A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

The Canon: A whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
© 2007 Natalie Angier
293 pages

Science is amazing! Why is so much of the writing about it so lame?   Natalie Angier's The Canon first reviews the principles of scientific thinking before talking - nay, gushing -- about the basics of physics, chemistry, cosmology, biology,  astronomy, and geology.   But this isn't just a science primer like Almost Everyone's Guide to Science, or Theories for Everything. It is written with a conscious desire to seem fun, so the author is borderline bubbly and generous with cultural references and wordplay.  It's sometimes distracting, but I enjoyed it on the whole.  The personable approach to science also manifests itself in the way Angier works in little stories about her life that relate (like being thunderstruck by an earthquake in her normally placid residence in  D.C.), or interviews with scientists in the field, whose own love and continuing wonder for their subject is part of the delivery.   This is definitely a layman's approach to science -- there's no graphs, equations, or tables to be found, no terrifying mathematics -- but what made a winner for me, from the get-go, were the opening chapters on thinking scientifically. Angier sells the scientific method to readers by connecting it to what they already do: for instance,  the act of troubleshooting a technical problem is similar, as we attempt to narrow down problems by focusing on one variable at a time. A reader who reads Brian Greene with ease may find Angier's lively -- manic, even --  romp through the lab to be silly, but I found her enthusiasm welcome and the wordplay diverting.  A sample from her chapter on geology:

The planet we inhabit, the bedrock base on which we build our lives, is in a profound sense alive as well, animate form from end to end and core to skin. Earth, as I said earlier, is often called the Goldilocks planet, where conditions are just right for life and it is neither too hot nor too cold, where atoms are free to form molecules and water droplets to pool into seas. There is something about Goldilocks, beyond her exacting tastes, that makes her a noteworthy character, a fitting focus for our attentions. The girl cannot sit still. She's restless and impulsive and surprisingly rude. She wanders off into woods without saying where she's headed or when she'll be home. She barges through doors uninvited, helps herself to everybody else's food, and breaks the furniture. But don't blame her. She can't help herself. Goldilocks is so raw and brilliant that she has to let off steam. Like Goldilocks the protagonist, Goldilocks the planet is a born dynamo, and without her constant twitching, humming, and seat bouncing, her intrinsic animation, Earth would not have any oceans, or skies, or buffers against the sun's full electromagnetic fury; and we animate beings, we DNA bearers, would never have picked  ourselves up off the floor.   The transaction was not one-sided, though. The restless, heave-hoing motions of the planet helped give rise to life, and restless life, in turn, reshaped Earth." 

Electric Universe

Electric Universe: The Shocking True Story of Electricity
© 2005 David Bodanis
308 pages

When you're in the dark, and you want to see, you need

Electricity, E-LEC-TRICITY!

(School House Rock, "Electricity")

Every now and again, I misjudge a book and find it a superior surprise. I picked Electric Universe up thinking to read an introduction to electricity, but found instead a rich history detailing the human discovery -- and use of -- electricity which contains stories of curiosity, intellectual courage, romance, adventure, and wartime bravado. In addition to providing clear, picturesque descriptions of how electrical processes work, Bodanis examines how electricity has changed society as a whole from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age.

 Electric Universe is truly a multi-genre book.  I checked it out for the science, as my understanding of electricity is somewhat dim. Like Brian Silver in The Ascent of Science, Bodanis is talented at making electricity understandable at its most basic level,  then applying that explanation to technological applications. The science continues throughout the book, culminating in a chapter on biological nervous systems. Bodanis places a great deal of emphasis on the scientists and technicians who sought to understand and use the hidden powers in nature to illuminate, link together, and revolutionize the world. I never knew that Edison was a patent-breaking scoundrel,  nor did I realize that Nazi Germany had its own sophisticated version of radar. How has a movie not been made of the daring Würzburg raid, in which a scientist parachuted into occupied Europe, escorted by grizzled paratroopers, to take over a German radar installation, learn its secrets, and return to England? There's even a film-worthy moment of all-on-the-line drama when the raiders' retreat is blocked by German machine gunners, who are defeated the last moments by the reappearance of previously lost Scottish highlanders, firing their rifles and yelling out old Gaelic battle-cries.

