What do you think?
Rate this book
The Best American Science Writing 2000
The first volume in this annual series of the best writing by Americans, meticulously selected by bestselling author James Gleick, one of the foremost chronicles of scientific social history, debuts with a stellar collection of writers and thinkers. Many of these cutting-edge essays offer glimpses of new realms of discovery and thought, exploring territory that is unfamiliar to most of us, or finding the unexpected in the midst of the familiar. Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg challenges the idea of whether the universe has a designer; Pulitzer Prize winner Natalie Angier reassesses caveman (and-woman) couture; bestselling author and Darwinian theorist Stephen Jay Gould makes a claim for the man whose ideas Darwin discredited; Timothy Ferris proposes a realistic alternative to wrap-speed interseller travel; neurologist and bestselling author Oliver Sacks reminisces about his first loves-chemistry and math. This diverse, stimulating and accessible collection is required reading for anyone who wants to travel to the frontier of knowledge.
- GenresScienceNonfictionEssays
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2000
5 people are currently reading
414 people want to read
About the author
James Gleick
20 books2,035 followersJames Gleick (born August 1, 1954) is an American author, journalist, and biographer, whose books explore the cultural ramifications of science and technology. Three of these books have been Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists, and they have been translated into more than twenty languages.
Born in New York City, USA, Gleick attended Harvard College, graduating in 1976 with a degree in English and linguistics. Having worked for the Harvard Crimson and freelanced in Boston, he moved to Minneapolis, where he helped found a short-lived weekly newspaper, Metropolis. After its demise, he returned to New York and joined as staff of the New York Times, where he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter.
He was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University in 1989-90. Gleick collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. In 1993, he founded The Pipeline, an early Internet service. Gleick is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.
His first book, Chaos: Making a New Science, an international best-seller, chronicled the development of chaos theory and made the Butterfly Effect a household phrase.
Among the scientists Gleick profiled were Mitchell Feigenbaum, Stephen Jay Gould, Douglas Hofstadter, Richard Feynman and Benoit Mandelbrot. His early reporting on Microsoft anticipated the antitrust investigations by the U. S. Department of Justice and the European Commission. Gleick's essays charting the growth of the Internet included the "Fast Forward" column on technology in the New York Times Magazine from 1995 to 1999 and formed the basis of his book What Just Happened. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, and the Washington Post.
Bibliography:
1987 Chaos: Making a New Science, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0140092501)
1990 (with Eliot Porter) Nature's Chaos, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0316609420)
1992 Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Pantheon. (ISBN 0679747044)
1999 Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, Pantheon. (ISBN 067977548X)
2000 (editor) The Best American Science Writing 2000, HarperCollins. (ISBN 0060957360)
2002 What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier, Pantheon. (ISBN 0375713913)
2003 Isaac Newton, Pantheon. (ISBN 1400032954)
2011 The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books. (ISBN 9780375423727 )
Born in New York City, USA, Gleick attended Harvard College, graduating in 1976 with a degree in English and linguistics. Having worked for the Harvard Crimson and freelanced in Boston, he moved to Minneapolis, where he helped found a short-lived weekly newspaper, Metropolis. After its demise, he returned to New York and joined as staff of the New York Times, where he worked for ten years as an editor and reporter.
He was the McGraw Distinguished Lecturer at Princeton University in 1989-90. Gleick collaborated with the photographer Eliot Porter on Nature's Chaos and with developers at Autodesk on Chaos: The Software. In 1993, he founded The Pipeline, an early Internet service. Gleick is active on the boards of the Authors Guild and the Key West Literary Seminar.
His first book, Chaos: Making a New Science, an international best-seller, chronicled the development of chaos theory and made the Butterfly Effect a household phrase.
