informed of their eventual use? How shouldwe deal with biological material gatheredunder suspect circumstances? Does it matterwhether or not the Yanomami of today andof 30 years ago would approve of their bloodbeing used to test whether ‘headmen’ leavemore offspring?

However we answer such questions, it isimportant that they be raised. Tierney hasopened up a rather large can of worms and, judging from the attention the book isgetting, there is a lot of explaining to do.Anthropologists in the 1960s and 1970sturned Yanomamo territory into a vast prov-ing ground for ideas about sociobiology,radiation injuries and the naturalness ofhuman aggression, and the fallout from thatexperience has yet to settle. ■

Robert N. Proctor is in the Department of History,Pennsylvania State University, University Park,Pennsylvania 16802, USA.

Across the industrial divideThe Great Divergence: China,Europe and the Making of theModern World Economyby Kenneth PomeranzPrinceton University Press: 2000. 382 pp.$39.95, £25.95

Anthony Vice

In his seminal work on Britain’s IndustrialRevolution, The Workshop of the World(1961), J. D. Chambers described how anAmerican visitor, touring the textile townsand villages, exclaimed over the workmen’scottages, with their stone fresh from themasons’ yards. Kenneth Pomeranz, an up-to-date American visitor, reviews this period(‘industrial revolution’ is not a term heappears to favour, preferring ‘sustainedindustrial growth’) from the perspective ofthe Far East.

Briefly, his thesis is that the conditions foran industrial revolution existed in theYangtze Delta of China, in Japan and inGujarat in India. Population levels matchedthose of Europe, whereas Asian techniques inagricultural land management and the use offuel, Pomeranz suggests, were superior tothose in Europe. But as we all know, Europewent on to enjoy an Industrial Revolution;the Asian economies hit a cul-de-sac. TheEast Asia hinterlands boomed after 1750, butthis local growth inhibited those regionsfrom exporting to the faster-growingYangtze Delta. As a result, growth at the coreof the East Asia economy essentially stopped,and what growth did take place was forcedalong labour-intensive paths. That repre-sents the ‘great divergence’.

My immediate reaction is to applaud thenovelty of this analysis. Only 10 years ago itwould have been difficult to find literature tosupport Pomeranz’s thesis in relation toChina; 25 years ago it would have been hard

to make such a case in respect of Japan.The self-evident question is why Europe

and Asia performed so differently — whywas there this divergence? Pomeranz’sanswer is essentially twofold: first, Europeenjoyed large coal resources, which wereaccessible and therefore cheap. And second,it benefited from what Pomeranz calls “thefruits of overseas coercion”, by which hemeans slavery. “The slave trade ... enabledEurope to exchange an ever-grow-ing volume of manufactured exports for an ever-growing volume of land-intensiveproducts.”

These arguments seem to offer both toolittle and too much. On the importance ofslavery, Pomeranz quotes an estimate thatthe fruits of overseas coercion could not have been responsible for more than 7% ofgross investment by late-eighteenth-centuryBritons, and for Europe as a whole the figure would have been far less. Coal of itself was of limited relevance to the Industrial

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NATURE | VOL 408 | 9 NOVEMBER 2000 | www.nature.com 139

Porcelain-making: sophisticated production, but not coal, iron and steel, which dominated in Europe.

Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Speciesby Jeffrey H. SchwartzWiley, $18.95, £14.99“Schwartz presents a detailed and informativehistorical account of evolutionary biology. Infact, the book could be read as a history ofevolution and will probably occupy such a niche. Schwartz is much more ambitious thanthis, however: he wants to convince the reader that his “new evolution” is the Holy Grailof the field.” Eörs Szathmáry, Nature 399, 745(1999)

The Fabric of the Heavens: The Development of Astronomy and Dynamicsby Stephen Toulmin & June GoodfieldUniversity of Chicago Press, $15, £10.50

Edison: A Life of Inventionby Paul IsraelWiley, $18.95, £12.50“Paul Israel, in this latest biography, has done aremarkable job. Not only has he given us freshinsights into a complex personality, but he has setthis against the backdrop of a dramaticallychanging American society driven on

remorselessly by the second IndustrialRevolution in which Edison was a pivotal player.” Willem Hackmann, Nature397, 34–35 (1999)

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827): A Life in Exact Scienceby Charles Coulston GillispiePrinceton University Press, $19.95, £12.50“Gillispie’s distinguished biography is amagisterial survey of one of the most influential scientists of the past two centuries.” William R. Shea, Nature 391,855–856 (1998)

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Revolution, being mainly used for domesticfuel. What mattered was the alliance of coal,iron and steel, which was given sharp impe-tus by the Seven Years’ War and later again bythe campaigns against Napoleon. Britishiron- and steel-making skills, based on earli-er manufacture of clocks and guns, were of ahigh order. One indicative story relates howthe German industrialist Alfred Krupp tookan assumed name and lived in Sheffield tolearn the steelmakers’ skills.

There is something of a paradox in thethesis of this cogent and well-researchedbook. A great divergence between the eco-nomic performances of Asia and Europewould be remarkable only if there had been awidespread expectation of convergence.There is little evidence that the IndustrialRevolution had been expected by econo-mists of the time to reproduce itself in theEast. That is not because China, Japan andIndia were viewed as remote countries ofwhich we know little, but rather becausethere were fundamental differences in thestructure of the two regions.

