Gain 13 Things That Dont Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries Of Our Time Written By Michael Brooks Expressed As E-Text
a cool read.
All of the chapters on astronomy caught my full attention from space probes to physics to dark matter to aliens it's all extremely COOL!
The chapter on Free Will was also pretty neat.
Do we really have free will Looks like we may not, What! Cool!
The other chapters are interesting too Life, Death, Sex, Placebo Effect, Microbiology, others and I really can recommend this book to anyone who gets a massive kick out of science reading, like I do.
Loved it. I wonder if an updated version of this book would change much, . . Oct: Just finished editing the Bulgarian translation,
Oct: This is a muchneeded book, for both scientists and laymen,
Firstly, because it teaches humility: never again shall you say to yourselves, I know all of it there is nothing left to discover.
Secondly, because it prods us to keep asking questions: What are we taking for granted Is this bit of knowledge reached by consensus or established by conformity or worse yet, complacence What other approaches are there to it What facts do not fit the picture How do we adjust our goggles
That last one reminds me of a saying I first saw in sitelinkThe Broken God by David Zindell: Beliefs are the eyelids of the mind.
More ruminations to follow,
Nov: The passage of time has carried away most ruminations I used to have, But you can still find some in sitelinkmy Bulgarian review,
What do you mean, you can't read Bulgarian What kind of parochial, uncivilized hick are you, . Consistently mindblowing until about the halfway point, where the focus shifts from the cosmic to the prosaic, Now granted, I'm a scientific ignoramus, but I can't be alone in feeling that cosmology is just way sexier than biology, so to go from heady speculations about a multiplicity of universes to of all sublunary things the wonders of homeopathy well, it kind of killed my buzz.
Highly recommended, in any case, especially for those who, like me, are impatient with the nuts and bolts of science but take a dilletantish interest in the big questions.
Oh and here's a fun little tidbit I picked up from Brooks, It turns out that when Einstein made his famous remark about God's not playing dice with the universe, Niels Bohr was there to deliver a brilliant slapdown, 'Einstein,' he said, 'Stop telling God what to do, ' How did I not know this Over the years, I could have confounded a lot of physics geeks and Jesus freaks with that one, The purpose of this book is to show, bydifferent examples, how science has a long way to go before it can assure us that "all is under control", Somehow, we are aware of this limitation, I am still unsure of the writer's stance, Is he in favor of science He explains one set of difficulties scientists faced in a certain area of research, before moving on to another, There are interesting bits of information peppered in, which is all this book has to offer in my opinion, so that you can sound a little smarter if a related conversation sparks up among your friends.
This is not a science book with a vision to theorize or bring under an umbrella varied separated notions of reality, It has no such scientific goal as such, Neither it aims to illuminate with great clarity the complex theories of science for the laymen the way books by Feynman or say Brain Greene are written, What I mean is, if you have read a great deal of popscience, then you already know most of what is discussed here, Because this book is what its title suggests, and if that's what you look for, it will work for you, I particularly enjoyed the sections on Dark Matter and Free Will, The further into the book I read the more I got into it as it progressed from the cosmological to the physical to the biological, Most intriguing to me were the looks at cold fusion, free will, the placebo effect, and homeopathy, With thirteen areas examined, including life, sex and death, there is probably something here for everyone, Everyone, except those who are unwilling to challenge their assumptions, Fairly interesting account of certain anomalies in science, Dark matter, Cold Fusion and some others, A lot of what comes out here is the fact that the scientific community is as human as the rest of us, So often if findings fly in the face of "established scientific fact" the person making the finding or following up on the research is completely ruined,
As in a researcher with a doctorate ending his days as a clerk in a stockroom or a Nobel laureate forced into retirement,
I got this out of curiosity and was drawn in quickly, The statement that the statement which leads to or presage more scientific discoveries is not "Eureka" but "that's funny",
The book is very readable and interesting, I suspect it will seem very elementary to any among the readers who are actually functioning researchers Sheldon Cooper would surly make fun of it, While it does draw the reader in at times it draws it's stories out a bit much and it is possible that by the time you move from one subject to the next you'll be more than ready to do so I was.
Still enjoyable and if this is something that interests you it's a good book for the intelligent layman,
Any book that makes you ponder subjects that are seemingly inherently necessary find a necessity for sexual reproduction or death in a new light are going to be getting a thumbs up from me.
I enjoy that, it is defiantly on my track of thinking, He took on a number of controversial topics and some of them homeopathy for example I don't think I will ever agree with given the current state of affairs but the author doesn't really ask you to agree with anything.
He just says there are things that don't make sense and that is it, I am ok with that, He didn't seem to have any hidden agendas so the rest I can let pass as just interesting brain candy, I like thinking about different things and I am not the type to want to get so caught up in what "is" that I can't postulate other scenarios, I would never have homeopathy as a remedy on my list though nor would I recommend it for family or friends, That aside, also the space probe thing was missing a few well known refutes, Anyway as long as their is no view pushing I can swallow it, It was still a fun read,Things That Dont Make Sense: The
Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time by Michael Brooks
“Things That Dont Make Sense” is a provocative look atscientific wideranging mysteries.
