Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships

"Camila Pang is a research scientist specialising in translational bioinformatics. She was diagnosed with autism at the age of eight. She also has ADHD and anxiety disorder. Explaining Humans is a charming investigation of how to understand human behaviour, drawing on her superpower of neurodiversity . At the beginning is a touching narrative of how, as a young girl, she is asking her mother whether there is a manual to explain humans: she couldn’t understand human behaviour and felt she couldn’t fit in. This book is, in a way, that very manual. Each chapter focuses on a different facet of science, and explains a different theme in a readily accessible way. Each also brings in analogies with human behaviours, and how to interpret and respond to them. The book embraces everything from machine learning, biochemistry, thermodynamics, light, sound, quantum physics, evolution, chemistry and game theory . In each of these chapters she explains how she has learned to use rules and devices from those various fields as a lens to understand and interpret human behaviour. The concepts are illustrated with some very nice little hand drawings. It seems like there’s a formula to the structure of the chapters. Each one starts with a personal recollection or experience and then dives into the science and then sums up at the end. There’s a striking combination of personal experience and hardcore science that draws the reader in. I think that formulaic approach is part of the charm. It illustrates the writer’s need for structure when approaching writing each chapter. The fascinating thing is it provides insights into different ways of thinking and of the challenges of being neurodiverse in a ‘normal’ world. It’s a scientific book but it’s also very personal. It could open up science to a much more diverse readership than one might normally expect. Ha! I really like the analogy she uses for the proteins involved in cell signalling – the empathetic receptor proteins that sense changes in the external environment; the no drama adaptor proteins that decide the best way to communicate a message across a cell; the loud extrovert kinases; and the thoughtful nuclear proteins that interpret and orchestrate the response. I know I’m not a kinase, but I know how it makes me feel to be in the room with one! It has been a real honour and a privilege to chair the judging panel for the 2020 Royal Society Book Prize. Science is an integral part of our lives. It is beautiful, diverse and vast. Science holds the key to the time-critical global challenges that we face of ensuring food security, health, and environmentally sustainable ways of living. The six books we have discussed all make science intriguing, accessible and exciting. Some raise awareness of the scientific process and of our understanding that scientists are humans too. Others are calls to arms, asking us to consider our place in the universe and what we can bring to humanity in our various ways. There is darkness, revelation and hope. There is inspiration. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount ."