Science and Inquiry discussion

For October 2014 we will be reading The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind by Michio Kaku.

Please use this thread to post questions, comments, and reviews, at any time.

Just read through the introduction and I'm hooked. I really take note to this mans perspective

I thought there would be more discussion or is there another feed I'm missing

Joseph, this is the right place. People may be slow to discuss, because it is not yet October, and they haven't started reading the book.

Anyway, I read the book a few months ago. It is excellent. Kaku is not an expert in this field, but his speculations are lots of fun to read. Here is my review.

I hate to say it, but Michio Kaku is little more than a TV personality - the Dr. Oz of physics. I'm not going to waste my time reading this, or any other of his books. I would recommend him to my 8-year-old grandson, but not to my precosious 12-year-old granddaughter.

It would be interesting if someone who has yet to start the book would record a count of the movie references.

I started early and am about 2/3 of the way through it. There have been a LOT of movie references.

Steve wrote: "It would be interesting if someone who has yet to start the book would record a count of the movie references.

I started early and am about 2/3 of the way through it. There have been a LOT of mov..."

I agree, Steve. It seemed like a pop-culture "name-dropping" exercise, to increase the popularity of the book.

He has to give credit to the individuals whom he interviewed especially since this isn't his specific area of study but more of a hobby. I didn't feel like he was name dropping just applying the name to the information provided. More than anything I feel like this book is aimed at intriguing individuals to what the mind is capable of because as he states in the book its really exploded in the past decade.

Joseph wrote: "He has to give credit to the individuals whom he interviewed especially since this isn't his specific area of study but more of a hobby. I didn't feel like he was name dropping just applying the na..."

Sorry, Joseph, I didn't explain sufficiently. By "name dropping", I didn't mean the names of people. I meant the titles of movies, especially the sci-fi movies, that he mentioned.

And I only thought it would be interesting to have a count of the movie references. BTW, he has yet to mention Alien, Aliens, or Bicentennial Man in the section on robots.

Maybe movie and other pop-culture are his way of attracting a wider audience. But to dumb-down the content does no service to us, and can only serve to increase his bank balance.

Robbower wrote: "Maybe movie and other pop-culture are his way of attracting a wider audience. But to dumb-down the content does no service to us, and can only serve to increase his bank balance."

Robbower--the strategy works for Kaku. His book got the most votes in our poll.

While I agree with the general sentiment that Kaku "dumbs down" the content and does it to reach a wider audience, I fail to see why this strategy should be criticized. We have constantly lamented in other threads about the dismal lack of understanding the general public has of scientific issues. So when an author comes along and by whatever means manages to grab the interest of people who otherwise wouldn't care, shouldn't this be cause for high praise? And as David points out, the strategy works. More people are getting to open up to science a little more. Some of his readers will no doubt continue down the scientific road after having been exposed to it in this breezy pop-culture way.

Clearly his target audience is not people who are already well read to the extent of being in a science and inquiry book club. This doesn't mean that his main objective is to make big bucks while twirling his mustache.

Well said

OK, Paolo, points taken and appreciated. I guess I'm being a bit self-centered in my opinions, the reason being that I feel STARVED for good science writing (and TV) that can help take an 'intermediate' science buff a few steps further. I have only 1970s Chemistry, Biology, Physics from a pretty good high school, and an adequate college. I will never be a professional scientist, but I still have a strong curiosity. Couldn't there be more available for the informed layman?

Good science is the ability to take a complex problem and simplify it.

I just read a great book about the microbiome and the problems arising with antibiotics wiping out ancient microbes. His theory was about the rise in diseases in the last 20 - 30 years which parallels the rise in antibiotic treatment as a cure all. You may find it a good read, I sure did. The book is called Missing Microbes by Martin J Blaser. Highly recommended

"I blame our professional scientific education that doesn't teach communication (whether among scientists or to layman)."

I can understand that the majority of scientists are not great communicators. What I can't understand is why the great communicators won't write hard science.

