by K.C. Cole ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2003
Cleverly entertaining “stand-up” science in search of a cosmic punch line.
Award-winning science writer Cole (The Hole in the Universe, 2001, etc.) offers a “love letter to the universe and those who explore it” in an essay collection culled from her popular LA Times column.
Looking at recent scientific discoveries as well as ongoing oddities and conundrums, the author employs a short-take format in which each commentary rarely exceeds three printed pages. Within this framework, merely rendering many of these subjects (barely) comprehensible to lay readers is in itself no mean feat, but Cole has an even more ambitious aim: to reveal the universe as “wholly relevant to politics, art, and every dimension of human life.” The wide range of phenomena she covers relates principally to physics, cosmology, mathematics, and astronomy, but the author is almost too adroit in quelling the looming suggestion that higher mathematics might be necessary for more than borderline understanding of the universe as scientists are able to see it today. Instead, Cole puts useful groundings into perspective: humans are able to survive and evolve on Earth, she lectures, only because waves of previous microbial inhabitants have “polluted” its natural atmosphere (carbon dioxide) with enough oxygen to sustain us. Nor should we forget that “everything we sense from the outside world is created in our minds from heavily processed and filtered information.” Then there are the carefully strewn factual curios: “About 10 percent of the average human body’s dry weight consists of bacteria,” for example, or “100 pounds of [material originally from] Mars ‘rains’ on our planet every year.” Her tendency to convey the universe in so many unrelieved, disconnected fragments may be a problem for readers expecting more organizing insights.
Cleverly entertaining “stand-up” science in search of a cosmic punch line.Pub Date: April 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-15-100816-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
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by Lulu Miller illustrated by Kate Samworth ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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by Carlo Rovelli ; translated by Simon Carnell & Erica Segre ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2016
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both...
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Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (General Relativity: The Most Beautiful of Theories, 2015, etc.) shares his thoughts on the broader scientific and philosophical implications of the great revolution that has taken place over the past century.
These seven lessons, which first appeared as articles in the Sunday supplement of the Italian newspaper Sole 24 Ore, are addressed to readers with little knowledge of physics. In less than 100 pages, the author, who teaches physics in both France and the United States, cogently covers the great accomplishments of the past and the open questions still baffling physicists today. In the first lesson, he focuses on Einstein's theory of general relativity. He describes Einstein's recognition that gravity "is not diffused through space [but] is that space itself" as "a stroke of pure genius." In the second lesson, Rovelli deals with the puzzling features of quantum physics that challenge our picture of reality. In the remaining sections, the author introduces the constant fluctuations of atoms, the granular nature of space, and more. "It is hardly surprising that there are more things in heaven and earth, dear reader, than have been dreamed of in our philosophy—or in our physics,” he writes. Rovelli also discusses the issues raised in loop quantum gravity, a theory that he co-developed. These issues lead to his extraordinary claim that the passage of time is not fundamental but rather derived from the granular nature of space. The author suggests that there have been two separate pathways throughout human history: mythology and the accumulation of knowledge through observation. He believes that scientists today share the same curiosity about nature exhibited by early man.
An intriguing meditation on the nature of the universe and our attempts to understand it that should appeal to both scientists and general readers.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-18441-3
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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