Among the scientists Gleick profiled were Mitchell Feigenbaum, Stephen Jay Gould, Douglas Hofstadter, Richard Feynman and Benoit Mandelbrot. His early reporting on Microsoft anticipated the antitrust investigations by the U. S. Department of Justice and the European Commission. Gleick's essays charting the growth of the Internet included the "Fast Forward" column on technology in the New York Times Magazine from 1995 to 1999 and formed the basis of his book What Just Happened. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, and the Washington Post.
Bibliography:
1987 Chaos: Making a New Science, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0140092501)
1990 (with Eliot Porter) Nature's Chaos, Viking Penguin. (ISBN 0316609420)
1992 Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, Pantheon. (ISBN 0679747044)
1999 Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, Pantheon. (ISBN 067977548X)
2000 (editor) The Best American Science Writing 2000, HarperCollins. (ISBN 0060957360)
2002 What Just Happened: A Chronicle from the Electronic Frontier, Pantheon. (ISBN 0375713913)
2003 Isaac Newton, Pantheon. (ISBN 1400032954)
2011 The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books. (ISBN 9780375423727 )
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 12, 2008
I've been reading this essay collection in fits and starts. Originally I had marked this as three stars, because I'd read a few and they didn't particularly impress me (other than the fact they were done well) but I've upped it to four after discovering the incredibly personal, descriptive and yet still managing to be strongly scientific and well researched essay, entitled Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain.
I've taken many neuroscience courses, but as Feynman has so often noted, there is no bigger difference than between knowing the names and the facts of a thing and truly understanding their substance, the real heart of the matter. In this same way, I've heard so much and studied so much about brains, but actually seeing the effect of brain damage on this writer's life speaks volumes, with both a strength and subtly that would be incredibly difficult for a normal, undamaged writer to match. (who lacks the experience and much make up for it with just imagination)
Everything, from the types of mistakes he makes, the things that give him the most trouble in the everyday things in his life, to the ways he has learned to cope with them, say so much about how the brain works. Forget the cartoonish handlings of the brain, the crudeness and simplicity of people getting knocked on the head and forgetting who they are, this is the real deal. The picture of the brain, when it works and when it is damaged, as researched by one who has experience and come to terms with firsthand, whose own life has become irreparably touched by all those fundamental and sometimes so distant facts which us healthy people can barely phantom.
I plan to check out his book, "In the Shadow of Memory" as soon as I can. Just as I have been interested to borrow "Uncle Tungsten and stories of a chemical boyhood" by Oliver Sacks, perhaps the real strength of this collection is to let you sample and direct you to the more meatier writings of these incredibly talented individuals.
[Also of note, if some reason you cannot get your hands on this book, the "Gray Area" essay is also available for free online at http://www.lostmag.com/issue3/grayare... ]
I've taken many neuroscience courses, but as Feynman has so often noted, there is no bigger difference than between knowing the names and the facts of a thing and truly understanding their substance, the real heart of the matter. In this same way, I've heard so much and studied so much about brains, but actually seeing the effect of brain damage on this writer's life speaks volumes, with both a strength and subtly that would be incredibly difficult for a normal, undamaged writer to match. (who lacks the experience and much make up for it with just imagination)
Everything, from the types of mistakes he makes, the things that give him the most trouble in the everyday things in his life, to the ways he has learned to cope with them, say so much about how the brain works. Forget the cartoonish handlings of the brain, the crudeness and simplicity of people getting knocked on the head and forgetting who they are, this is the real deal. The picture of the brain, when it works and when it is damaged, as researched by one who has experience and come to terms with firsthand, whose own life has become irreparably touched by all those fundamental and sometimes so distant facts which us healthy people can barely phantom.
I plan to check out his book, "In the Shadow of Memory" as soon as I can. Just as I have been interested to borrow "Uncle Tungsten and stories of a chemical boyhood" by Oliver Sacks, perhaps the real strength of this collection is to let you sample and direct you to the more meatier writings of these incredibly talented individuals.