Modern society is entirely impossible without electricity and the various technologies -- like radio and computers -- which developed from its understanding. The transformation of society through these technologies fascinates, and Electric Universe is a history of that transformation with human-interest stories to spare. I read it in two sittings, pausing only to go to bed for the night, and consider Bodanis an author of interest for the future. Electric Universe is a definite recommendation.

The Grand Design

The Grand Design
© 2010 Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow
198 pages

Though modern physics is considerably harder to understand than say, anthropology, I continue to be fascinated by it -- for physics, it seems to me, is the most fundamental science. The constituent elements of the universe that compose both our bodies and celestial bodies are all essentially composed of particles driven by natural forces.  As I've enjoyed Hawking in the past and am in need of a physics refresher, I approached this book with great anticipation. The book's slenderness shocked me: though a physically attractive book, its contents are brief, almost truncated.

Hawking and Mlodinow start of promisingly by introducing the reader to the scientific understanding of the universe as being a thing ruled by laws -- not the fickle will of mysterious gods and ethereal forces. From there, they move quickly into quantum particle physics and M-theory -- altogether too quickly for me, for though I reread troublesome passages repeatedly, they left me confused.  Though it is true my knowledge of modern physics has waned sharply in the last two years (as my formal studies have been primarily historic), I remember reading Dan Falk's The Universe on a T-Shirt  and coming away with a fuzzy appreciation for what string- and M-theory meant for science -- and when I read Falk in 2007, I was completely unversed in modern science.

The essential idea presented in the book is that M-theory, with its multiple and parallel universes  explains why our own universe appears so fine-tuned and congenial toward the existence of intelligent life. If everything that can happen has and does happen, well naturally the things that needed to happen for US to happen happened.  That is...what I have derived from reading this several times and wincing because something I thought I had a slight handle on now seems utterly foreign.  If you have a solid appreciation for the subtleties of quantum physics, you may be able to apply that to the chapters which are about M-theory specifically.  As for me, I will be returning to Brian Greene at some point in the New Year, because I remember his The Elegant Universe being hard to read, but thorough enough that I could understand it provided I was willing to take the time to ponder its ideas. The Grand Design is unfortunately  simple to the point of being simplistic.

Related:

• Universe on a T-Shirt,  Dan Falk
• The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
• The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, Brian Greene

Black Holes and Baby Universes

Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays

© 1993 Stephen Hawking

182 pages

Well, this is one book that recquires very little explaination. It's a book of essays written by Stephen Hawking, most of them being on scientific topics. The beginning essays are biographical, and they work their way up to being chiefly science related: after a couple of essays about his life, he writes an essay on A Brief History of Time, which he calls "A Brief History of A Brief History". From this point, Hawking moves on to theortical physics -- black holes, quantum mechanics, free will vs. determinism, that kind of thing. After his final science essay (this one on the future of the universe, or rather potential futures), he ends the book with a transcript of an interview, the "Desert Island Discs" BBC interview. This is or was a hallmark program of the BBC, in which famous people were asked to bring eight records that they might bring with them if they were to be marooned on a desert island. The standard interview -- covering topics in line with the theme of this book, namely his life and work -- is periodically interupted by the reporter asking Hawkings to play one of his records in order. The interview ends with Hawkings being asked to choose a favorite among the records, and to talk about what book and luxury item he would plan on bringing. For those who are curious:

1. Gloria, Poulenc
2. Brahms Violin Concerto
3. Beethoven's String Quartet, Opus 132
4. The Valkyrie, act one
5. "Please Please Me", the Beatles
6. Requiem, Mozart
7. Turandot, Puccini
8. "Je Ne Regrette Rien", Edith Piaf

His book is Middlemarch by George Eliot, and his luxury item a large supply of crème brûlée. The book is written in Hawkings' usual way, although it lacks his fondness for illustrations. The science may be dated by this point, but it's probably still a good read for Hawkings fans.

A Brief History of Time

A Brief History of Time from the Big Bang to Black Holes
© 1988 Stephen Hawking
198

Our minds can play tricks on us: my experience with this book is a case in point. I remember vividly being at a big chain bookstore and perusing the science section for something seditious. In my memory, I note with amusement a massive book called A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. I know there's no way I can reach such a tome, so I look at the book next to it, called A Briefer History of Time. I buy neither, going with Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything instead.

