Humans are culpable of taking unseen aspects of their lives for granted. The argument may be trivial when looked at from a large perspective, but the manner in which David Bodanis explores it in “The Secret House: The Extraordinary Science of an Ordinary Day” is likely to raise a few hairs. There a significant number of invisible things happening around people every day, which can only be explored scientifically. This is what Bodanis captures in this book, which may not be a very good read for people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) or those who are borderline. Creepy and freaking may be the appropriate terms to describe this book, but it presents factual scientific evidence of another world, dominated by a million organisms, besides our own. This world is manifested through the eyes of a futurist and an author of popular scientific books, David Bodanis.
“The Secret House: The Extraordinary Science of an Ordinary Day” deconstructs the mainstream discourse that it is possible to live a normal day in a sterile environment free from any form of unwanted elements. According to Bodanis (1986), the everyday life that humans lead is defined by ‘germs; the air that we breathe has microbes; we remain blissfully ignorant of the particles that fall into the food we cook; the electrical consequence of washing out hair; and the millions of microbes that populate the bar soaps we use. It is this overwhelming microscopic detail in our everyday life that we remain ignorant of that Bodanis explores in a clear, almost grotesque manner. Bodanis scientifically presents the bacteria, mites, radiation, and chemicals among others that an average house and its inhabitants are exposed to on a normal day. The description is sandwiched between two events that mark the beginning and the end of an ordinary day: the spherical shock wave from an alarm clock in the morning; and the attempt by the homeowner to stop the shock waves from a dripping tap before retiring to bed respectively, in this 272-page book.
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“The Secret House: The Extraordinary Science of an Ordinary Day” may be criticized for Bodanis attempt to gross the reader with all manner of details at microscopic level that would otherwise be considered normal. However, the vivid description of the microbial life and the mites, especially the dependence of the latter on the leftover nibbles that are tiny flakes of human skin, and the presence of the former on all things that we touch, soap, lipstick, taps, and air, is a true depiction of the environment in which humans lead their daily lives. The People Staff (1987) recognized the significance of Bodanis “bug-eyed look at the squiggly, squirmy life-forms that go unseen in the ordinary home.” This is corroborated by Bodanis own assertion of the hygienic stage they went through, where they had to boil everything and brush the bed down every day before retiring. Such were the consequences of this yearlong research work on the author, and one can argue that readers are not immune to these predictable effects.
Bodanis portrays the microcosm in an ordinary home to be made of tenants, and it is imperative that humans make peace with them. The book highlights the microscopic detail that humans are exposed to, but falls short of suggesting that it should be eradicated. Most people would consider the microscopic detail an insignificant part of their ordinary homes, and such assumptions are justifiable given that people have been able to lead normal lives prior to Bodanis book. The best approach is to put this microscopic detail into perspective. For instance, people may be alarmed by the presence of weevils or mites in their beds and the fact that their shed off skin is their food. However, one can only imagine what a person looks like to a mite.
References
Bodanis, D. (1988). The secret house: 24 hours in the strange and unexpected world in which we spend our nights and days . Touchstone Books.
People Staff. (1987, Apr). They say a man's home is his castle, but David Bodanis' secret house reveals the creepy truth. People. Retrieved 17/05/2017 from: http://people.com/archive/they-say-a-mans-home-is-his-castle-but-david-bodanis-secret-house-reveals-the-creepy-truth-vol-27-no-16/.