[Also of note, if some reason you cannot get your hands on this book, the "Gray Area" essay is also available for free online at http://www.lostmag.com/issue3/grayare... ]
May 29, 2013
It's interesting to see how a collection of essays weathers the passage of time; essays about cutting edge science age particularly quickly. When it was new, this first entry in the 'Best American Science Writing" series, from 2000, must have seemed quite striking. Now, over a decade later, only some of the pieces seem so compelling.
My favorites include George Johnson, 'A Matter of Scale', on scale-dependence in plants and animals as a natural law; Jonathan Weiner, 'Lord of the Flies', a delightful portrait of biologist Seymour Benzer; Floyd Skloot, 'Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain', about living with the results of a brain injury; and Oliver Sacks, 'Brilliant Light', part of a longer memoir of his childhood. Stephen Jay Gould's long 'A Division of Worms', about the changes in French biologist Lamarck's theories of evolution, is interesting in spite of itself.
In contrast, Douglas Hofstadter, 'Analogy as the Core of Cognition' is an awkward, loosely reasoned argument that everything we think depends on abstraction or categorization - not really analogy, though for some reason Hofstadter feels compelled to call it that. Steven Weinberg, 'A Designer Universe?', is even more annoying -- maybe this kind of anti-theistic rant seemed fresher in 2000, but it mostly feels tired and superficial now, post- Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and other 'new atheists'.
My favorites include George Johnson, 'A Matter of Scale', on scale-dependence in plants and animals as a natural law; Jonathan Weiner, 'Lord of the Flies', a delightful portrait of biologist Seymour Benzer; Floyd Skloot, 'Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain', about living with the results of a brain injury; and Oliver Sacks, 'Brilliant Light', part of a longer memoir of his childhood. Stephen Jay Gould's long 'A Division of Worms', about the changes in French biologist Lamarck's theories of evolution, is interesting in spite of itself.
In contrast, Douglas Hofstadter, 'Analogy as the Core of Cognition' is an awkward, loosely reasoned argument that everything we think depends on abstraction or categorization - not really analogy, though for some reason Hofstadter feels compelled to call it that. Steven Weinberg, 'A Designer Universe?', is even more annoying -- maybe this kind of anti-theistic rant seemed fresher in 2000, but it mostly feels tired and superficial now, post- Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and other 'new atheists'.
March 14, 2015
Some of the selections really thudded for me and not because of their seemingly boring subject matter but because the writing wasn't compelling (as if i could've chosen better instances of science writing than Mr. Gleick! sheesh). This series really ought to change the title to The Best American Popular Science Writing because there's nothing technical or difficult about any of the pieces. I suspect that's a mandate from the publisher—can't sell books if only 0.05% of the population can understand 2 of the selections.
"When Doctors Make Mistakes" is a candid insider's retelling of one of his early mishaps as a doctor in training along with an exploration of how the medical community works to avoid (& avoid repeating) such mistakes. An important and eye-opening view for those of us outside that group. All humans are fallible. All doctors are human. Non-doctors tend to believe that doctors should be infallible. Why is that?
"Of Mice and Elephants" — i can't remember anything about this except that it's about "the scaling problem." Oh, and i marked one factoid with "cool" in the margin: "the number of heartbeats during an average stay on Earth tends to be roughly the same, around a billion."
"Lord of the Flies" — a review of the work life of a peripatetic scientist; lately (as of 2000) he spent his time studying flies for clues about genetics. At least some of his results were over-generalized and exaggerated in the popular press along the lines of "Fountain of Youth Found in Flies' Genes."
"The Biotech Death of Jesse Gelsinger" — a fair look at one of the early cases against bioengineering. Akin to the first piece in this collection, though, why did we expect that they could get it right on their first tries? Just because of the Hippocratic oath? One of the doctors involved in Jesse's unfortunate death apparently (and admirably?) feels that way.
