Expertly delineates complex scientific issues in nontechnical language, using telling detail to weave together personal,...
A staggering account of the scientific revolution that still challenges our notions of reality.
Wired UK consulting science editor Kumar (Science and the Retreat from Reason, 1997) provides a gripping narrative of the birth of atomic physics in the first half of the 20th century. Max Planck described his 1900 discovery—that light acted on matter in packets of energy rather than continuous waves—as “simply an act of desperation.” Nonetheless, his discovery was an outgrowth of technological problems faced by the burgeoning German lighting industry. In 1905, Albert Einstein, another of the fathers of quantum physics (as well as relativity theory), pointed the way to the discovery of the photoelectric effect and the development of lasers by relating the frequency of light waves to photon energy. However, years later he wrote that quantum physics reminded him “a little of the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoic, concocted of incoherent elements of thoughts.” Other puzzling discoveries led Niels Bohr to identify isotopes and to recognize that radioactivity was a fundamentally unpredictable nuclear rather than atomic phenomenon. In 1925, Bohr’s younger associate Werner Heisenberg had a flash of insight that transformed the seemingly paradoxical nature of the new physics and with it called into question the nature of objective reality—it is impossible, he wrote, to achieve a simultaneously exact measurement of quantum physical parameters such as the position and momentum, or the time and energy of a nuclear-scale event. Until his death, Einstein opposed Bohr and Heisenberg’s renunciation of the possibility of representing reality “as independent of observation.” The debate still rages today, spawning new areas of research in quantum computing and even teleportation. Kumar evokes the passion and excitement of the period and writes with sparkling clarity and wit.
Expertly delineates complex scientific issues in nontechnical language, using telling detail to weave together personal, political and scientific elements.Pub Date: May 24, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-07829-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
A fine, wide-ranging anthology from the pages of one of the world's most popular magazines. National Geographic has for a century cultivated an austere, formal image as a heavily illustrated but scholarly vehicle for conveying knowledge about the planet and its peoples. Its staff, writes former editor-at-large McCarry (Second Sight, 1991) in his good-natured introduction, was considerably less austere, to the point of being eccentric and even somewhat dangerous, qualities that sometimes escaped the printed page. The editors saw to that, imposing the somber personality of the magazine on its contributors; even so, McCarry notes, ``whatever the editorial climate, several generations of Geographic writers doggedly continued to turn out prose that was mostly literate and entertaining.'' After addressing the history of the bare native breast and the quirks of longtime helmsmen Gilbert and Melville Grosvenor (the former instructed an editor never to accept any contribution by one Magoffin, whose ``ways are not our ways''), among other matters, McCarry proceeds to offer a well-considered sampling of material drawn from issues over Geographic's 109-year run. Much of the material is new or very recent, including Barry Lopez's luminous essay on the California desert and David Remnick's perilous travels through the new, mafia-overrun Russia. Other pieces are decades old, but they have historical and literary interest that keeps them from seeming too dated—even when correspondent Theodore Roosevelt refers knowingly to Nairobi, Kenya, as ``a town of perhaps 5,000 to 6,000 people'' and combat journalist David Douglas Duncan easily writes of ``hurling bombs with a mighty shout into Jap faces.'' The mix of old and new, coupled with McCarry's wry commentary, makes for a constantly edifying reader.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-7922-7012-6
Page Count: 472
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
An informal discussion of how the deceptively solid boundaries and names appearing on maps (past and present) represent the intersection of geography with history, fantasy, prejudice, propaganda, wishful thinking, and pure chance. Maps are an attempt to depict an unstable world with a complex past and, as Nelson (Moonshiners, Bootleggers, and Rumrunners, not reviewed) notes, to ``send ominous messages and trace ethnic and religious fault lines.'' At any given time, more than a hundred boundaries are disputed, but some maps skirt reality or create their own. For example, Arab maps ignore Israel or call it Palestine, and Syrian maps claim territory for Syria that has been part of Turkey for 50 years. But then, imaginative map-making has an established history. During the Middle Ages, the kingdom of Prester John was a staple of European maps. Even an increase in firsthand accounts did not ensure accuracy; for example, Columbus insisted that he that he had reached the Orient, and accommodating cartographers stretched Asia to fit his claims. One place may acquire several designations because of transliteration snags, mispronunciation, or misunderstanding, as when Chinese told foreign traders that they were from Chin (their ruling dynasty) rather than Kung-ho-kuo (their country). Some names reveal fragments of local history: Mohawks sneered at the hunting skills of Algonquins residing in New York State's northern mountains by calling them Hatir¢ntaks (``they eat trees''), whence Adirondack. Others trace changes in government, as when St. Petersburg changed to Leningrad and back again. Place names can be wonderfully descriptive, such as Mose-os-Tunya, ``smoke that thunders,'' or imperialist, such as Victoria Falls, thus named by David Livingston. Such claiming by naming continues even today: While orbiting the moon, astronaut James Loving dubbed one of its peaks Mount Marilyn, for his wife. Enlightening entertainment for those who browse the atlas so long that they forget what they meant to look up. (50 maps)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-56836-174-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Kodansha
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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