Provocative and hard to put down, but only for the science savvy.
A new theory of how energy sculpts order throughout the universe.
Science usually advances in tiny increments within cloistered disciplines through peer-reviewed publications. This debut, though, is audacious in scope and approach. Gunter, a trained ecologist but not an academic, introduces a simple yet profound and largely homespun system that, if proved, would require a paradigm shift across all disciplines. He proposes seven new thermodynamic laws to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the existing second law—entropy, or the dissipation of energy—and increasing order in the cosmos, which he attributes to the operation of natural selection upon all structures, not merely the biological. Levolution, Gunter says, is the energy-driven process of “changing a group or population of existing entities such that they organize into a single new whole, a new entity, a new monad, or new kind of unit”—i.e., particles, atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, populations, solar systems, and galaxies—all in the service of maximizing and speeding the flow of energy to lower potentials: i.e., entropy. Gunter spent 30 years developing his theories and writing this book. He credits and builds upon the work of others, but his synthesis is new, and he has coined several terms as he organized these new laws. He challenges others to prove or disprove his ideas. The text, however, is devoid of mathematical support; the only formula in the book is Einstein’s familiar E=mc2. Gunter has an engaging style and often lightens his subject’s heft: “While the idea of energy’s descent to ‘entropic doom’ or the ‘heat death’ of the universe has been around to depress people for decades, few people really understand how deeply nature is involved in this Entropy project.” Of his proposal for 10 thermodynamic laws, he says, “[T]hey will now fit perfectly on two clay tablets.” Gunter writes clearly and intends the work as “popular science,” though he occasionally uses arcane allusions that will baffle many, such as “Jane’s radius” from gravitational physics and “slits and waves” experiments from particle physics. There is copious intentional repetition, as if drilling the reader in a new language, which in some ways it is. By the end, those who have stuck around will be able to complete many of his sentences.
Provocative and hard to put down, but only for the science savvy.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1480810075
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.
Tyson (Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, 2017, etc.) receives a great deal of mail, and this slim volume collects his responses and other scraps of writing.
The prolific science commentator and bestselling author, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History, delivers few surprises and much admirable commentary. Readers may suspect that most of these letters date from the author’s earlier years when, a newly minted celebrity, he still thrilled that many of his audience were pouring out their hearts. Consequently, unlike more hardened colleagues, he sought to address their concerns. As years passed, suspecting that many had no interest in tapping his expertise or entering into an intelligent give and take, he undoubtedly made greater use of the waste basket. Tyson eschews pure fan letters, but many of these selections are full of compliments as a prelude to asking advice, pointing out mistakes, proclaiming opposing beliefs, or denouncing him. Readers will also encounter some earnest op-ed pieces and his eyewitness account of 9/11. “I consider myself emotionally strong,” he writes. “What I bore witness to, however, was especially upsetting, with indelible images of horror that will not soon leave my mind.” To crackpots, he gently repeats facts that almost everyone except crackpots accept. Those who have seen ghosts, dead relatives, and Bigfoot learn that eyewitness accounts are often unreliable. Tyson points out that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so confirmation that a light in the sky represents an alien spacecraft requires more than a photograph. Again and again he defends “science,” and his criteria—observation, repeatable experiments, honest discourse, peer review—are not controversial but will remain easy for zealots to dismiss. Among the instances of “hate mail” and “science deniers,” the author also discusses philosophy, parenting, and schooling.
A media-savvy scientist cleans out his desk.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-324-00331-1
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science...
Bryson (I'm a Stranger Here Myself, 1999, etc.), a man who knows how to track down an explanation and make it confess, asks the hard questions of science—e.g., how did things get to be the way they are?—and, when possible, provides answers.
As he once went about making English intelligible, Bryson now attempts the same with the great moments of science, both the ideas themselves and their genesis, to resounding success. Piqued by his own ignorance on these matters, he’s egged on even more so by the people who’ve figured out—or think they’ve figured out—such things as what is in the center of the Earth. So he goes exploring, in the library and in company with scientists at work today, to get a grip on a range of topics from subatomic particles to cosmology. The aim is to deliver reports on these subjects in terms anyone can understand, and for the most part, it works. The most difficult is the nonintuitive material—time as part of space, say, or proteins inventing themselves spontaneously, without direction—and the quantum leaps unusual minds have made: as J.B.S. Haldane once put it, “The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.” Mostly, though, Bryson renders clear the evolution of continental drift, atomic structure, singularity, the extinction of the dinosaur, and a mighty host of other subjects in self-contained chapters that can be taken at a bite, rather than read wholesale. He delivers the human-interest angle on the scientists, and he keeps the reader laughing and willing to forge ahead, even over their heads: the human body, for instance, harboring enough energy “to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.”
Loads of good explaining, with reminders, time and again, of how much remains unknown, neatly putting the death of science into perspective.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7679-0817-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
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