Ambitious and thought-provoking.
Cutting-edge physics for a popular audience.
This time out, Kaku (Physics, CUNY; Hyperspace, 1994, etc.) takes us through the broad outlines of what physicists call “Theories of Everything.” The hottest new flavor here is M-Theory, a derivative of string theory in which our universe is considered to be one of innumerable parallel universes separated by tiny distances in eleven-dimensional space. While apparently counterintuitive, such theories arise from the solid twin pillars of modern physics: quantum theory and general relativity. Kaku dutifully steers the reader through the key formulations of physics, with brief glimpses of the scientists behind the big ideas: not only Newton, Einstein and Hawking, but the playful George Gamow, who did as much as anyone to make the Big Bang respectable, and the wisecracking Richard Feynman, who cheerfully admitted that nobody really understands quantum theory. We also get a look at the hardware of today’s science, from the atom-smashers that generate new particles to the giant telescopes that peer back toward the origins of the universe. Kaku clearly enjoys speculating about the broader implications of his subject, and he cites several SF novels with obvious familiarity. His concluding chapters offer a discussion of some ways an advanced civilization might escape the heat death of the universe by tunneling into a parallel universe where the stars still shine. Unfortunately, though, Kaku sometimes stumbles when he strays beyond physics. Errors creep into his historical summaries (Copernicus wrote his astronomical treatise well before his deathbed), and analogies sometimes fall flat: he states that plucking a musical string harder produces a different note (it just becomes louder). His final chapter looks for meaning in the structure of the cosmos, seeking a compromise between the Copernican principle (we are not special) and the anthropic principle (we can hardly be accidental).
Ambitious and thought-provoking.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-385-50986-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004
Dawkins (Zoology/Oxford Univ.) returns to the concerns of his The Blind Watchmaker (1986), presenting the case for Darwinian natural selection as the only reasonable explanation for biological diversity. The book's initial premise is that the "purpose" of life is the transmission of DNA down through the generations. Dawkins offers the metaphor of a river branching into myriad substreams to explain the central phenomenon of evolution: Each species has ancestors in common with other species but is in the present day separate and distinct; traced far enough back, each can be related to all the others. Thus, the study of the DNA in human cells (transmitted only from female ancestors), combined with fairly straightforward mathematics, leads to the conclusion that an "African Eve" — one woman who lived some 200,000 years ago — is ancestral to all living humans. (Dawkins hastens to add that she is not the only such common ancestor, nor even, probably, the most recent.) He looks at the roles of predation, cooperation, varying sex ratios, and other "strategies" that organisms develop to promote survival of their DNA. And he disposes, quietly but firmly, with arguments that certain structures in modern organisms — wings, eyes, orchid blossoms — appear so perfectly adapted that no cruder version could accomplish the tasks they perform so well. These structures, in fact, improved in slow increments, states Dawkins. The length of time for natural selection to evolve a complex eye, starting with a light-sensitive spot on the skin and incorporating minuscule changes with each generation, was less than half a million years, and the trick has been done independently at least 15 times. Finally, he considers the question of whether life on Earth is unique, or whether other planets might have evolved intelligent species. Clear and lively, with concrete examples throughout, this account addresses the major issues in modern evolutionary theory without dodging or pulling punches. An excellent overview of the subject.
Pub Date: March 29, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-01606-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
A staggering work of epistemological research.
Former book editor and publisher Rosen (Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe, 2007) pursues the question of why English-speaking peoples developed the key mechanical innovations that propelled the modern world.
In 1829, George and Robert Stephenson’s Rocket inaugurated the age of steam-powered locomotion, hauling with it a rich lineage of previous inventions mostly by enterprising men in the Anglosphere—“Great Britain and its former colonies, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.” Harnessing steam power abruptly doubled human productivity, which had been “flat as Kansas for a hundred centuries” before turning “like the business end of a hockey stick.” What prompted the English and Welsh to take that spark of genius and make something useful, even profitable, with it? Patent law had a lot to do with fostering the “itch to own one’s own work,” and Rosen devotes much of his fascinating, wide-ranging narrative to the importance of common-law rulings in favor of the original inventors—e.g., Attorney General Edward Coke, the influential English jurist at the turn of the 17th century, vehemently ruled against monopolies and supported England’s craftsmen. At the same time, Francis Bacon propounded science and invention as a free-flowing social enterprise, while John Locke defined the concept of property in terms of God-given labor. Open science, literacy, the growth of markets (e.g., the textiles explosion) and improved ironmaking skills all helped prod British, and soon American, inventors to solve mechanical problems both for personal interest and national glory. The only flaw in Rosen’s exhaustive survey is the lack of attention paid to female inventors.
A staggering work of epistemological research.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6705-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2010
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