THIS year鈥檚 best science books are marked by striking new perspectives on the world and on ourselves. From artificial intelligence and space exploration to our relationships with non-humans, there鈥檚 plenty to think about this holiday.
Starting with the game-changer, AI, three very different books give the technology a human face. In (Random House), Joy Buolamwini describes research on racial and gender bias in the algorithms underlying machine intelligence. Her expertise now has her advising world leaders on how to prevent AI鈥檚 harms.
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Then there is Fei-Fei Li, who is at the forefront of US efforts to teach AI how to interpret the world visually. Her book (Flatiron Books) is an antidote to the machismo in the field.
So, too, in its own bizarre way, is (Oneworld) by award-winning children鈥檚 author Andy Stanton. In detailing his hysterical efforts to get ChatGPT to write a masterpiece, Stanton offers real insight into how it works or, well, doesn鈥檛.
Science, on the other hand, does work well, as Philip Ball shows in his celebration of the craft of scientists in (University of Chicago Press). He also explains why 鈥渆xperiment鈥� means such different things to different people 鈥� and where the beauty comes in.
James Hannam鈥檚 (Reaktion Books) celebrates our first great scientific achievement: realising, thousands of years ago and against all intuition, that Earth is a ball floating in space.
The astronomy into which that insight fitted ended up serving as 鈥渢he midwife to all Earth鈥檚 sciences鈥�, contends physicist Roberto Trotta in (Basic Books). He imagines how differently humans would have understood the world were our skies permanently overcast.
Physicist Carlo Rovelli tackles ideas that are even more counterintuitive in (Allen Lane). He guides us through a time-reversed black hole in this elegant work, which our reviewer described as 鈥渕ore like an ode to the biggest questions in physics鈥� than a popular science book.
Can such wild perspectives really transform us? Marjolijn van Heemstra spent a year trying to experience, on Earth, the rapture astronauts say they feel when they look back on our planet from space. Reading (W. W. Norton), our reviewer was struck by what one of van Heemstra鈥檚 astronomically knowledgeable interviewees said: 鈥淏egin your day with what you truly are 鈥� deeply improbable.鈥�
Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is pursuing a related improbability: he thinks that outer space is full of abandoned machinery from alien civilisations. His book (John Murray) is an intelligent and well-argued speculation, in the mould of the late astronomers Fred Hoyle and Carl Sagan.
Back on Earth, and getting harder to spot, are the natural wonders thrown up by our living planet. The global fall in bird numbers (half of all species are in decline) adds poignancy to (University of Chicago Press), a delightful book by research ornithologist Mark Hauber and illustrator Tony Angell. From owls hunting at night to the common pochard resting with an eye open to spot predators in the daytime, this is a global, hour-by-hour account of individual bird lives.
Alongside the birds, curious and relatively obscure natural history subjects abound this year. Alison Pouliot describes in amazing detail her (University of Chicago Press), though it gets a bit creepy with vegetable caterpillars 鈥� fungi that eat insects from the inside.
And there are the octopuses David Scheel tells of in his (Hodder & Stoughton), a refreshingly unsentimental portrayal of an emotionally complex animal.
In (W. W. Norton), Danielle Clode conjures up a disconcerting prehistoric vision of giant koalas, before assessing the modern population鈥檚 plight in the face of habitat loss, highly contagious retroviruses and climate change.
One important aspect of nature is that it is tasty. Concerned with the shrinking diversity of what we eat and the lack of nutrition in processed foods, food writer Taras Grescoe goes in search of ancient (indeed, prehistoric) recipes in (Greystone Books).
It is a quixotic but worthwhile journey in the light of the damage processed foods can do, as we are reminded in (W. H. Allen). Psychologist Kimberley Wilson draws on her work in prisons, schools and hospitals to show how what we eat affects everything from decision-making to aggression and violence. Scary.
Our relationship with the natural world involves more than just eating it, of course, and bioethicist Jessica Pierce wants us to make the most of our non-human relationships. In (University of Chicago Press), she argues all dogs are good dogs, and shows how to better serve their innate dogginess.
Bangs and silences
In (Profile Books), Hana Videen harks back to a time when there were very many more animals to get up close to, and very many more words for all of them.
Meanwhile, Caspar Henderson takes a more unusual angle on the natural world in his (Granta), 48 exquisite short essays on the world perceived and understood through sound, beginning with the big bang and ending with silence.
Henderson鈥檚 wide-eyed take on the world should be encouraged, as should Eugenia Cheng鈥檚. In (Profile Books), she shows how 鈥渄umb鈥� questions cut to the quick of her subject. 鈥淐heng celebrates the dizziness and disorientation engendered by childlike questions,鈥� wrote our reviewer, 鈥渁rguing that these feelings are suggestive of the right kind of bafflement.鈥�
Architectural engineer Roma Agrawal (she helped design London鈥檚 Shard) is another who believes in the power of simplicity. (Hodder & Stoughton) shows how constant iterations of a good idea drive progress, from the Roman nail to the International Space Station.
Staying with engineering 鈥� and space 鈥� two books offer rich food for rocketheads and critics alike. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith bring tough love to the idea of Martian settlement in (Particular Books), a sharp, well-informed and very funny book.
Then there鈥檚 (Springer), in which urban planner Justin Hollander applies his knowledge of cities to ask what a Martian settlement would look like. The unglamorous answer: underground and pretty basic.
Simon Ings is a writer based in London
