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The Architecture of Matter
"Warmly recommended. It is that rare achievement, a lively book which at the same time takes the fullest possible advantage of scholarly knowledge."—Charles C. Gillespie, New York Times Book Review
404 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
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January 17, 2018
In this dense yet surprisingly readable book Toulmin and Goodfield will take you through the history of scientific ideas from Thales and Anaximander to Watson and Crick. In addition to explaining various theories and concepts within physics, chemistry, and biology the book’s key strength is showing the birth of these ideas in the context of their time.
There are plenty of theories that retrospectively turned out to have been incorrect or incomplete, but there are no idiots in this book and the authors brilliantly take us through the relevant zeitgeists and describe not just what a particular scientist thought, but why he thought so on a perfectly legitimate grounds. As such the book doesn’t merely depict the development of ideas, but traces out the evolution of scientific intellectual milieu from classical antiquity to 20th century.
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Rest are notes to self, in a (mostly hopeless) attempt to jog the future memory:
Up to 600BC mostly craft and ritual, latter is necessary since attribution of causes is incredibly poor. Emphasis on making, rather than understanding.
Ionia 600BC first traces of matter theory.
- Early natural philosophy as rational mythology. Crippled by having to explain creation in addition to “merely” explaining matter. Talk about scope creep.
- Men of Miletos: Thales (water) vs Anaximander (looking for a universal substance devoid of properties).
- Competing views on problem of change: “Pendulum” (Anaximander, almost entropy-like), “Breath” (Anaximenes, pneuma), “Mixture” (Empedocles).
- Seeds of two-thousand year debate between atomists and continuumists, in its various forms.
500BC, more abstract vectors of thought.
- Pythagoras. Everything has a mathematical essence. Paging Max Tegmark…
- Democritus and Lucretius. Atomism (“pure” - no forces, no fields, of course)
400BC, first attempt at synthesis of competing theories
-Plato. Geometry & math (like QM today :)), geometric atomism as theory of matter (platonic solids).
- Aristotle. Emphasis on function, classification, physiology, development. Teleology and final causes (ironically originated as bottom-up, later reframed as top-down by religious thinkers).
Alexandrian transition (from 322BC death of Aristotle to approx. 100AD)
- Stoicism (300BC-200AD). Pneuma, standing waves, emergent properties, early complexity almost. Seems shockingly prescient.
- Epicureans. Atoms and void.
- Galen (Rome 130-210AD). Combines Aristotle and Stoics, demonstrates function of the kidney, physician to Marcus Aurelius.
Hellenistic-then-Roman Alexandria becomes full intellectual center by 100 AD. Unlike Athens – diverse, commerce driven, and practice oriented.
- Alchemists. Marriage of Greek philosophy with practice. Seem underrated by history, acquired bad reputation when revived by medieval European charlatans.
- Rise of Neo-Platonism (Plato’s rationality gradually replaced by spirituality, no longer secular)
Scholasticism 1100-1700. Debate unburdened by experiment.
- 16c hints of revival via Renaissance humanism – reviving ancient Greeks through empirical evidence.
- 17c William Harvey (medicine, anatomy along Galen/Aristotle lines, blood flow), Jan van Helmont (experimental chemistry, gases)
- Of course Rene Descartes – need for rational reason and mechanistic framework (top-down), Francis Bacon – empiricism and scientific method (bottom up).
- Descartes deflects religion by introducing mind-body split. Scientists free to pursue their goals in the domain of “matter”, but ”mind” and “life” are left to God till 20th century.
- Turn of the tide away from prevailing Aristotelianism towards atomism on Lucretian lines.
-Isaac Newton – introduces “action at a distance” as force which effectively unifies Stoic “pneuma” with mechanical atomists. Huge. (Bad call with corpuscular aether light theory though)
Chemistry. Hard to appreciate how difficult it is to think about gases and heat from scratch. Can’t even ask the right questions…
- 17c – Robert Boyle as first modern chemist, but 18c is a truly great one for chemistry:
- Lavoisier knocks out phlogiston, recognizes oxygen and hydrogen, need for taxonomy, reframes the whole field. Father of modern chemistry. Beheaded in French revolution reign of terror…
- Dalton – Atomic theory of chemistry. Huge. (systematized by Mendeleev into periodic table 1869).
- Dalton firmly moves chemistry from Aristotelian function to Platonic structure.
19c, massive progress.
- With Faraday (self-taught, intuitive, experiment) and Maxwell (formal math) we get electromagnetism.
- Classical Synthesis in physics: Greek atomism + Newton (force) + Maxwell (non-mechanical energy exchange).
- Sadi Carnot – carnot heat engine, entropy -> 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics. Mic drop.
Turn of 20c – classical synthesis disintegrates together with assumptions about atom’s indivisibility and immutability.
- 1899 Max Planck’s paper kicks of QM. Quanta enters. Energy emitted in quantized form.
- 1905 Einstein. Energy is not just emitted but exists in quantized form. Photon.