First, and probably most important, werethe very different legal systems. The Germaneconomist Max Weber argued that a rationallegal system was necessary for the smoothfunctioning of a capitalistic economy. Arecent study by Hernando de Soto, seeking toexplain why capitalism has proved so effec-tive in North America and Western Europebut failed to deliver in Russia, South Americaand Africa, points to the absence of legallyenforceable property rights. Second, theIndustrial Revolution was a British ratherthan, as Pomeranz tends to argue, a Euro-pean phenomenon. He himself points outthat European industrialization was stillquite limited outside Britain until at least1860 — remarkably late by UK standards.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, a smallisland to the north-west of continentalEurope (Scots and Welsh contributed, as wellas English) produced a crop of entrepreneurspossessing financial skills allied to outstand-ing qualities in mechanical engineering.Many were harsh, demanding and narrow-minded, as we know from the literature; butthey were also honest — although oneGeorge Hudson, the subsequently disgraced‘railway king’, was the exception.

Their successors fared less well, later inthe nineteenth century, in the age of electri-cal power and the internal-combustionengine. That was another great divergence— between Britain and continental Europe,in Britain’s favour, until around 1860, andfrom then onwards between Britain andNorth America and continental Europe, to Britain’s disadvantage. It’s a moot point whether or not this latter divergencecontinues. ■

Anthony Vice can be contacted at the UnitedOxford & Cambridge University Club, 71 PallMall, London SW1Y 5HD, UK.

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140 NATURE | VOL 408 | 9 NOVEMBER 2000 | www.nature.com

The body spectacularSkeletons in the medico-artistic cupboardRoy PorterOne of the things you first notice about thepeople attending Spectacular Bodies, a quiteamazing exhibition at London’s HaywardGallery, is the complete mix it has drawn in,rather than just your usual arty crowd. And that’snot surprising, for we’re all fascinated by ourphysical reality, our flesh and blood. But what aparadox is embodied there!

Our bodies, after all, are what we’re mostfamiliar with, yet they are also the heart ofdarkness, all unknown. Except occasionally, bycourtesy of medical technology, we never see ourinsides. Save when we’re in pain, we never feelmost of our organs. And, religious or not, wesense there’s something sacrosanct, taboo — or atleast profoundly private — about our innards:most of us are squeamish enough about havingour outsides seen naked. And any reminder ofmortality is deeply disturbing.

Hence the shocking nature of the traditions ofscientific art and artistic science represented in theexhibition. From the Renaissance on, an unholyalliance of anatomists and artists began to dissectthe human body and turn what they saw intoartworks: drawings, paintings, écorchés (flayedmuscle-men torsos, often holding flaps of skinaside), huge sculptures, little figurines and waxmodels that could be taken apart, layer by layer.

And there is something creepy besides. Whena Dutch anatomist pickled a human fetus, whatmade him think to attach beads to its tiny handsand wrists? When wax modellers carved a torso,why did they affix curly tresses to the head, or addpubic hair, or give the faces individualizedexpressions? Something prurient, evenpornographic, seems to be at work.

Doubtless, the draughtsmen and craftsmenhad their reasons: artists did dissections so as tocreate objects of beauty, anatomists wielded thescalpel the better to know their pathology and beable to heal. But the question of voyeurisminevitably arises. What do we make of thepleasure that artists and anatomists so evidentlyderived from examining and dismembering thedead? And what of our own enjoyment?

We see, in the frontispiece to his De Fabrica(1543), the young Vesalius proudly displaying theinner secrets of the woman he has just dissected,most likely a criminal. Two centuries later, Hogarthpresents us with a parody of that scene in his FourStages of Cruelty, hinting that the true criminalsare the surgeons — or perhaps us, the viewers.

Likewise, a vast canvas by André Brouilletshows Jean-Martin Charcot, the ‘Napoleon of theneuroses’, displaying a ‘hysterical’ woman, laceblouse slipping down her breasts, in front of anassembly of students. Is this medicine or is it a sexshow? This exhibition’s power lies in forcing us,time and again, to confront our own reactions tothe skeletons in the medico-artistic cupboard. All

credit to the curators, Martin Kemp and MarinaWallace, for their superb achievement.

Two aspects of the exhibition were mildlydisappointing, however. The top floor is devotedto the scientific aesthetics of the face. But with afew exceptions — notably Franz XaverMesserschmidt’s grinning and grimacingphysiognomical busts — that section carries lessforce than those featuring the body at large.

And the attempt to weave modern, speciallycommissioned items into an exhibition that ismainly historical seems a missed opportunity.There are too few contemporary pieces to add upto more than a token appearance. And with theexception of John Isaacs’ life-sized auto-torso, themodern pieces seem both too knowing and ratherconventional. Here lies a paradox indeed: modernart courts the reputation of being shocking —think of Tracy Emin and Damien Hirst — but it isactually the academic artists, from Leonardo andRembrandt to Johann Zoffany and GeorgeStubbs, who provide the greatest jolts.

On entering the exhibition, what you see firstis a series of Dutch group portraits featuringdapper doctors gathered around semi-dissectedcorpses. Instruments in hand, some look as if theyare about to carve Sunday lunch; others seemabout to give the cadaver a manicure. There issomething shocking in the detachment of boththe artistic and the anatomical gaze. It is anunnerving opening to an unnerving exhibition,which is not to be missed. ■

Roy Porter is at the Wellcome Institute for theHistory of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, LondonNW1 2BE, UK.Spectacular Bodies: The Art and Science of theHuman Body from Leonardo to Now is at theHayward Gallery, London, until 14 January 2001.

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