Books

  (out of 5 stars)

Part detective story, part historical investigation, and part bibliophilic adventure, Owen Gingerich's The Book Nobody Read narrates the author's decades-long quest to track down and document all the existing first and second edition copies of Nicolaus Copernicus's groundbreaking work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri six ("Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"). De revolutionibus set in motion the drive to replace a geocentric universe with a heliocentric one. Gingerich take his title from myth put forward by Arthur Koestler that Copernicus's book was not widely read. Gingerich's investigation shows Koestler to be dead wrong.

Spending three decades building his census of De revolutionibus, Gingerich became personally invested in researching the history of the revolutionary work. Finding hundreds of copies of the first two editions to be very heavily annotated, the author discovered that not only was the book widely owned, it was clearly widely read. Later famous owners of the book included Kepler and Brahe, and in copy after copy, Gingerich discovered extensive notes by edition owners.

The Book Nobody Read is one of those odd niche adventures that likely appeals to a small audience. However, as a bibliophile and lover of both astronomy and history, this was a fantastic story of the worldwide search for copies of one of most important books ever written. Gingerich documents his travels and troubles across the world as he tracked down each copy. A passionate historian, the author also draws for the reader a unique view of the influence of De revolutionibus and the assorted characters who owned and were affected by it.

Again, I think this book likely appeals to a small niche audience, namely those interested in the history of science and/or the history of books. For those readers, however, this book is a fantastic treat and well worth a weekend read. Gingerich is a strong writer and clearly passionate about his lifelong pursuit of Copernicus's masterpiece. Peppered with many photographs of noteworthy annotations and editions, the author presents a wonderful exploration of the history of De revolutionibus. Four and one-half stars.

  (out of 5 stars)

Sam Harris has long been a speaker and thinker whose ideas I enjoy hearing, especially in regards to some of his base-level anti-religious arguments. The End of Faith is a fine first effort which offers some fundamentally strong arguments against religion in general, and more precisely, against the irrationality of faith without evidence. The book loses its way at times, and the last chapter should never have been included.

Other reviewers comment on how strongly Harris singles out Islam in this book, specifically condemning numerous passages (at one point he even offers 3-4 pages of non-stop quotes from the Koran espousing violence and hatred for non-muslims). It is clear that Harris believes Islam is the primary threat to our safety in these modern times, and his argument is backed up by ample evidence that this is the case. I'll respond with three thoughts (*) on this at the end of the review so as not to derail anyone wanting me to get to the point here. Harris does hammer Christians and Jews hard as well, though certainly not with the focus directed at Muslims.

EoF offers a view similar to that which Bill Maher advocates at the end of his film Religilous, that non-religious people need to stand up strongly and be accounted. The era when religion can cause the end of civilization is upon us, and the ability of religion to move masses to murder and mayhem, not to mention nuclear war, is a primary concern for all of human civilization. In other words, dissent loudly or die from the irrationality and violent tendencies of religions. I've subscribed to his view before reading this book, and find Harris' arguments provide compelling testimony (not evidence as such) that there is some reason to be very concerned.

This book loses some points in the way it wraps up, especially Chapter 7, which involves an odd inclusion of discussion of self and mysticism. While I'm inclined to agree with Harris that mysticism is not necessarily religious, I feel he was trying to justify himself one last time and the result is a muddled conclusion to an otherwise solid effort. I very much enjoy philosophy of mind and egoism discussions, and while those subjects certainly apply to how we view and value religion, Harris' narrative of edgy concern followed through most of the book slides strangely into a fuzzy discussion out of place in the book. He cites Dennett and other mind-matter thinkers, so he does appear to have an empirical interest in such things, but I don't feel that he needed to (nor should have) included chapter 7 justifying his views that mysticism is available to non-religious. It just didn't jive with mood established previously.

My edition of EoF included an update at the end written by Harris, responding to several key criticisms leveled since the book's original publishing. I thought this section was a neat summary of Harris' responses and if you have watched or read any of Harris' talks, you've likely seen him perfect these responses over time.

I enjoyed Eof for the most part, minus the unnecessary chapter 7, and would recommend it to anyone concerned about the desires and actions of religious people everywhere, especially moderates, for whom Harris shows no sympathy nor gratitude. Four stars.

* In response to Harris' focus on Islam in this book, I'd like to elaborate a bit. Harris hammers Islam hard, and explicitly defines it as the primary source of concern in religion to day. Three points.

First, in support of Harris, I believe that he acknowleges quite clearly that viewing Islam as the key enemy of reason is not simply due to the fact that believers believe horrible things and are willing to do things just as horrible, it is a matter of social progress elsewhere that tends to make Judeo-Christian societies, perhaps, more tolerant and less likely to use literal interpretations of holy books as a basis for violent actions (however, I acknowlege that this is up for strong debate and depends greatly on how you define terms like 'violent actions' and 'tolerant'). In other words, it is important to note that the Crusades and especially the Inquisition showed how irrational violence can be encouraged through literal readings of the Bible. The difference, in the end, is temporal.

