While exploring a rich variety of topics, from climate change to Einstein, this collection of scientific thoughts lacks...
A scientific freethinker draws on his Usenet posts to argue for reinterpretations of mainstream theories.
In this book, Prasad (God vs. the Universe, 2015, etc.) challenges scientific orthodoxy on subjects ranging from the role of carbon dioxide in shaping the Earth’s climate to the physical characteristics of the human soul. In presenting his arguments, the author also celebrates the culture of Usenet and other online discussion forums, where he developed and honed his theories over several decades. Prasad approaches established science with a contrarian’s enthusiasm, disputing the particle-wave dual nature of light, the conclusions of climate change studies, the customs of academic publishing, and Albert Einstein’s role in developing scientific theory. The book draws on a broad range of published research, though the papers’ authors would likely dispute many of Prasad’s interpretations of their work. Prasad writes in an excitable style, with more than 90 exclamation points appearing throughout the nearly 140 pages of the book’s body, and with unfettered confidence: “Judged on the basis of this principle [Occam’s Razor], my theory of light is superior to existing theories.” There is also a hint of the conspiracy theorist in the volume’s approach, particularly in the discussion of government-funded research into climate change, described as “massive corruption.” The author accuses climate researchers of ignoring the complexities of the system immediately before supporting one of his arguments with “This is what happened in reality, though the actual data are different, and these graphs are merely an example to clarify what really happened.” With its overabundance of exclamation points, italics, and all-caps text, along with its sense of entitlement (“My objection and my answers to all the other questions, including my explanation of light, need to be on the record and fully acknowledged”) and incredulity (“I felt that the totality of online information on these subjects was somehow subtly changing”), the book retains close ties to its origins in online postings without moving beyond Usenet into a more refined and coherent scientific argument.
While exploring a rich variety of topics, from climate change to Einstein, this collection of scientific thoughts lacks polish.Pub Date: May 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5309-4838-3
Page Count: 152
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
bookshelf