And yet, here sitting upon my freezer is a small book titled A Brief History of Time. It is not the tome I remember. Clearly, my memory is in error -- I shall keep that in mind (if I can) as a practical lesson. The book itself is very straightforward: it's a brief popular science book. I think its ideal (if not intended) audience is college-educated and curious about the object. It doesn't seem that accessible to new students: I would recommend Hawking's own Universe in a Nutshell or a few others as an introduction to general relativity and quantum physics. Those are two of the subjects covered, by the way, along with black holes, the big bang, the nature of space and time, and a few other sundry topics. Although Hawking's writing in this book is easy to follow, it didn't seem to me as if he explained the topics in detail enough -- my take is that he expects the readers to know a little something ahead of time. I do, somewhat, although in the year or so it's been since I've read about physics, my knowledge of this particular area has faded.

Related Books:

• The Ascent of Science, Brian Silver
• Universe on a T-Shirt, Dan Falk
• The Universe in a Nutshell, Stephen Hawking
• The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene*

* I've not finished this one yet, but the first few chapters allowed me to understand concepts I'd never understood before, like why we think space is curved.

Atom

Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos
© 1997 Isaac Asimov
300ish pages

Last week I wanted to read a little science, and my eyes fell upon -- as luck would have it -- Atom by Isaac Asimov. The book is an informal introduction to the world of subatomic physics, but written with a historical perspective. Asimov does not simply introduce the reader to electrons and quarks and muons and so on: he tells the history of scientific research dealing with subatomic physics and links it to studies in other fields (electromagnetism and planetary science, for instance). Even though he introduces a historical narrative into it, he is still able to explain the significance of various concepts. It is both informal and detailed. Although Asimov's style is clear and he does a good job of explaining matters, my concentration kept leaping to my impending return to university life, and so I did not give this book the attention it deserved. I will return to it, I think.

Science Frontiers

Science Frontiers: 1945 -
Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser © 2004
246 pages including index

This week I resumed my reading of Spangenburg and Moser's updated "History of Science" series, finishing it off with Science Frontiers, which examines science since 1946. After an introduction on the scientific method, the book is divided into the Physical Sciences, the Life Sciences, and Science in Society, following the same pattern established in their preceding books in this series. The physical sciences are dominated by particle physics and quantum mechanics. The authors didn't seem to do the excellent job they usually do of explaining the topics: perhaps I was off. This first part ends on amuch more easy note, that of the solar system and Earth. Thanks to the satellites projects of the seventies and eighties, we have a wealth of data on the other bodies in the solar system. The last chapter, "Mission to Planet Earth", includes the topics of plate techtonics, dinosaur extinciton theories, ozone depletion, and the greenhouse effect.

In The Life Sciences, one chapter is devoted to the discovery of DNA. The next chapter concerns the origins of life, and examines viruses, AIDs, genetic eingeering, cloning, and the possibility that life arose from clay. The last chapter in this section concerns human evolution. Part 3, "Science and Society", was very interesting. It consists of two chapters. In one, "Hot and Cold on Science", the authors look at a curious situation: while the atomic age create fear and distrust about science and scientists, the space age turned them into heroes. The last chapter concerns the rise of superstition, post-modernism, and the new age.

As usual, the book is concise and presents a very readable narrative, especially beyond the chapters on physics which I thought fell short of their usual superbness.

Modern Science

Modern Science 1896 - 1945
© 2004 Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser
206 pages


I continued this week in a series that I began in the summer -- Spangenburg and Moser's "The History of Science" series, which is an update to their "On the Shoulders of Giants" series. As usual, the authors divide the book into two major sections and one minor one: the Physical Sciences, the Life Sciences, and Science and Society. The book's introduction and prologue work well to integrate this book into the rest of the series and to give the reader a broader perspective. There are ten chapters in all.

This period isn't my favorite period of science -- that probably goes to the 19th century -- but I found the book's content to be interesting. In the physical sciences, we learn about the beginnings of modern physics, starting with the discovery of X-rays and moving on from there -- to radiation and quantum theory and to all they entail. The author organize the Physical Sciences chapter along structural lines: its chapters include "The New Atom", "The New Universe, Part One", "The New Universe, Part Two", and then go into more particulars with "New Observations of the Universe" and "The Atom Split Asunder".

