Solid as a straightforward chronology of how mathematics has developed over time, and the author adds a provocative note...
The emphasis is on “real” in the latest by the prolific British science writer, who questions the extent to which mathematics truly reflects the workings of nature.
Clegg (Ten Billion Tomorrows: How Science Fiction Technology Became Reality and Shapes the Future, 2015, etc.) has a degree in physics from Cambridge, and he uses that knowledge to discourse on the relationship between math and science. Math builds its own universe based on given (i.e., not proven) axioms and rules of operation to derive facts (theorems) that are true in that system. Science, on the other hand, builds theories based on observations and experiments, and the theories become conventional wisdom until questioned by new observations and data. Nevertheless, over time, there has been an eerie congruence between abstruse developments in math—e.g., non-Euclidean geometry—and the equations that govern Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Clegg suggests that math increasingly has come to rule the roost in physics. Nobody has ever seen a black hole he notes; the objects are “more the product of mathematics than of science,” the evidence for their existence being indirect. Likewise the Higgs boson and superstring theory. The author urges caution and a step back rather than obedience to a questionable math authority. Before reaching this conclusion, Clegg treats readers to an orderly history of math. He begins with counting on fingers or marks on sticks to match the amount of a physical object, leading to symbols for numbers. These numbers are really real, he says, because they are based on matches with objects in nature. But as math evolved, that connection blurred. By the 19th century, with set theory and concepts of orders of infinity, and 20th-century proofs on the incompleteness of mathematical systems and other logical conundrums, the relation to reality has faded—as will some readers’ attention, because this is not easy stuff.
Solid as a straightforward chronology of how mathematics has developed over time, and the author adds a provocative note urging scientists to keep it in its place.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-08104-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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