Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Should we or should we not bring back dinosaurs? Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton is all about the ethical implications of this idea coming to life.

Lizards attacking people?

Jurassic Park is located on Isla Nublar, an island off the coast of Costa Rica. We don’t really know what happens at Jurassic Part off the bat. But we can tell strange things are happening on the mainland of Costa Rica. People are coming to the hospital with wounds resembling animal attacks, but nobody is truthful as to what actually occurred. Looks like a new species of “lizard” is attacking people. It looks like this “lizard” might be in the dinosaur family.

It’s dinosaurs

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton explores what would happen if we brought dinosaurs back to life. It all begins when the head of a bioengineering company gets the idea to make a zoo of prehistoric animals. As one might assume based on the book’s wide popularity, things go wrong. Terribly wrong. But thanks to Crichton we can learn the moral of the story without experiencing the wrath of these animals ourselves.

Should we bring back prehistoric animals?

Michael Crichton does a great job at blending science and philosophical plots in a way that is easy to follow. He recreated these creatures very thoughtfully, considering how they could behave as well as their unexpected tendencies. He gives us the the best of both words in this story: truth and fiction. You’ll get to learn about some real dinosaurs while using fiction to explore how these animals might have actually behaved.

This approach resonated with me because it breathes life into what life could’ve been, even if it’s fictionalized. In fact, I think it’s necessary to use fiction in order to understand how the world really works. We get to suspend our disbelief in something that’s not fully fleshed out in our history. We get to find gaps in our interpretations that we might’ve missed without fiction.

In modern times, we have theories about the behaviors of dinosaurs from fossil records. We base these on teeth and bone structure as well as other clues found around the site of the fossils. Yet, the bones can’t tell us what it’s like to live among deadly giants. It can’t tell us whether or not we should even attempt to find out.

It could happen

Crichton did a great job convincing me that living amongst vicious predators is dangerous. And he did so in a way that presents the dangers realistically. I could totally see someone like Elon Musk venturing into something like this out of curiosity. I mean, who wouldn’t want to spend an afternoon at a dinosaur park? That’s even more telling about the human race. We’re aware of the risk and yet are willing to accept the cost in the name of re-discovery.

All about the plot

My only gripe with the story is the lack of depth and growth in the characters we follow. As I mentioned earlier, this is a cautionary tale exploring a hypothetical scenario. It makes sense that the story doesn’t rely on the characters arcs to make it’s point. They help us explore the ethos of Jurassic Park and teach us that ambition can overshadow caution.

There’s more to this story

I also loved the fast-paced nature of this story since it takes place over the course of a couple of days. It is full of adventure, mystery, and suspense. It also has some conspiratorial aspects that unfold throughout the story, as well as an overarching plot that we can follow in the next 2 books in the series.

I’m interested to see the plot develop across the full trilogy. I would recommend it to people that want to learn about dinosaurs in an engaging and thought-provoking way. A lot of it is scientifically accurate, which was my favorite thing about it because the entire book served as a thought experiment that could actually apply to real life. It was well-written and engaging, and definitely for the science lover!

Dangers of bioengineering

Ungovernable science

There’s always an element of the unknown in any predictive model we make. It’s inevitable, and part of the reason why we haven’t figured out a unified theory of physics. A predictive model that takes into account every single unpredictability would, by definition, have to predict itself! It’s a weird paradox to conceptualize, but it’s basically why we have the butterfly effect. One thing leads to another, and next thing you know a wing flutter turns into a traffic jam on your way home from work.

Jurassic Park warns us that we can try to know everything, but science can’t always tell us if we should.

Big business & science

• You can’t always predict exactly what is going to happen, especially with animals we don’t understand

We are introduced to Jurassic Park through the history of biotechnology and its entanglement with business. Before this technology, science was an endeavor of pure discovery and knowledge, and scientists shunned those in it for the money. However, this changes with the rise of biotechnology, which is being used commercially to sell products for profit. This very much mimics our own relationship with big pharma and other scientific bodies that are bought and paid for by old money..

People are easily driven by money and opportunity, and this can lead them to ignore the morality behind what they are doing. In Jurassic Park, we see this a lot with the staff working there. They got an opportunity to do something that hasn’t been done before and followed directions blindly without truly considering the danger behind what they created.

Quick Facts about Dinosaurs:

• Dinosaurs first appeared in the Triassic period 220 million years ago and became the dominant life form in the Jurassic period 190 million years ago. Dinosaurs went extinct during the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago.
• Species rediscoveries (thought extinct but aren’t): Australian mountain pygmy possum and procompsognathus
• Some dinosaurs mentioned: dilophosaurus, velociraptors, t-rex, triceratops, stegosaurus, hypsilophodonts, othnielia, apatosaurus, duckbilled hadrosaurs, brontosaurus, brachiosaurus, ultrasaurus, seismosaurus, maiassaurus, procompsognathid

Chaos theory:

Fractals / Mandelbrot – “The edging of the set shows a self-similarity, which is perfect, but because of the minute detail, it looks like it evens out” (Wikipedia). For example, the peak of a mountain looks like the rest of the mountain

I loved Malcolm’s perspective in this story so my most memorable quotes are all from him haha. He offered a lot of scientifically-grounded models of what would happen to the park and presented us with theories that are at work in the real world, like chaos theory. Chaos theory outlines the built-in unknowability of life. It’s impossible to know all variables at play at any given time. Therefore, there is ALWAYS uncertainty in any model that tries to predict how the world behaves.

“But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn’t it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought”

Malcolm (mad mathematician) pg. 72. Referring to the trivialities of fashion, and why he only wears black and grey

“When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the greasy of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that’s how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there… And at the end of your life, your whole existence has the same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day”

pg. 171 Malcolm on fractals

“…science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that it’s practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways— air, and water, and land— because of ungovernable science”

Malcolm pg. 312