In the life sciences, we see the rise of antibiotics and insulin. Mendel's work is rediscovered and is applied toward Darwinian evolution. The eighth chapter concerns the search for ancestral historeis, including information on the various hoaxes like Piltdown. The third part of the book is new to this series, and focuses on Science and Society. In this particular book, the authors continue to look at medical quacks but also shine a light on the growing rise of women in science. Miniture biographies are woven throughout the book, and many are of women.

In essence, what I've come to expect of the authors: the book is short, concise, interesting, and informative. It may be geared toward a younger age-group than adults, but I find it useful to keep me apprised of the basics.

This Week at the Library (31/7)

Books this Update:

• The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx
• Nine Tales from Tomorrow, Isaac Asimov
• Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, Neil Postman
• Books that Changed the World, Robert B. Downs
• The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I wanted to start reading historically significant books. The Communist Manifesto strikes me as being one of the most influential books in human history, for better or for worse. Before this, I had the vague impression that Marx and Engels had somehow created the ideas of communism in this book. It turns out that Marx was asked to write the book to articulate the thoughts of communist and socialists, which would indicate that communism and socialism were both ideas that were already around and with a following -- unless Marx is a time-traveler. While the book is written to express the views of the “communist party”, this does not actually refer to any actual organized political party, but rather the body of people who shared communist ideas. This leads me to wonder how communist and socialist ideas were actually formed. It would be interesting research if I cared, but I don’t really. The Communist Manifesto is in essence a political tract, and it strikes me as being quite romantic. In the beginning, when Marx is writing about how capitalism has transformed the society, he writes that it turned the family into a mere economic unit and so on. I suppose if you’re advocating any kind of utopia, especially one run by working-class revolutionaries who wouldn’t know how to govern, you have to be a romantic. Of course, I have the utmost respect for the working class (being part of it when I’m not in school) -- but governing modern societies is quite difficult and quite frankly without more education and civil experience than the average working person has, a dictatorship of the working class is not going to end well.

Next I read Nine Tales from Tomorrow, a collection of short stories penned by Isaac Asimov that are all set in the future of Earth. Two of the stories were also in Asimov’s Mysteries. As usual, Asimov didn’t disappoint. There were two stories in particular I thought were really interesting. The first (“Profession”) was about a society where conventional education is no longer practiced. There is so much specialization of information and so much progress in neuroscience that people are “programmed” by machines to do things. Children are strapped into a machine and “programmed” to read at age eight. When they are approaching adulthood, they are taken to machines again; the machines scan their brains, determine what programming (Computer Technician, Chemist, etc) is most compatible with their brains, and then they’re programmed.

This begs the question of what the devil those kids and teenagers are doing until their “Reading” and “Education” days. I also wonder if the machines take into account what occupations are most needed when they are about to program people. For instance, suppose you have a large amount of people one year who happen to be receptive to being programmed as master electricians, but you only need a few electricians. What happens then? What happens if there are desperately-needed jobs like root-beer manufacturers, and too few people are best-suited for root-beer programming? It’s an interesting society to ponder. The story set in it is about one man who proves to be unsuitable for any kind of programming: he’s one of those curious sorts that seeks out knowledge for the sake of it and resists being told what to think.

The second story I found quite interesting was “The Feeling of Power“, set in a time where people have become so dependent on computers that no one knows how to do any kind of math anymore. This story is especially interesting because Asimov has his characters using pocket computers that are remarkably prescient of today’s PDAs Other stories are about characters who range from suicidal supercomputers to nurses taking care of Neanderthal children who have been ripped out of their own time by some kind of machine that is used to examine historic specimens. Sadly, Asimov does not use forewords and afterwords in this book.

