥�

That was one reason Stuart Kauffman鈥檚 Reinventing the Sacred, which argues that we need to build a new sense of the sacred encompassing all such complex phenomena as life, made it to our shortlist. Kauffman doesn鈥檛 pull punches. If you are not a scientist 鈥� and I am not 鈥� you have to be thoughtful when engaging with ideas about emergence and so on. The book is for the non-specialist but it is very serious science. If we could get the same result with chemistry, I鈥檇 be delighted.

IS: We didn鈥檛 have many serious science books on our long list, but there were some beautifully written research books which were not nominated. In the end, we had to ask: is this book well written, and does the author make their case well?

We also tried to avoid judging things in terms of, 鈥渄o I like this kind of content?鈥� There is always a tendency to assume that your own field has enormous depth and complexity. So when it comes to areas you don鈥檛 know, you tend to judge on the grounds of two or three books you have already read.

This is as bad as judging science by A Brief History of Time, The Blind Watchmaker and The Language Instinct. They are all great books but they are not representative of science. If you assume they are, you end up thinking there鈥檚 a lot of very high-blown philosophy and not much hard-core stuff in science. The reverse would be true if you only read something like Nature.

Were any important books left out?

IS: Yes. The initial selection process has problems which need to be sorted out. I was surprised that a novel by Thomas Pynchon, which was among the original 200 or so nominations chosen by staff of the University of Warwick, didn鈥檛 make it to the long list. We were also disappointed the long list had no new-media entries 鈥� that鈥檚 one reason we would like students to nominate too in future.

Suppose you had a fantasy year, with an Einstein, a Keynes and a James Joyce all nominated?

CM: It would be great 鈥� and if they made it to the shortlist or even won that would definitely answer any criticisms that there might be about accessibility and philistinism. That would also work well with this prize being self-funded, not corporate.

IS: I鈥檇 love that. But I鈥檓 worried they might not get through our selection process, as with Pynchon. And of course there is the problem of not including real research entries, which I really think we should do.