"Close Encounters" — a ho-hum 1st-person scientist's study of ants and how individual members interact to create the community. Just like with an ant colony, i think there's more going on beneath the surface of this article and that is what i would prefer to read. Her conclusions felt like a stretch.
"Antarctic Dreams" — Question: How in the hell did they create a neutrino detector? Answer: Read this article. Question: How in the hell do they know they're detecting neutrinos? Answer: This article doesn't really tell you. That omission implies (to me, anyway) a sense of "It's a serious scientist thing; you wouldn't understand."
"Interstellar Spaceflight? Can We Travel to Other Stars?" — A subject dear to my heart! since childhood! Alas, the answer being offered is, "No, but we could start planning for an intergalactic internet sorta thing; that'd be pretty cool; and virtually the next best thing to traveling to other stars physically, right?" I guess i'll grudgingly agree with that. I was stoked to see the video of the little Mars cameras, so it would be even more awesome to receive data from another sentient species even if it's only their version of Twitter & Facebook.
"Journey to the Center of My Mind" — A writer convinces a brain scientist to scan his brain looking for ... the creativity stuff? The writer was curious to find out if storytelling has a center in the brain or if memory ... lemme quote him, it's faster: "These [MRI] scans would, for the most part, be customized, almost autobiographical studies that would probe thoughts and emotions related to my personal history and work as a writer and editor." He didn't find a "center" of his mind. Surprised? yeah, me neither.
"Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain" — A writer suffers severe brain damage and still manages to write about it. The writing is so good about how hard it is for him to do the simplest things now, including putting words together into sentences, that it's hard to believe he actually wrote it. If he did, it must've been like climbing a mountain, but climbing a mountain so tall that every night when you make camp, you know you'll wake up closer to the bottom again and unaware of exactly how you got to that spot or how to get back to where you initially made camp. Lesson: don't ever contract a virus that attacks the brain (ie, if anybody ever offers you a virus, just say no).
"Close Encounters: An Artist Shows That Size Affects Shape" — Is it just me or does it seem a bit odd that 2 of the stories are titled "Close Encounters"? It's not like this is Best American Science Writing 1978 . Anyway, there's an artist whose work apparently "proves" that the size of an object actually affects the shape that your mind "sees." That's contrary to the long-held scientific given. Some folks posited that shape is affected by size but nobody'd proven it. I couldn't really follow the graphic that was provided and what i did see seemed less than compelling, but the idea is interesting. This also provides an interesting look at modern art—is it really art? By which i mean, is this the kind of thing that you think of as Art?
"Analogy as the Core of Cognition" — Another subject near and dear to my heart! since childhood! A bit disappointing that i'm not satiated by the article. Depressed that i'd almost surely not be able to follow more technical delvings into the ideas. I can dig the premise, but as with the essay about studying ants, i wanted more.
"Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms of Pseudoscience" — From The Onion. Good stuff. Nuff said?
"Brilliant Light" — I think this was one of Oliver Sacks's precursor publications en route to finishing Uncle Tungsten. A friend of mine read that book and was underwhelmed and i think i know why: Sacks is least interesting to me when he's talking about his own life (aren't we all?).
"Lab Notes" — A jazz pianist & writer's memories of trying to do right by his family tradition and grow up to become a scientist ... and the misery of his failure to do so. Not uplifting, but compelling. Maybe just because i might've been that same guy (without the "living up to family expectations" biznaz) if i'd stuck to my initial collegiate plan of becoming a chemist. Hmmm, wasn't i just saying that we're most boring when talking about ourselves? This writer wasn't. I hereby officially rescind that glib overstatement.
