Swift, agile treatment of a little known but highly entertaining episode in a legendary life.
The story of how the author of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, who was also an official of the Royal Mint, pursued with Javertian intensity London’s most brazen passer of bad coins.
Levenson (Science Studies/MIT; Einstein in Berlin, 2003, etc.) demonstrates a surpassing felicity in his brisk treatment of this late-17th-century true-crime adventure. One narrative difficulty is that there’s far more documentation about Isaac Newton than about counterfeiter William Chaloner, so the author is forced to rely heavily on an unreliable, anonymous biography of Chaloner published in 1699, not long after its subject was hanged for his crimes. Levenson is careful, however, to remind us continually of that biography’s flaws, and he digs out other information on the brash counterfeiter from public records and elsewhere, including Newton’s papers. The author cuts back and forth between the careers of his two main characters. We see Newton moving with focused ferocity through a variety of obsessions—the well known (mathematics, physics), the lesser known (alchemy, biblical prophecy) and the least known (his long career at the Mint). The details of Chaloner’s career are sketchy, but it’s clear he was both extraordinarily clever with mechanical devices and circumspect about his counterfeiting, rarely letting Player A on his team know what Player B was about and rarely getting within convictable range of any damning evidence. Chaloner tried to insinuate himself into the Mint, gave evidence at Parliamentary inquiries as if he were a disinterested authority on coinage, published pamphlets about monetary matters and, at the end, fought desperately and ingeniously for his life against Newton, who had initially underestimated his quarry. Levenson departs from the strong current of his narrative only when it’s necessary to explain a bit of London history or the workings of the legal and financial systems of the day.
Swift, agile treatment of a little known but highly entertaining episode in a legendary life.Pub Date: June 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-15-101278-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
As much a work of philosophy as of physics and full of insights for readers willing to work hard.
Undeterred by a subject difficult to pin down, Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, 2017, etc.) explains his thoughts on time.
Other scientists have written primers on the concept of time for a general audience, but Rovelli, who also wrote the bestseller Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, adds his personal musings, which are astute and rewarding but do not make for an easy read. “We conventionally think of time,” he writes, “as something simple and fundamental that flows uniformly, independently from everything else, uniformly from the past to the future, measured by clocks and watches. In the course of time, the events of the universe succeed each other in an orderly way: pasts, presents, futures. The past is fixed, the future open….And yet all of this has turned out to be false.” Rovelli returns again and again to the ideas of three legendary men. Aristotle wrote that things change continually. What we call “time” is the measurement of that change. If nothing changed, time would not exist. Newton disagreed. While admitting the existence of a time that measures events, he insisted that there is an absolute “true time” that passes relentlessly. If the universe froze, time would roll on. To laymen, this may seem like common sense, but most philosophers are not convinced. Einstein asserted that both are right. Aristotle correctly explained that time flows in relation to something else. Educated laymen know that clocks register different times when they move or experience gravity. Newton’s absolute exists, but as a special case in Einstein’s curved space-time. According to Rovelli, our notion of time dissolves as our knowledge grows; complex features swell and then retreat and perhaps vanish entirely. Furthermore, equations describing many fundamental physical phenomena don’t require time.
As much a work of philosophy as of physics and full of insights for readers willing to work hard.Pub Date: May 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1610-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that...
Nicely textured account of what the Earth would look like if humans disappeared.
Disaster movies have depicted the State of Liberty poking out from the ground and empty cities overgrown with trees and vines, but what would really happen if, for one reason or another, every single one of us vanished from the planet? Building on a Discover magazine article, Weisman (Journalism/Univ. of Arizona; An Echo in My Blood, 1999, etc.) addresses the question. There are no shocks here—nature goes on. But it is unsettling to observe the processes. Drawing on interviews with architects, biologists, engineers, physicists, wildlife managers, archaeologists, extinction experts and many others willing to conjecture, Weisman shows how underground water would destroy city streets, lightning would set fires, moisture and animals would turn temperate-zone suburbs into forests in 500 years and 441 nuclear plants would overheat and burn or melt. “Watch, and maybe learn,” writes the author. Many of his lessons come from past developments, such as the sudden disappearance of the Maya 1,600 years ago and the evolution of animals and humans in Africa. Bridges will fall, subways near fault lines in New York and San Francisco will cave in, glaciers will wipe away much of the built world and scavengers will clean our human bones within a few months. Yet some things will persist after we’re gone: bronze sculptures, Mount Rushmore (about 7.2 millions years, given granite’s erosion rate of one inch every 10,000 years), particles of everything made of plastic, manmade underground malls in Montreal and Moscow. In Hawaii, lacking predators, cows and pigs will rule.
Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that nature and humans need to maintain to survive.Pub Date: July 10, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-34729-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
PERSPECTIVES
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