Deep thoughts but heavy going.
A Nobel Prize–winning physicist tries his hand at philosophy.
Peebles, emeritus professor of physics at Princeton, has spent a career studying the universe in the first seconds after the Big Bang. Now in his mid-80s, he looks back at the triumphs of physical science, which began with Newton in the 17th century but vastly accelerated with Einstein in the 20th, and asks a question that will appeal mostly to philosophers and sociologists: Is there an objective reality, and can science describe it? Peebles has no doubt, but there is no shortage of opposition. Perhaps the most stubborn is the postmodern view that scientific discoveries are social constructs that reveal less about reality than culture, class, gender, and politics. In research facilities such as particle accelerators, sociologists have observed for long periods and concluded that the scientists involved were not the traditional seekers of truth but rather ambitious strivers dedicated to their own advancement and heavily invested in theories that owed more to the proclamations of brilliant figures in their field than to actual evidence. Peebles agrees that scientists have their foibles, but he emphasizes the importance of the scientific method, which focuses on evidence and rules that make accurate predictions possible. To illustrate his arguments, he devotes lengthy, highly technical chapters to discoveries in his field, many of which began as social constructs. The author points out that Einstein developed general relativity in 1917 from pure thought and little evidence. Physicists loved it nonetheless, and 50 years passed before evidence for the theory became overwhelming. Peebles never claims that he is writing for a popular audience, and readers unfamiliar with college physics and calculus will struggle. They will also encounter an avalanche of footnotes and quotes from journals and books, often several per page. This book may appeal to scholars, but David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity offers a far more accessible analysis of how scientists arrive at the truth.
Deep thoughts but heavy going.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-691-23135-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.
The accomplished British nature writer turns to issues of environmental ethics in his latest exploration of the world.
In 1971, a law instructor asked a musing-out-loud question: Do trees have legal standing? His answer was widely mocked at the time, but it has gained in force: As Macfarlane chronicles here, Indigenous groups around the world are pressing “an idea that changes the world—the idea that a river is alive.” In the first major section of the book, Macfarlane travels to the Ecuadorian rainforest, where a river flows straight through a belt of gold and other mineral deposits that are, of course, much desired; his company on a long slog through the woods is a brilliant mycologist whose research projects have led not just to the discovery of a mushroom species that “would have first flourished on the supercontinent [of Gondwana] that formed over half a billion years ago,” but also to her proposing that fungi be considered a kingdom on a footing with flora and fauna. Other formidable activists figure in his next travels, to the great rivers of northern India, where, against the odds, some courts have lately been given to “shift Indian law away from anthropocentrism and towards something like ecological jurisprudence, underpinned by social justice.” The best part of the book, for those who enjoy outdoor thrills and spills, is Macfarlane’s third campaign, this one following a river in eastern Canada that, as has already happened to so many waterways there, is threatened to be impounded for hydroelectric power and other extractive uses. In delightfully eccentric company, and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman who advises him to ask the river just one question, Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that “even the trout have portage trails,” returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river’s permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative.Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780393242133
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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