"Furs for Evening, But Cloth Was the Stone Age Standby" — I should state first of all that few things cause me to roll my eyes as dangerously nowadays as Fashion (imagine i'm an 8 year old and my mother is expounding on the greatness of Classical Music in front of my peer group—that is the type of eyeball rolling i'm talking about). And this is all about Stone Age Fashion. Ugh. Grunt. Me cave man. Not want talk about clothing. Quiet, woman! Need sleep. I can't resist quoting a quote from this article, "We're reconstructing the past based on 5 percent of what was used." In other words, maybe 5% of all the things crafted, created, made, used during the Stone Age survived intact and we're postulating what life was like based only on that. This "novel" interpretation of the "Venus" figurines doesn't seem much better argued than any other interpretation: all theories are worthy of skepticism.
"A Division of Worms" — If you've studied evolution, you've probably been taught to make fun of Lamarck. This article (from a lecture, i think) intends to destroy that compulsion, to restore him to a place of esteem and honor among turn-of-the-19th-century science, and to show that he wasn't as "silly" as he has been portrayed ever since Darwin's theory held true. I didn't know Gould held a faculty post for invertebrate studies, but that fits perfectly with this study of Lamarck's late-in-life ability to change his thinking about how life evolves based on his (re)classification of Worms.
"Must Dog Eat Dog?" — I think this was supposed to be funny. I didn't think it was. (And i'm starting to wonder if i'm biased against female science writers!) I can dig her desire to say, "Evolutionary psychologists revel in telling Uncomfortable Truths." Remember how i was cynical about the 5% of material culture from the Stone Age? Well, there can be even more supposition, extrapolation, and flat-out theorizationalizing from thought experimentation among evolutionary biolog/psycholog/blablahologists. But that's not funny, to me.
"Einstein's Clocks: The Place of Time" — The History of Science. Could anything sound more boring than that? I submit that it could not. 20 pages of text & 3 pages of footnotes roughly equivalent to saying, "Remember that time when the Europeans finally started to try to set up universal time? That was awesome. Oh, and that was the same time that Einstein was sussing out special relativity (which won't be explained here cuz ... everybody already knows that by now, right?)" Anyway, it wasn't as bad as all that. Semi-compelling. But if you already know the history of the development of universal time-keeping, you might not wanna bother. How that time influenced Einstein's thought is semi-intriguing. Give it some thought, the author is saying. Ok. Done.
"A Designer Universe?" — Yet another short piece about the standard scientific community's feelings about "intelligent design." I'd recommend Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion instead, focusing only on the chapters specific to intelligent design.
OVERALL: Sounds like i didn't like this very much. Maybe it's just that i expect more out of science writing. I shouldn't be so dismissive of most of the material. I'll read more books in this series. Why? Because i'm not a scientist or technical expert. I can't read the highbrow stuff. I've gotta rely on the popularized stuff OR go to school for a couple more years so that i can read articles & books in ONE field more deeply (not gonna happen). These books are a neat way to try to keep up with some of the hot topics in the world of science year by year.
"When Doctors Make Mistakes" is a candid insider's retelling of one of his early mishaps as a doctor in training along with an exploration of how the medical community works to avoid (& avoid repeating) such mistakes. An important and eye-opening view for those of us outside that group. All humans are fallible. All doctors are human. Non-doctors tend to believe that doctors should be infallible. Why is that?
"Of Mice and Elephants" — i can't remember anything about this except that it's about "the scaling problem." Oh, and i marked one factoid with "cool" in the margin: "the number of heartbeats during an average stay on Earth tends to be roughly the same, around a billion."
"Lord of the Flies" — a review of the work life of a peripatetic scientist; lately (as of 2000) he spent his time studying flies for clues about genetics. At least some of his results were over-generalized and exaggerated in the popular press along the lines of "Fountain of Youth Found in Flies' Genes."
"The Biotech Death of Jesse Gelsinger" — a fair look at one of the early cases against bioengineering. Akin to the first piece in this collection, though, why did we expect that they could get it right on their first tries? Just because of the Hippocratic oath? One of the doctors involved in Jesse's unfortunate death apparently (and admirably?) feels that way.