It's because the vast majority of people don't want to read about the statistics of an experiment. Rather linguistically explaining how the theory was developed and the implications thereof. If the book was nothing but mathematical jargon it wouldn't sell. An after all people want to make money for their work.

It's not about challenging them with harder tests. It's about taking a function in algebra and then applying it to a real life situation. Going through school I never knew the implications of what I was learning so I never took it seriously

Joseph wrote: "It's because the vast majority of people don't want to read about the statistics of an experiment. Rather linguistically explaining how the theory was developed and the implications thereof. If the..."

I don't think it's a choice between maths and words. There are some writers who write seriously for the educated layman... Dawkins, Dennett, Smolin, Wilson... even Penrose come to mind. But the vast majority of the shelf space goes to the 'gee-whiz' books with sexy titles and garish covers.

Civilcampaign wrote: "Robbower wrote: ""I blame our professional scientific education that doesn't teach communication (whether among scientists or to layman)."

"What I can't understand is why the great communicators w..."

Thank you for introducing a subject on which I think I may be able to make a contribution to this group!

I haven't participated much here partly because I don't have the kind of scientific background that most others seem to have and partly because I just haven't had time to read the books that are being discussed.

However, I do have a background in communication (print journalism, to be specific), and I wanted to share the most helpful writing/communication guideline I ever learned:

Never underestimate the reader's intelligence, but never overestimate the reader's background.

I learned that in my first college journalism class, and I tried to apply it throughout my newspaper and freelance journalism career. To some extent, I even applied it in my fiction, though in a slightly different way.

This principle was very useful when I was writing about complex economic and/or political issues. I think it would be especially appropriate for science writing.

Laura, that is a good guideline for writing about all subjects!

Laura wrote: "Civilcampaign wrote: "Robbower wrote: ""I blame our professional scientific education that doesn't teach communication (whether among scientists or to layman)."

"What I can't understand is why the..."

An interesting comment. One of the best books I've read in the past several years is 1491. The author is a journalist, and has the skill of bringing together information from many different fields, both scientific and historical, and creating a new synthesis.

Another book by a journalist is on a science topic: Parasite Rex, with info from virtually all specialty biology fields.

I can well understand that some of you who are accomplished scientists may be bored by some of the books that the group reads because they're too basic or simplistic or repetitive. But many of us joined the group because we don't know science that well and we want to learn.

I'm one of the later and I'm often frustrated because I can't keep up with the reading or because a selection is very far beyond me.

Maybe I'm naive in hoping that we can meet the needs of all members, but I think it's possible, as long as we understand that our members are diverse. I believe that we can share -- some months we choose a book targeted to a more advanced audience and some months we choose a book targeted to those less advanced. I also believe this happens unconsciously rather than through some concerted effort.

It seems to me that the primary purpose of this group -- maybe the reason most of us joined -- is to discover which books we might want to read, to determine which are worth our time. Everyone must make that determination for him/herself, but to do so we need input. That's where the group comes in. This is the place to find out whether someone thinks AAA book is targeted to an advanced audience or not, or whether BBB book is so badly written as to be not worth reading, or whether CCC book is just wrong.

That's why I encourage all of you to share your opinions of science and math books you have read (or attempted to read), at every opportunity. No opinion is wrong, as long as it's respectful. And no opinion is useless even if it's the same as many others.

Finished it a couple of days ago. This was my first book by Kaku so I had no preconceptions, nor do I now have any knowledge of how this one compares to his other works. Like most here, I also know him from his many appearances on various programs on the Science Channel. Like Neil DeGrasse Tyson he seems to be helping to fill the shoes of Carl Sagan, by bringing science to the general public in a positive and engaging manner.

Rather than "dumbed-down" I thought the material was presented in a sort of "Reader's Digest" manner where Kaku was basically, collecting, editing and explaining the latest research on the topic. But I too was a little disappointed by this. I was hoping for a little more original thought. It got better in the second half, and if any of you read the Appendix, it certainly didn't seem "dumbed down" to this non-scientist, but then I always seem to have trouble following the nuances of quantum mechanics.

