Three great new books
Science of the most digestible sort
Review by Michael Sims
Once upon a time, on an episode of "The Simpsons," Homer finds himself in another dimension. He looks around at the warped physics of the "Tron"-like world and, in his trademark uncomprehending whine, says, "I wish I'd read the book by that wheelchair guy."
Now that's fame.
If Stephen Hawking isn't a household name, he's as close as a scientist can come in the land of Beavis and Butt-head. His "Brief History of Time" was a certified Phenomenon, and millions of Americans have seen the PBS series, "Stephen Hawking's Universe." Amid glamorous shots of physicists walking on the seashore or silhouetted against a sunset, there are enthusiastic descriptions of relativity, superstrings and even the ambitious Theory of Everything. The series portrays learning as a passionate adventure. Such treatment gives science a human face -- which, in this era of pseudoscience and fundamentalism, is a valuable public service.
The same spirit prevails in the authorized companion to the TV series, "Stephen Hawking's Universe: The Cosmos Explained." The author is the series' producer, David Filkin, formerly head of the BBC's science unit. Like the series, the book addresses complex issues in a straightforward, reader-friendly manner.
Although "Stephen Hawking's Universe" grapples with arcane questions about how the universe works, and is filled with both hard facts and fanciful theories, any literate high school student could follow it. (Granted, finding literate high school students may be the first hurdle.) Handsomely illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, it adds up to an irresistable whirlwind tour of a field that has revolutionized our view of reality itself.
Stephen Hawking's Universe: The Cosmos Explained
By David Filkin
Basic Books, $30
ISBN 0465081991
For a broader survey of many different fields, turn to "A Science Odyssey: 100 Years of Discovery" by Charles Flowers. In only 300-odd pages, Flowers manages to survey the highlights of the scientific endeavor during the last century. He ranges easily from the invention of the radio to racist eugenics, from familiar icons such as Einstein to the less-well-known neurologist Charcot. We visit the Wright Brothers' bicycle shop and Freud's office in Vienna, the Scopes Trial and a heart transplant hospital, Fleming's penicillium lab and NASA. To mention only one of the 150 color and black-and-white photos, there is the recipient of a heart transplant holding his own failed organ in a jar.
Flowers seems to have a wealth of anecdote at his fingertips. For example, he tells the story of Army psychologist Henry Goddard, who was director of the Vineland Training School for Feeble Minded Boys and Girls in the early years of the twentieth century. Disguising his social agenda as documented science, Goddard promoted the unsound and damaging concept of "feeblemindedness" through such slanted examples as the story of the descendants of a morally upright Revolutionary War soldier and a supposedly degenerate barmaid.
"An odyssey," Flowers writes, "is not a planned trip from one place to another. . . . This odyssey goes on, because we cannot resist the thrill of learning what could never before be imagined." He nicely describes the joy of such learning: "We all share in the delights of surprising discoveries, even when they shatter our most ancient, cherished ideas about ourselves and the nature of the universe. The mind reels, but the blood races. What next?"
"A Science Odyssey" is bursting with wonderful stories. No matter which topic he is addressing, Flowers sets the scene with vivid anecdotes about the scientists, inventors and discoverers who made the last century a time of such enormous change.
A Science Odyssey: 100 Years of Discovery
By Charles Flowers
William Morrow, $30
ISBN 0688151965
Our third new science book seems like it should be the narrowest in scope, but it turns out to have universal ramifications. It is a lovely little volume by K.C. Cole, entitled "The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty."
The subtitle may sound formidable, but thanks to Cole's passion, humanity and talent as an explainer, the book is fascinating and even lively. Cole is a wonderful writer.
At barely 200 pages, "The Universe and the Teacup" contains more insight about the human preoccupation with measuring and analyzing than many weightier, drier tomes. "Mathematics," Cole says, "is not about numbers so much as it is a way of thinking, a way of framing questions that allows us to turn things inside out and upside down to get a better sense of their true nature."
Lovers of math like to quote Edna St. Vincent Millay's famous line "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare," and Cole never loses sight of the elegance of pure mathematics. But the evangelical zeal that makes her such an effective journalist has another agenda. Like John Allen Paulos in his book "Innumeracy," like Martin Gardner in his books, Cole examines the many ways in which ignorance of mathematics diminishes our ability to grasp the issues whirling around us in the world.
Cole quotes Richard Feynman, in a remark that sums up the attitudes (and books) of David Filkin, Charles Flowers, and herself: "Science is a long history of learning how not to fool ourselves."
The Universe and the Teacup
By K.C. Cole
Harcourt Brace, $22
ISBN 0151003238
Michael Sims writes often about science and nature.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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