"Close Encounters" — a ho-hum 1st-person scientist's study of ants and how individual members interact to create the community. Just like with an ant colony, i think there's more going on beneath the surface of this article and that is what i would prefer to read. Her conclusions felt like a stretch.
"Antarctic Dreams" — Question: How in the hell did they create a neutrino detector? Answer: Read this article. Question: How in the hell do they know they're detecting neutrinos? Answer: This article doesn't really tell you. That omission implies (to me, anyway) a sense of "It's a serious scientist thing; you wouldn't understand."
"Interstellar Spaceflight? Can We Travel to Other Stars?" — A subject dear to my heart! since childhood! Alas, the answer being offered is, "No, but we could start planning for an intergalactic internet sorta thing; that'd be pretty cool; and virtually the next best thing to traveling to other stars physically, right?" I guess i'll grudgingly agree with that. I was stoked to see the video of the little Mars cameras, so it would be even more awesome to receive data from another sentient species even if it's only their version of Twitter & Facebook.
"Journey to the Center of My Mind" — A writer convinces a brain scientist to scan his brain looking for ... the creativity stuff? The writer was curious to find out if storytelling has a center in the brain or if memory ... lemme quote him, it's faster: "These [MRI] scans would, for the most part, be customized, almost autobiographical studies that would probe thoughts and emotions related to my personal history and work as a writer and editor." He didn't find a "center" of his mind. Surprised? yeah, me neither.
"Gray Area: Thinking with a Damaged Brain" — A writer suffers severe brain damage and still manages to write about it. The writing is so good about how hard it is for him to do the simplest things now, including putting words together into sentences, that it's hard to believe he actually wrote it. If he did, it must've been like climbing a mountain, but climbing a mountain so tall that every night when you make camp, you know you'll wake up closer to the bottom again and unaware of exactly how you got to that spot or how to get back to where you initially made camp. Lesson: don't ever contract a virus that attacks the brain (ie, if anybody ever offers you a virus, just say no).
"Close Encounters: An Artist Shows That Size Affects Shape" — Is it just me or does it seem a bit odd that 2 of the stories are titled "Close Encounters"? It's not like this is Best American Science Writing 1978 . Anyway, there's an artist whose work apparently "proves" that the size of an object actually affects the shape that your mind "sees." That's contrary to the long-held scientific given. Some folks posited that shape is affected by size but nobody'd proven it. I couldn't really follow the graphic that was provided and what i did see seemed less than compelling, but the idea is interesting. This also provides an interesting look at modern art—is it really art? By which i mean, is this the kind of thing that you think of as Art?
"Analogy as the Core of Cognition" — Another subject near and dear to my heart! since childhood! A bit disappointing that i'm not satiated by the article. Depressed that i'd almost surely not be able to follow more technical delvings into the ideas. I can dig the premise, but as with the essay about studying ants, i wanted more.
"Revolutionary New Insoles Combine Five Forms of Pseudoscience" — From The Onion. Good stuff. Nuff said?
"Brilliant Light" — I think this was one of Oliver Sacks's precursor publications en route to finishing Uncle Tungsten. A friend of mine read that book and was underwhelmed and i think i know why: Sacks is least interesting to me when he's talking about his own life (aren't we all?).
"Lab Notes" — A jazz pianist & writer's memories of trying to do right by his family tradition and grow up to become a scientist ... and the misery of his failure to do so. Not uplifting, but compelling. Maybe just because i might've been that same guy (without the "living up to family expectations" biznaz) if i'd stuck to my initial collegiate plan of becoming a chemist. Hmmm, wasn't i just saying that we're most boring when talking about ourselves? This writer wasn't. I hereby officially rescind that glib overstatement.