- 1911 Rutherford’s atomic model. Nucleus. Transmutation of N into O with alpha particles (1919). First nuclear reaction.
- 1913 Bohr’s model, with orbits.
- 1919 Einstein mass-energy equivalence. Who-ah.
QM Transcendence. 1926-30 Heisenberg and Schrödinger reinterpret QM and transcend it.
- Atomic model – e don’t “jump” orbits but change energy
- Waves of probability, irreducible indeterminacy.
- Stoics “standing matter waves” strike back! Einstein and Rutherford are not amused…
- Nuclear physics as a perfect synthesis of Stoics and Democritus
- Bohm & Vigier model as an attempt to remove indeterminacy issues.
- To this day we are stuck between Copenhagen and Everett interpretations, aka instrumentalists vs realists.
- And yet Schrödinger’s equation is perfectly deterministic and works spectacularly well – “shut up and calculate” :)
Biochemistry birth pangs – Albrecht von Haller (1750s experimental physiology), Julien de La Mettrie (materialism for life forms).
- By 1800s the burden of proof shifts to physiology – why shouldn’t physics and chemistry apply to the animate?
- Claude Bernard (1850s) – life does obey laws of physics/chemistry, but organism emerges through complexity of interaction, no special hand-wavy “vitality” required for life.
- Emphasizes stability of organisms, sustained by energy, and modulated by heat, negative feedback. Couldn’t quite take this idea to apply to genetics/evolution/development, as those sub-disciplines still in their infancy
Cell theory. Cells discovered in 1660s but properly understood by 1860s.
- Slow progress largely due to slow rate of microscope improvement. (This tools-theory dependence Is one of the book’s overarching themes)
- Famous trifecta: 1841 Robert Remak - cell division, 1857 Franz Leydig – cell structure (nucleus, cell-contents, membrane). Rudlof Virchow – proper unifying treatise on cell theory. (“Dalton of physiology”)
Heredity, genetic inheritance - Mendel (“Lavoiser of botany”) and August Weisman (1880s), too bad the 2 never met…
- Weisman – biological stability of inheritance patterns, molecular basis for genetics.
- Both Aristotle and Stoics were looking for “carrier” with “pneuma” as a Hail Mary, and Weisman finally properly took this forward.
- T.H. Morgan – chromosomes and heredity (1933). It is left to Ronald Fischer to mathematize Darwinian evolution on a genetic basis.
- And of course Francis and Crick, 1953, double helix and atomic structure of DNA. Today you can order CRISPR toolkit online…
There are plenty of theories that retrospectively turned out to have been incorrect or incomplete, but there are no idiots in this book and the authors brilliantly take us through the relevant zeitgeists and describe not just what a particular scientist thought, but why he thought so on a perfectly legitimate grounds. As such the book doesn’t merely depict the development of ideas, but traces out the evolution of scientific intellectual milieu from classical antiquity to 20th century.
-------
Rest are notes to self, in a (mostly hopeless) attempt to jog the future memory:
Up to 600BC mostly craft and ritual, latter is necessary since attribution of causes is incredibly poor. Emphasis on making, rather than understanding.
Ionia 600BC first traces of matter theory.
- Early natural philosophy as rational mythology. Crippled by having to explain creation in addition to “merely” explaining matter. Talk about scope creep.
- Men of Miletos: Thales (water) vs Anaximander (looking for a universal substance devoid of properties).
- Competing views on problem of change: “Pendulum” (Anaximander, almost entropy-like), “Breath” (Anaximenes, pneuma), “Mixture” (Empedocles).
- Seeds of two-thousand year debate between atomists and continuumists, in its various forms.
500BC, more abstract vectors of thought.
- Pythagoras. Everything has a mathematical essence. Paging Max Tegmark…
- Democritus and Lucretius. Atomism (“pure” - no forces, no fields, of course)
400BC, first attempt at synthesis of competing theories
-Plato. Geometry & math (like QM today :)), geometric atomism as theory of matter (platonic solids).
- Aristotle. Emphasis on function, classification, physiology, development. Teleology and final causes (ironically originated as bottom-up, later reframed as top-down by religious thinkers).
Alexandrian transition (from 322BC death of Aristotle to approx. 100AD)
- Stoicism (300BC-200AD). Pneuma, standing waves, emergent properties, early complexity almost. Seems shockingly prescient.
- Epicureans. Atoms and void.
- Galen (Rome 130-210AD). Combines Aristotle and Stoics, demonstrates function of the kidney, physician to Marcus Aurelius.
Hellenistic-then-Roman Alexandria becomes full intellectual center by 100 AD. Unlike Athens – diverse, commerce driven, and practice oriented.
- Alchemists. Marriage of Greek philosophy with practice. Seem underrated by history, acquired bad reputation when revived by medieval European charlatans.
- Rise of Neo-Platonism (Plato’s rationality gradually replaced by spirituality, no longer secular)
Scholasticism 1100-1700. Debate unburdened by experiment.
- 16c hints of revival via Renaissance humanism – reviving ancient Greeks through empirical evidence.
