On his book The Chemical Age: How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth
Cover Interview of September 02, 2020
In a nutshell
The Chemical Age is the story of intense famines,
ceaseless wars, ravaging diseases, and ecological disasters, told through the
personal lives of the scientists who strove to either halt calamity or
facilitate it. The book orbits around the human propensity to innovate without
thinking through potential consequences.
Perhaps no field of scholarship illustrates this better than
that of chemistry. Since the origin of organic chemistry in 1828, scientists
have synthesized hundreds of thousands of chemicals. Many of these chemicals
were designed to fight the scourges of humanity, such as famine and infectious
diseases, while other chemicals were designed to kill people. Scientists
engaged in extraordinary risks to advance and test their chemical innovations,
and some participated in the most egregious crimes in history. All the while,
these novel chemicals were broadcast throughout the world, where they poisoned
wildlife, disrupted ecosystems, and compromised human health.
Ultimately, the realization of these unintended consequences
gave rise to the global environmental movement. I would like the reader to gain
an appreciation for human history through the lens of chemistry—for the ways in
which famine, plagues, war, and ecology are inextricably bound; for the
desperate races to save society from collapse as crops failed and diseases
swept across national boundaries; and for the outsized role of innovative
scientists in humanity’s trajectory.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
The Chemical Age is the story of intense famines, ceaseless wars, ravaging diseases, and ecological disasters, told through the personal lives of the scientists who strove to either halt calamity or facilitate it. The book orbits around the human propensity to innovate without thinking through potential consequences.
Perhaps no field of scholarship illustrates this better than that of chemistry. Since the origin of organic chemistry in 1828, scientists have synthesized hundreds of thousands of chemicals. Many of these chemicals were designed to fight the scourges of humanity, such as famine and infectious diseases, while other chemicals were designed to kill people. Scientists engaged in extraordinary risks to advance and test their chemical innovations, and some participated in the most egregious crimes in history. All the while, these novel chemicals were broadcast throughout the world, where they poisoned wildlife, disrupted ecosystems, and compromised human health.
Ultimately, the realization of these unintended consequences gave rise to the global environmental movement. I would like the reader to gain an appreciation for human history through the lens of chemistry—for the ways in which famine, plagues, war, and ecology are inextricably bound; for the desperate races to save society from collapse as crops failed and diseases swept across national boundaries; and for the outsized role of innovative scientists in humanity’s trajectory.