Second, I believe Harris somewhat misses the point of the suicide bombers he uses to convey his vision of Islam. He views Islam as more terroristic, more likely to kill civilians without mercy, less likely to listen to reason, and certainly more likely to be dangerous to us than any other religious fanatic, all due to his belief (which seems accurate) that the Koran is unequivocally in favor of violence against non-Muslims.

He singles out Islam because of their use of weapons and tactics, attributing such behavior to direct quotes from scripture, but Harris ignores the fact that most Muslim countries are in highly aggitated states, especially in places most likely fall victim to suicide bombers, and the available arsenal to such Muslim believers is very limited. They cannot raise armies of tanks, Apaches, and B2s to enforce their worldview. They can't even organize 'normal' militias as a means to gain or hold power (this is especially true in suicide bombing targets Iraq and Israel). They instill terror on the only level they know how to: blowing something up (which does not always include suicide bombing). I would postulate that organized Islamic states with a more 'sophisticated' terroristic arsenal would not need to rely so heavily on randomly bombing civilians. Torture prisons, embargos, invasion forces and occupation can create enormous states of panic and terror and all have much longer-lasting effects. Harris here either ignores or refuses to recognize such actions as implicitly terroristic, and by extension, does not equate such Judeo-Christian inspired terror as on the same plane as that created by Islam. I utterly disagree and given the information which has become public since Faith was publish concerning Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and waterboarding, have the advantage of understanding how our Christian nation can cheerlead such devestating and horrific behavior.

Finally, third, Harris takes the position that torture is justified under the Dershowitz proposition of the 'ticking time-bomb' even knowing the information is almost certainly going to be worthless, assuming that we would also be willing to bomb an area knowing we would kill innocent civilians. Where to begin on this one... The Dershowitz argument is quite the straw man because it never happens yet we always assume it does. Anyone with knowledge of an imminent threat is highly unlikely to give up the details if he is as blinded by his religious beliefs as Harris spends several chapters assuring us he is (in the case of a Muslim). KSM was tortured 6 times a day over a month's time, and the actual information recovered from this was almost certainly not timely, even if in the end it turned out to be accurate. If it takes 30 days of near-continuously drowning a man in order to get him to talk, there never was a ticking time-bomb to justify the torture in the first place.

In the ethical considerations of torturing a person who is more likely to be innocent than have useful knowledge, Harris compares the choice to whether to bomb a target knowing innocent civilians will be killed. He throws up this bit of a red herring, and I cannot believe he didn't remove this and pick a clearer example. Torturing innocent people is not in any way the same as attempting to neutralize a military target. Yes, in both cases innocents are harmed (Harris rightly calls both torture), but only in the second case is the effort made to specifically damage the enemy's ability to perform the same action against our side. Torturing many people in hopes that one might tell us where the ticking time-bomb is located is such a fruitless pursuit that we are almost certainly more ethical to carpet bomb a location full of civilians and military targets than we are to specificially target individuals knowing they are likely to be innocent. Again, if there is a ticking time-bomb, the odds that you will capture and torture the person with just the right knowledge in time to defuse the bomb is incredibly small, enough to define anyone behind the action as evil under any rubric you choose to follow. The odds of destroying the fighting capability of a military unit with the precise (relative to previous methods) munitions available today is very high, to the point where we can often avoid civilian casualties (though by no means always). Straw man: remove thy self from this discussion.

I hope to find out Harris has backed off this proposition given that it is entirely disingenuous and dangerous. (I emphasize here that Harris IS NOT advocating torture, this was a thought exercise in the middle of a discussion of ethics).

  (out of 5 stars)

I picked up this book hoping that its subtitle, 'Evolution Beyond Natural Selection' would offer an interesting abstration of neo-Darwinian theory. In some ways, it certainly did so, but the results are a strange mix of solid science, sour grapes, and wishful cheerleading.

Make no mistake, the book is a relatively easy read, is well-written, and contains a ton of reference to good science, scientists, and some of the latest arguments on all sides of evolutionary thought. The backbone of the book, its discussion of symbiosis, is fascinating and would offer enlightenment to any reader unfamiliar with it. Ryan does an outstanding job conveying the importance of symbiotic relationships throughout most of the book, and I have no doubt of its importance as a primary driver of evolutionary diversity.

