Some interesting old books

Talking this morning with Fang we thought that instead of me e-mailing her some links we were talking about, I would post them here.

Many books whose copyright has expired have been scanned and made available on the internet. One good place to search is The Internet Archive. If you are looking for Darwin’s books The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online is also a good source.

Here are some examples:

Francis Lloyd’s Physiology of Stomata from 1908.

Charles Darwin’s The Power of Movement in Plants from 1898.

Loftfield’s The Behavior of Stomata from 1921.

Francis Darwin and Edward H. Acton’s Practical Physiology of Plants from 1901.

Wilhelm Pfefer’s The physiology of plants: a treatise upon the metabolism and sources of energy in plantsvolume 1 from 1900, volume 2 from 1903.

Julius Sachs Text-book of botany : morphological and physiological from 1882.

And the very nice colour illustrations I was telling Fang about are in Charles Darwin’s The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle published between 1838 and 1843.

Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by JM Williams

Years ago, when I read it for the first time, I found this book extremely useful in improving my writing style, and in diagnosing problems in my own and other people’s drafts. I plan to read it again.

The approach is quite different to other writing style books. There are few hard and fast rules, it is mainly centred on how to make your ideas clear and write text that is easy to read. It is full of  examples and good explanations of what works and what doesn’t.

There are two versions of the book: (links to amazon.co.uk)

Style: Toward Clarity and Grace by JM Williams (also available in Helka)

Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams, and Gregory G. Colomb

I read the first one, it is older and cheaper and does not include exercises. The second, newer version includes exercises and is meant to be used as a textbook.

This is a good book to read even if you write well. It will help you understand why your texts are clear and good, and surely it will make revising your drafts easier. It will also help you when you have to comment on other people’s drafts. If you need to improve your own writing and you want to understand the logic behind guidelines rather than just follow rules, reading this book is a must.

Of creativity in art and science

I have just finished reading a very interesting book about landscape photography by Alain Briot. It has several chapters on the creative process in photography. The parallel with  creativity in science is remarkable and a lot of what he writes about is very useful to those doing scientific research.

One example: creative vs. critical modes. If one tries to be creative and critical at the same time one doesn’t get any original work done.

My interpretation: When writing a first draft just let your ideas flow, just write what crosses your mind without stopping to check their soundness. After your flow of  ideas dries out, switch to critical mode and be ruthless criticizing and editing what you have written. If new ideas are  born, switch back to creative mode. And so forth.

The same applies to designing new experiments, etc. First design your experiment without thinking too much about how easy or difficult it would be to put the design into practice. When you are finished with your first draft design, switch to critical mode. And so forth.

Even when working in groups these modes or roles should be kept separate, otherwise creativity gets stifled.

Even if you are not as much interested in photography as I am, this book could make for some interesting reading.

The book is Mastering Photographic Composition, Creativity, and Personal Style by Alain Briot. The link is to amazon.com

Highly recommended.

SenPEP

Our research group is called SenPEP (Sensory photobiology and ecophysiology of plants).

This is our new blog.