- 17c William Harvey (medicine, anatomy along Galen/Aristotle lines, blood flow), Jan van Helmont (experimental chemistry, gases)
- Of course Rene Descartes – need for rational reason and mechanistic framework (top-down), Francis Bacon – empiricism and scientific method (bottom up).
- Descartes deflects religion by introducing mind-body split. Scientists free to pursue their goals in the domain of “matter”, but ”mind” and “life” are left to God till 20th century.
- Turn of the tide away from prevailing Aristotelianism towards atomism on Lucretian lines.
-Isaac Newton – introduces “action at a distance” as force which effectively unifies Stoic “pneuma” with mechanical atomists. Huge. (Bad call with corpuscular aether light theory though)
Chemistry. Hard to appreciate how difficult it is to think about gases and heat from scratch. Can’t even ask the right questions…
- 17c – Robert Boyle as first modern chemist, but 18c is a truly great one for chemistry:
- Lavoisier knocks out phlogiston, recognizes oxygen and hydrogen, need for taxonomy, reframes the whole field. Father of modern chemistry. Beheaded in French revolution reign of terror…
- Dalton – Atomic theory of chemistry. Huge. (systematized by Mendeleev into periodic table 1869).
- Dalton firmly moves chemistry from Aristotelian function to Platonic structure.
19c, massive progress.
- With Faraday (self-taught, intuitive, experiment) and Maxwell (formal math) we get electromagnetism.
- Classical Synthesis in physics: Greek atomism + Newton (force) + Maxwell (non-mechanical energy exchange).
- Sadi Carnot – carnot heat engine, entropy -> 1st and 2nd law of thermodynamics. Mic drop.
Turn of 20c – classical synthesis disintegrates together with assumptions about atom’s indivisibility and immutability.
- 1899 Max Planck’s paper kicks of QM. Quanta enters. Energy emitted in quantized form.
- 1905 Einstein. Energy is not just emitted but exists in quantized form. Photon.
- 1911 Rutherford’s atomic model. Nucleus. Transmutation of N into O with alpha particles (1919). First nuclear reaction.
- 1913 Bohr’s model, with orbits.
- 1919 Einstein mass-energy equivalence. Who-ah.
QM Transcendence. 1926-30 Heisenberg and Schrödinger reinterpret QM and transcend it.
- Atomic model – e don’t “jump” orbits but change energy
- Waves of probability, irreducible indeterminacy.
- Stoics “standing matter waves” strike back! Einstein and Rutherford are not amused…
- Nuclear physics as a perfect synthesis of Stoics and Democritus
- Bohm & Vigier model as an attempt to remove indeterminacy issues.
- To this day we are stuck between Copenhagen and Everett interpretations, aka instrumentalists vs realists.
- And yet Schrödinger’s equation is perfectly deterministic and works spectacularly well – “shut up and calculate” :)
Biochemistry birth pangs – Albrecht von Haller (1750s experimental physiology), Julien de La Mettrie (materialism for life forms).
- By 1800s the burden of proof shifts to physiology – why shouldn’t physics and chemistry apply to the animate?
- Claude Bernard (1850s) – life does obey laws of physics/chemistry, but organism emerges through complexity of interaction, no special hand-wavy “vitality” required for life.
- Emphasizes stability of organisms, sustained by energy, and modulated by heat, negative feedback. Couldn’t quite take this idea to apply to genetics/evolution/development, as those sub-disciplines still in their infancy
Cell theory. Cells discovered in 1660s but properly understood by 1860s.
- Slow progress largely due to slow rate of microscope improvement. (This tools-theory dependence Is one of the book’s overarching themes)
- Famous trifecta: 1841 Robert Remak - cell division, 1857 Franz Leydig – cell structure (nucleus, cell-contents, membrane). Rudlof Virchow – proper unifying treatise on cell theory. (“Dalton of physiology”)
Heredity, genetic inheritance - Mendel (“Lavoiser of botany”) and August Weisman (1880s), too bad the 2 never met…
- Weisman – biological stability of inheritance patterns, molecular basis for genetics.
- Both Aristotle and Stoics were looking for “carrier” with “pneuma” as a Hail Mary, and Weisman finally properly took this forward.
- T.H. Morgan – chromosomes and heredity (1933). It is left to Ronald Fischer to mathematize Darwinian evolution on a genetic basis.
- And of course Francis and Crick, 1953, double helix and atomic structure of DNA. Today you can order CRISPR toolkit online…
June 19, 2019
So it took me a little over four years to finish this book. Most books would have been abandoned after that point, but this one was very interesting at points. Mostly, it just took a lot of effort to read. And, if I am honest, effort is rarely something I'm looking for in my reading material! The parts about the revolution of chemistry leading to a more complete picture of the atom were fascinating. The parts before that about ancient science and after that about biological sciences were less interesting to me. The ancient parts were still interesting for how much they got right! And the later parts about biology were interesting because this book was first written in the 60s and it is amazing how much more about biology we have learned since then!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews