by Guru Madhavan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 3, 2015
Madhavan is a less engaging writer than Henry Petroski, who covers much the same ground, but he provides a readable survey...
Want to be an engineer? Then learn to think like one, especially by learning how to see structure where chaos abounds.
Engineers aren’t like ordinary mortals. Ideally, they’re Spock-like creatures who think logically about all things. That’s one reason, writes engineer/economist/National Academy of Sciences adviser Madhavan in an interesting aside, engineers aren’t often found in politics, in which participants in the melee “show no reluctance to make bold pronouncements beyond their areas of competence.” Engineers, conversely, dislike making mistakes and oversimplifying, and in theory, their line of reasoning steers clear of value judgments of the sort politics is built on. Not that the engineering mind yields utopias: as Madhavan sagely notes, optimization algorithms may yield financial windfalls, but they also “had an ‘invisible hand’ in financial disasters,” just as the liberating technology of cellphones now means that people are chained to their work at all hours. So how do engineers think? With quantitative rigor, of course, and with qualitative objectivity. Madhavan’s opening case studies, which “demonstrate the power of engineers to convert feelings into finished products,” take their time in cohering, but eventually they settle down to look at the issues of structure, constraint, and trade-off, as well as the allied concepts of “recombination, optimization, efficiency, and prototyping.” One need not be employed as an engineer in order to put these principles to use; as Madhavan notes in one of the best case studies in the book, the film director Alfred Hitchcock was trained as an engineer and employed these practices in his movies: “Hitchcock was a backward thinker. His final product was preordained but flexible. He valued implementation over improvisation.”
Madhavan is a less engaging writer than Henry Petroski, who covers much the same ground, but he provides a readable survey for would-be engineers and those seeking to understand them.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-23987-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
More by Guru Madhavan
BOOK REVIEW
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
Share your opinion of this book
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...
Awards & Accolades
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2016
New York Times Bestseller
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Carlo Rovelli
BOOK REVIEW
by Carlo Rovelli ; translated by Simon Carnell
BOOK REVIEW
by Carlo Rovelli ; translated by Marion Lignana Rosenberg
BOOK REVIEW
by Carlo Rovelli ; translated by Erica Segre & Simon Carnell
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.