After this I moved on to Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past can Improve the Future. The book is by Neil Postman, who the exalted Wikipedia says was a social critic who was especially concerned with how the ubiquitous nature of information today and its presentation as mere entertainment has cheapened its value. He makes the point that people today are in fact more gullible than the people of the middle ages: it’s just that the authorities they heed unthinkingly are television personalities who happen to know more than thirteenth-century priests by accident of birth. Al Gore writes about the mass media’s role in cheapening the value of information in his The Assault on Reason. Postman looks at how the century of the Enlightenment -- the century of Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and countless others -- can help us improve our lives today in the areas of progress, technology, language, information, narratives, children, democracy, and education. There were many parts of this book I agreed with, and there were parts I disagreed with. My favorite chapter was the one on education, where Postman presents five suggestions for improving the nature of our educational system:

• Teach children the art of asking questions.
• Logic and rhetoric should be given more importance given that they help students “defend themselves against both the seductions of eloquence and the appeal of nonsense.”
• Teach a scientific outlook -- get children to think about how we know scientific claims are truth rather than simply presenting them as facts to be memorized and recited. As Carl Sagan said, "Science is more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking; it is a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with an eye for human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those of authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan -- political or religious -- who comes ambling along." Postman then says that we should teach creationism in the classroom. In his words, "Good science has nothing to fear from bad science." This is very true, but it doesn‘t apply to creationism -- it isn't science, bad or otherwise. It is in this chapter that Postman comments that modern humans are more gullible than their medieval predecessors: a farmer or a lowly cobbler may have believed the sun went around the Earth, but in his defense he did observe the sun apparently cycling the Earth. Until the advent of the space age, how many billions of humans believed that the Earth went around the sun without appreciating the subtleties of solar system patterns and the way that they can be worked out through mathematics? Those people believed in a heliocentric universe -- which is utterly counterintuitive -- and did so blindly. His point is almost lost now that we have a space station orbiting Earth and robot drones scattered around the solar system, but it’s still true in other instances.
• Teach children about the psychological, social, and political effects of new technologies.
• Teach comparative religion in the interests of furthering understanding of our culture -- literature, music, and so on. Postman warned that this was his most controversial opinion, but I see nothing wrong with it -- so long as teachers treat each religion according to the same standard and don’t push religion on kids.

The book was an interesting read. The Enlightenment is one of my favorite historical periods to study. While I didn’t agree with everything he said, I don’t mind being annoyed if I can be made to think about my own assumptions in the process. I think I’ll be reading a little more of him.

Next I read Books that Changed the World. The author comments on sixteen books that in his opinion have changed the world. They are, in order: The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli; Common Sense by Thomas Paine; Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith; Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus; Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau; Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Das Kapital, by Karl Max; The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, by Alfred T. Mahan; The Geographical Pivot of History, by Sir Halford J. Mackinder; Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler; De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (The Revolutions of the Heavily Spheres), by Nicolaus Copernicus; De Motu Cordis, by William Harvey; Principia Mathematic, by Sir Isaac Newton; The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin; The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud; and Relativity, the Special and General Theories, by Albert Einstein.

The author, Robert B. Downs, dedicates a chapter to each book, taking care to introduce the book within its historical context. The book was published in the 1950s, but its commentary on Das Kapital is surprisingly rational given that it was published during the second red scare. I thoroughly enjoyed each commentary. Only one of the books was completely unfamiliar to me (The Geographical Pivot of History) , but I’ve not read most of these. The book stirred my interest in some of them, though, and I will be looking around for them. I recommend the book if you can find it.

Lastly, I want to comment on The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene. I didn’t finish all of it, nor do I see myself doing so before I return to university. It’s not a huge book, but the ideas are sizable and I have to re-read passages several times and think on them for a while before they finally click. The first part of the book is on general relativity, and that is the part I finished. The part I am currently on is on quantum theory, and more particularly on how matter can act both as waves and particles. While I don’t understand this, I do finally understand why time appears to slow down the nearer you approach the speed of light. I suggest finding the book if you have an interest in this. Incidentally, thanks to all of the reading I’ve been doing on this subject (mainly the Spangenburg/Moser book, Stephen Hawking’s book, and part of this book), I knew almost all of the answers in the “Fission” category in one of Jeopardy’s recent Tournament of Champions episodes. I say almost because the contestants had answered one before I walked into the room.

Pick of the Week: Nine Tales of Tomorrow, Isaac Asimov. I think maybe on weeks where I’m reading something by Asimov I should mention the runner-up, not the Asimov book, as by this point it’s fairly obvious that it’s not fair to ask other books to compete with Asimov.

Quotation of the Week: “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” - Thomas Paine, The Crisis

Next Week:

• Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• State of Denial, Bob Woodward
• Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
• Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
• The Age of Synthesis, Ray Spangenburg and Diane Kit Moser