"Furs for Evening, But Cloth Was the Stone Age Standby" — I should state first of all that few things cause me to roll my eyes as dangerously nowadays as Fashion (imagine i'm an 8 year old and my mother is expounding on the greatness of Classical Music in front of my peer group—that is the type of eyeball rolling i'm talking about). And this is all about Stone Age Fashion. Ugh. Grunt. Me cave man. Not want talk about clothing. Quiet, woman! Need sleep. I can't resist quoting a quote from this article, "We're reconstructing the past based on 5 percent of what was used." In other words, maybe 5% of all the things crafted, created, made, used during the Stone Age survived intact and we're postulating what life was like based only on that. This "novel" interpretation of the "Venus" figurines doesn't seem much better argued than any other interpretation: all theories are worthy of skepticism.
"A Division of Worms" — If you've studied evolution, you've probably been taught to make fun of Lamarck. This article (from a lecture, i think) intends to destroy that compulsion, to restore him to a place of esteem and honor among turn-of-the-19th-century science, and to show that he wasn't as "silly" as he has been portrayed ever since Darwin's theory held true. I didn't know Gould held a faculty post for invertebrate studies, but that fits perfectly with this study of Lamarck's late-in-life ability to change his thinking about how life evolves based on his (re)classification of Worms.
"Must Dog Eat Dog?" — I think this was supposed to be funny. I didn't think it was. (And i'm starting to wonder if i'm biased against female science writers!) I can dig her desire to say, "Evolutionary psychologists revel in telling Uncomfortable Truths." Remember how i was cynical about the 5% of material culture from the Stone Age? Well, there can be even more supposition, extrapolation, and flat-out theorizationalizing from thought experimentation among evolutionary biolog/psycholog/blablahologists. But that's not funny, to me.
"Einstein's Clocks: The Place of Time" — The History of Science. Could anything sound more boring than that? I submit that it could not. 20 pages of text & 3 pages of footnotes roughly equivalent to saying, "Remember that time when the Europeans finally started to try to set up universal time? That was awesome. Oh, and that was the same time that Einstein was sussing out special relativity (which won't be explained here cuz ... everybody already knows that by now, right?)" Anyway, it wasn't as bad as all that. Semi-compelling. But if you already know the history of the development of universal time-keeping, you might not wanna bother. How that time influenced Einstein's thought is semi-intriguing. Give it some thought, the author is saying. Ok. Done.
"A Designer Universe?" — Yet another short piece about the standard scientific community's feelings about "intelligent design." I'd recommend Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion instead, focusing only on the chapters specific to intelligent design.
OVERALL: Sounds like i didn't like this very much. Maybe it's just that i expect more out of science writing. I shouldn't be so dismissive of most of the material. I'll read more books in this series. Why? Because i'm not a scientist or technical expert. I can't read the highbrow stuff. I've gotta rely on the popularized stuff OR go to school for a couple more years so that i can read articles & books in ONE field more deeply (not gonna happen). These books are a neat way to try to keep up with some of the hot topics in the world of science year by year.
January 18, 2019
great essay collection.
February 23, 2019
The inaugural volume of this (sadly) now defunct series might be the best one I’ve read. Great thought-provoking articles.
September 5, 2007
Out of maybe twenty essays, at least ten were SO worth reading and totally accessible (profiles of scientists = NOT really science, still makes me seem smart!) I definitely had to skim three essays that were prodigiously footnoted and talked about physics or some such nonsense, but the rest (mostly from The New Yorker or The New York Times Magazine) were legit. I'm definitely planning on reading the rest of the series - it's a little embarrassing to bust out science facts from 2000.
Read
December 3, 2011Seems to be another fine collection. Read "Brilliant Light" by Oliver Sacks, a wonderful account of growing up sciency. And "Analogy as the Core of Cognition" by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
Alas, must return to library.
Alas, must return to library.
July 19, 2007
many interesting essays. a designer universe by weinberg was a take no prisoners assault on region that i resonated with.
April 3, 2008
Good pieces on really interesting topics written with humor and enthusiasm. Gotta get more of these things. Pleasant, not like science homework at all.
June 1, 2010
These essays will blow your mind.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews