Book Reviews June 2007

The mystery of consciousness John Searle Granta, 1997 ISBN: 0940322064 Mentioned in Consciousness The nature of consciousness is the subject of a great deal of discussion, in one form or another. In The Mystery of Consciousness contributes to this discussion by looking at the work of other writers on the subject. Many of these, such as Francis Crick, Daniel Dennett, and Gerald Edelman have an essentially reductionist viewpoint, and Searle shows how this point of view seems unsatisfactory in that it seems to avoid the difficult questions. He also discusses the work of Roger Penrose, in particular arguing that there are serious flaws in Penrose's idea of a link between consciousness and Gödel's incompleteness theorem. Continued..

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The Archimedes Codex William Noel Orion Books, 2007 ISBN: 9780297645474 In 1998 a mystery buyer paid over $2000000 for a very important book. There were fears that this would mean a return to the obscurity it had suffered for most of the previous century. The Archimedes Codex: Revealing The Secrets Of The World's Greatest Palimpsest tells how this did not happen. William Noel explains how he had the task of extracting information from this document. It seemed like a hopeless task: the copy of Archimedes work had been scraped of and replaced by a prayer book, what remained had been examined in detail in 1906, and the book had suffered serious deterioration since that time. Despite these problems Noel tells how modern scientific techniques have found out much that is new about Archimedes. Continued..

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Insights of genius Arthur I Miller MIT Press, 1996 ISBN: 0387946713 Creativity in science and art isn't something that can be readily produced. In Insights of genius : Imagery and Creativity in science and art Arthur I Miller discusses various aspects of creativity and its link to visual images. One thing he looks at is the distinction between visualization and visualizability - for instance Feynman diagrams are a useful tool in quantum theory, but do they actually show what is happening at the micro-level? Miller also examines the outburst of creativity at the start of the 20th Century, considering the work of Poincaré, Einstein and Picasso amoung others, and looking at interactions between them. Continued..

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1089 and all that David Acheson Oxford University Press, 2002 ISBN: 0198516231 Mathematics isn't always seen as the most entertaining of subjects. In 1089 and all that:A journey into mathematics, David Acheson tries to change that perception. He gives a lighthearted introduction to geometry, algebra and calculus, and goes on to look at the numbers π, e and i. There are chapters on oscillating strings, infinite series and 'the secret of all life'. He also considers chaos theory, soap bubbles, and his own version of the Indian rope trick. There are also has plenty of amusing cartoons - it's really quite impressive how much is packed into this small book. Continued..

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New Views on an Old Planet Tjeerd H. Van Andel Cambridge University Press, 1985 ISBN: 0521447550 The possibility of global change is much in the news nowadays. In New Views on an Old Planet:A history of global change Tjeerd H. Van Andel looks at the long history of the earth, and at the changes which have taken place. He starts off with the ice ages, and moves on to the longer term effects of continental drift. Later in the book he looks at the evolution of life on earth. This is a non-technical book, but I wouldn't recommend it to the complete beginner in the subject, since Van Andel often highlights some of the disagreements in the subject - he doesn't try to hide them to produce a simpler work Continued..

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A more beautiful city Michael Cooper Sutton, 2003 ISBN: 0750929596 Robert Hooke was a very active scientist, but tends to be overshadowed by others, in particular Isaac Newton. In A more beautiful city Michael Cooper shows how Hooke has been treated somewhat unfairly in this regard. He explains how, rather than shutting himself away, Hooke was active in many aspect sof the life of the seventeenth century, and in particular in the rebuilding of London after the great fire of 1666. This rebuilding is the subject of most of the book, after a short biography of Hooke at the start. Continued..

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Equilibrium thermodynamics C.J. Adkins Cambridge University Press, 1968 ISBN: 0521274567 Mentioned in Absolute zero Thermodynamics was originally a macroscopic theory with the microscopic explanation coming later. In 'Equilibrium Thermodynamics' C.J. Adkins presents the subject from the macroscopic point of view. (Philosophically one might want to do this to separate out the two viewpoints, but that isn't really a motivation for this book) His idea is that this is the best way to introduce the subject to the student. I can't say that I agree with that, but it does mean that he can pack a large amount of material into a small book, so if your main interest is in the applications of thermodynamics then you may find this book worth studying. Continued..

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How Things Are John Brockman and Katinka Matson William Morrow, 1995 ISBN: 0688133568 In How Things Are: A Science Tool Kit for the Mind John Brockman and Katinka Matson have asked a large number of eminent scientists to write about what they consider to be important in the way that they and other scientists think. Books of this kind can suffer from the articles being repetitive and unsatisfyingly short. This one largely manages to avoid that problem, and I feel that this is because the contributors have been given a sufficiently wide scope to answer the question. Hence the reader gets plenty of novel viewpoints on the nature and practise of science. Continued..

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The Mathematical Tourist Ivars Peterson Freeman, 1988 ISBN: 0716719533 There's much in recent mathmatics that is of interest to the non-specialist - if you know the right place to look. In A Mathematical Tourist: snapshots of modern mathematics, Ivars Peterson, a sicence journalist, investigates some of the recent discoveries and finds all sort of fascinating topics to report on. There are prime numbers and their use in cryptography together with higher dimensional objects and how they apply to managing businesses. The chapter on Twists of Space looks at soap films, topology, new types of crystals and knot theory, with a description of how chemists have tried to create knotted molecules. And there's plenty on fractals, chaos, cellular automata, and a lot more besides. Continued..

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The Crucible of Creation Simon Conway Morris Oxford University Press, 1998 ISBN: 0198502567 If you're going to read The Crucible of Creation by Simon Conway Morris then you'll need to know about Wonderful Life in which Stephen J Gould argues for contingency in evolution, based upon the reinterpretation of the Burgess Shale fauna - in which Conway Morris played a significant part. But Conway Morris clearly doesn't like his work being used in support of an idea which he disagrees with, and so argues against it in this book. Unfortunately this leads to the book having a very strange first chapter, which seems more like a rant than reasoned argument - the author seems prone to repeat simple arguments which have already been addressed in Gould's book. Continued..

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