Michael Brooks holds a PhD in Quantum Physics, editor and now consultant for New Scientist magazine, takes the reader on the wonderful journey of scientific mysteries, Since the publishing of this book a few of these mysteries have been resolved, This provocativepage book includes the following thirteen mysteries/chapters:, The Missing Universe,. The Pioneer Anomaly,. Varying Constants,. Cold Fusion,. Life,. Viking,. The Wow! Signal,. A Giant Virus,. Death,. Sex,. Free Will,. The Placebo Effect, and. Homeopathy.
Positives:
. A wellwritten, wellresearched and entertaining book,
. The writing is fair and evenhanded almost too much so,
. The fascinating topic of scientific mysteries in the capable hands of Dr, Brooks. “The future of science depends on identifying the things that don't make sense our attempts to explain anomalies are exactly what drives science forward, ”
. Excellent format! Each chapter is about a specific scientific mystery and the author cleverly leads the end of the previous chapter into the next one,
. Interesting facts spruced throughout the book, “Color is our way of interpreting the frequency ofthat is, the number of waves per second inradiation, When we see a rainbow, what we see is radiation of varying frequencies, The violet light is a relatively highfrequency radiation, the red is a lower frequency everything else is somewhere in between, ”
. Profound and practical practices in science, “They won't embrace the extraordinary until they rule out the ordinary, ”
. Provocative questions that drive the narrative, “Have the laws of physics remained the same for all time”
, An interesting look at cold fusion, “To get energy out of atoms, you either have to break up their coresa process called nuclear fissionor join different atoms together by nuclear fusion, ”
. One of the deepest concepts, the concept of what constitutes life, “If creating life is "simply" a matter of putting the right chemicals together under the right conditions, there's still no consensus about what "right" actually isfor the chemicals or the conditions.
”
. It never hurts to quote some of the greatest thinkers, consider the late great Carl Sagan, “We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one ofbillion other that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes.
That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering, ”
. Is there life on Mars Find out about some of the attempts made, “One of the strongest arguments against life existing on Mars has always been the harshness of the environment: low temperatures, a wispy thin atmosphere, and the lack of liquid water all count against the development of living organisms.
”
. A look at Occams razor applied to aliens, “Occam's razor, and it says that, given a number of options, you should always go for the simplest, most straightforward one, ”
. A fascinating look at the Giant Virus, “There were the eukaryotes, the advanced organisms like animals and plants whose large and complex cells contained a nucleus that held inheritable information, The other branch was the simpler prokaryotes, such as bacteria, which have cells without a nucleus, ”
. A look at death. “Over the years, though, evidence mounted up supporting Kirkwood's idea that aging is due to a slow, steady buildup of defects in our cells and organs, ”
. Why the need for sex “In general, the random genetic drift due to chance variation offers the best hope of explaining the apparent advantage of sex, ”
. Homosexuality in the animal kingdom, “Bruce Bagemihl's tenyear labor of love, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, reports that more thanspecies have been documented engaging in nonprocreative sexual behaviorincluding longterm pairings, ”
. A fascinating look at free will, “The lesson we learn from all this is that our minds do not exist separately from the physical material of our bodies, Though it is a scary and entirely unwelcome observation, we are brainmachines, We do not have what we think of as free will, ” “In the illusion of free will, it seems we have been equipped with a neurological sleight of hand that, while contrarational, helps us deal with a complex social and physical environment.
”
. So what about the placebo effect “The general conclusion here, it seems, is that the placebo effect is due to chemistry, ”
. Why is homeopathy still in existence “According to the World Health Organization, it now forms an integral part of the national healthcare systems of a huge swath of countries including Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Mexico.
” “An assessment of homeopathy using the criteria of known scientific phenomena says it simply cannot work no wonder Sir John Forbes, the physician to Queen Victoria's household, called it "an outrage to human reason.
”
. Notes and sources provided.
Negatives:
, Since the book was released insome of the anomalies have been resolved if not really not taken seriously, As an example, the Pioneer Anomaly was resolved feel free to look it up,
. I felt Dr. Brooks was a little too generous toward the wrong side of scientific consensus, As example, the discarded homeopathy,
. Lack of charts and diagrams that would have complemented the sound narrative,
. Though immersed to various degrees here and there I would have liked to see Dr, Brooks be clearer on what the scientific consensus is for each chapter,
In summary, I really liked this book, The book holds up quite well despite being released in, My only gripe is not making perfectly clear what the scientific consensus is for each mystery, also, I would have discarded homeopathy as a scientific mystery, That said, a fun book to read, I recommend it!
Further suggestions: “At the Edge of Uncertainty” by the same author, “The Big Picture” by Sean Carroll, “Now: The Physics of Time” by Richard A.
Muller, “:: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything” by John Gribbin, “Know This: Todays Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments” by John Brockman” and “The Island of Knowledge” by Marcelo Gleiser.
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