In the future, if I want to read about the latest developments in neuroscience I think I will stick to authors with a background in that field.

Perhaps I should read something by Kaku about his own field of particle physics and string theory??

Good observations. I had a similar reaction to Neil Shubin. His book 'Your Inner Fish' was great. He's a fish/amphibian paleontologist. But when he tried to capitalize on his success with 'The Universe Within', he was way out of his depth, and on some points very mistaken.

So my take-away? Specialist training in one branch of science does not make a writer an expert in all sciences. No more than success in a movie career makes you a good political theorist.

Thanks for the tip about Shubin because I also enjoyed Your Inner Fish.

Of course there are exceptions like Nicholas Wade, a science reporter, who wroteBefore the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors and The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, both of which I really enjoyed. But maybe the difference is that Wade is a professional writer/researcher, unlike Kaku who is a scientist first, writer second, and thus Wade is better equipped to write about scientific disciplines in which he is not directly involved.

I am into part three, but have also been disappointed by the shallow critique Kaku seems to offer. In his book Visions, I appreciated the practicality of his physics evaluation of space travel, for example. Interesting otherwise, however.

I read this a while back. I'm very much in agreement with his premise about consciousness as presented in the first few chapters. My issue with the book is that this premise is never developed/supported. The book goes into a historical summary of the mind which may be interesting for some, but not all and then into speculation about AI. All in all it simply didn't hold together for me and I was quite disappointed in the book with the exception of the premise about consciousness as a feedback mechanism which I have been advocating for ages.

Is this thread closed? I received this book as a Christmas gift and would like to put here my future review. May I do that?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

José Luís Pinto wrote: "Is this thread closed? I received this book as a Christmas gift and would like to put here my future review. May I do that?"

Jose, absolutely. We figure the discussion is never really closed.

So far I've already reached chapter 7. I think the book's major strenghts are the knowledge of physics of Michio Kaku and his great communication skills, but when he described the three levels of counsciousness he ended up repeating himself in chapter 2 and sometimes it is visible he isn't a biologist like, for instance, when he approaches the issue of how we can have a functional and developped brain with just 23000 genes and doesn't refer that the old idea of "one gene, one protein" (molecular biology's central dogma) implicit in his writing is, despite not being completely false, outdated and, for instance, there are non ribossomic peptids (NRPS) and the same genes can create a multitude of different proteins using the alternative splicing process. He also makes the mistake in chapter 6 of saying agriculture started 5800 ago when he connects the last mutation in the ASPM gene with it and writing. Connecting that mutation and writing is already a bit risky and overstates the importance of that last mutation, but the agricultural claim is outright false (how did people settle in the Neolithc and create the first cities in the Fertile Crescent like Jericho and Çatalhöyük?). Besides that, I'm not very convinced by his claim that the brain evolution has stopped because he only takes into account the size expansion and the neurons' thickness and neglects modern or future pressureslike an emphasis on the person's creativity and social skills, the meritocratic system and in the future the machines, which may be auxilliaries to our brain. I'm talking more about chapter 6 because I have just read it and then it's easier to point out things like this (but here he made more mistakes or misconsiderations, which isn't helped at all by the fact that the study of intelligence is very hard, complex and controversial).

Anyway, I was hoping for a more "fantastic" book (I had read nothing by this author and had just seen some of his shows on Discovery Channel) full of speculations (which I wouldn't like much. Kaku proved himself better than I was hoping) and, as popular science and an introduction on neurosciences and their prospects, it's a good book. I know most of what he writes about ethics isn't original at all (and by his constant references to philosophers and scientists makes it clear), but I love the way how he writes in an accessible manner and connects things with science fiction.

Thanks Jose, I concur, but more from a computer science/AI perspective. I was very encouraged by his first couple of chapters but it kind of fell apart after that. He's clearly very interested in the topic, but I think he's working outside his field so it kind of fell flat for me overall.

I preferred so far chapter 5. For a person who has studied this for decades Kaku's work doesn't bring anything new, but for relative newcomers like me (I'm still in high school) and for the general people it's a good introductory work, but not much more than that.