He hits at neo-Darwinists repeatedly, although generally backed up by some science. He uses Darwin's last 2 points (the gradual shift of the genome through small changes) to hammer away at neo-Darwinian theories, and offers some solid proof that Darwin was wrong to deny that evolution could be nearly spontaneous and dramatic. However, somewhere around halfway, I began to have some doubts about where this was heading. He had mentioned Lovelock and Gaia Theory, mostly in passing to that point, but had not quite dove head first into the fray. But his insistence throughout on emphasizing the positive aspects of symbiosis as key to evolution led to the utter decline of his narrative into an argument in favor of altruistic behavoir as something other than the widely accepted selfish gene theory. That's ok by itself, alternative theories offer guides toward better understanding, but the last 3 chapters are quite bizarre compared to the rest of the book. Ryan steps into near-metaphysical conjectures about altruism, social acceptance, and several times cherry-picks bits of good science to argue his points. Several alternative theories to selfish genes are thrown out, almost in a scattershot approach, kind of a last ditch effort to convince the reader that the neo-Darwinians are wrong, or at best, misleading.

I'm open to some of the alternative theories Ryan offers, clearly what we know about evolution is not the full picture and the role of symbiosis has been largely undervalued in popular science books, but by the time I'd read the first 80% of the book, I'd drawn a conclusion based on his presented evidence that the selfish gene theory could explain almost everything he claimed Darwinians could not explain. A few times he even props up stale straw men just to knock them down with a less-than-stellar argument in favor of his view.

At the end of the read, it was worth the time despite its weaknesses, and it should be an excellent introduction to the role of symbiosis in evolution and in daily life. Just consider how little direct evidence he offers for his secondary thesis that selfish gene theory fails to explain some of the things he offers, and I personally ignored his insistence in using Gaia as his platform for discussion. Altruism is a big one and Ryan's treatment of it really soured this book a bit at the end given that he had fallen down into subjective speculation rather than solid science. Take note of his leap-of-faith trick in refering to the 3-million year old footprints of (I believe it was Australopithecus africanus) in his discussions of social altruism. Overall, three and one-half stars.

  (out of 5 stars)

Math is such a hard subject to put into enjoyable narrative that I tend to be relieved when I realize I'm already 100 pages into a math book and don't feel like putting it back on the shelf. Peterson's narrative is engaging and should provide a comfortable realm in which to explore his examples of applied and advanced math studies. While the book itself does contain some discussion of advanced math, the author is careful to offer the reader solid analogies and models to help understand some of the concepts. The book is heavily peppered with graphics, charts, models, and other visual representations of the subjects, which helps enormously in visualizing what the author describes.

This book was written in 1990, so many of the discussions regarding computers and their function in math (generally the last 1/3 or so) are greatly out of date. However, all is not lost since Peterson's underlying points are often untouched by such concerns. Just keep that in mind as you read about things that aren't yet possible on computers, or feats which have surely been bested, such as disussion of Deep Thought (chess playing computer Deep Thought eventually gave way to Deep Blue which scored a highly controversial victory over master and champion Kasparov in 1997 before being dismantled). All in all, well worth a read for most any level of math reader or general science reader. Four stars.

  (out of 5 stars)

I've been on a kick lately learning about Dawkin's Extended Phenotype and the idea that genetics can drive a complex system in ways that aren't solely isolated to a single body vehicle. I thought this book might take up that idea and run with it, but the author doesn't quite make that connection to dawkins. However, he comes very close with Liaisons. This book is a quick read and includes examples of microbes that have joined larger plants or animals to become symbionts. Most of the examples are of mutually beneficial relationships between the microbes and their hosts, including lichen, angler fish, legumes, and many others.

This is an area of science that is fascinating, quickly changing, and can be mind boggling at times, but I felt Wakeford did an excellent job conveying his points and explaining the complex relationships without overburdening with deep science. There is good detail in the book, and it is not for the very casual science reader, but still approachable by curious readers. Recommended for anyone seeking an extention of the Phenotype idea or general science readers. Four stars.

  (out of 5 stars)

Dr. Plait's Bad Astronomy is a first-rate introduction to astronomy-related myths and the real facts you should know. This book is intended as a primer for curious but otherwise beginning science readers. If you have read other popular science books, you probably don't need most of the info contained in this book. Plait sets straight many different myths, including why the sky is blue (not from ocean reflections) and why toilets flush the way they do (hint: it is not due to the rotation of the earth). Basic concepts are covered and popular but ignorant misconceptions are cleared up.

While this book was not really for me (I did skim through a few chapters), it is an excellent resource for someone interested in learning more about astronomy or science myths. Plait's writing is very easily digested and he is good at clearly defining his concepts. The section on debunking astronomy-related creationist points is well formed and should be a solid framework for smacking down those arguments. Three stars for me personally since I prefer more advanced treatment of astronomy, but solidly recommended for beginning science readers or those whose astronomy experience is very low.