快猫短视频

INSECTOPEDIA is an eclectic collection of 26 essays and vignettes about insects and our relationship with them. As a mix of travel writing, cultural observation and history, this is a fine piece of work. Unfortunately, it has several shortcomings as a popular science book.

The essays are arranged alphabetically, encyclopedia-style. It gets off to a great start with 鈥淎ir鈥�, an awe-inspiring account of the thousands of airborne insects that drift overhead each day. However, things take a turn for the worse in chapter C with 鈥淐hernobyl鈥�, a profile of entomological artist Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, who in her artwork documents deformity in insects collected near nuclear power plants. She cites this as evidence that much lower levels of radioactivity can trigger cell damage than mainstream science allows and says her ideas have been unfairly rejected by the scientific establishment. Raffles accepts her assertions at face value and offers no significant analysis of why scientists might have objections to her methods. In later chapters, he talks about the limitations of scientific methods and the merits of using art and subjective experience as a means to achieving knowledge.

Science should be open to critique from the humanities, but Raffles鈥檚 caricature of the scientific method as entirely elitist, restrictive and reductionist is blinkered. He arrives at this viewpoint from the argument that all routes to knowledge, from science to mysticism, are equally valid. If you share this view, your only problem will be tripping over the humanities jargon. If you reject it, you might be tempted to snap the book shut in frustration. This is a shame, because when Raffles moves on to our relationship with insects he shines.

His account of Chinese cricket-fighting, for example, is vivid and fascinating. Raffles transports us to modern-day Shanghai, where the art of cricket selection and training is still based on principles outlined in the 13th-century Book of Crickets. In underground gambling dens, trainers imbue their duelling crickets with ancient warrior ideals of honour, while at the same time exchanging wads of cash.

Raffles also examines our contrary attitude to insects. Why are we happy to marvel at dead specimens in museums, but recoil when we see living ones? We share a lot of our genes with insects, so why do we feel so little compunction about killing them? Shortcomings aside, this book will challenge your view of insects and make you see these wonderful creatures from a new perspective.