Absurd Science

Review: The Quantum Astrologer’s Handbook by Michael Brooks

Jerome Cardano was a 16th Century mathematician who, among other things, was the first to look at probability theory and make sense of imaginary numbers. He oscillated from poverty to riches and back, was fêted in royal courts across Europe and, like Galileo, fell foul of the Inquisition. He defended but failed to save his simple son from execution for murder. He has been much maligned in any previous history I’ve read concerning him.

This book is written by a Quantum Physicist, not a Mathematician and it treats him much more sympathetically, warts and all. Brooks is a scientist, but he is perfectly happy to tolerate some of Cardano’s crazier beliefs (e.g. astrology; he wrote a horoscope for Jesus) since he himself defends some rather strange quantum ideas including String Theory.

This book is a very accessible introduction to the craziness of Quantum Theory and how Cardano laid some of its foundations. It requires little or no physics or mathematics knowledge. Its great value for me was how it uncovers how every age has its ideas that seem bizarre in retrospect and how we should show respect for those ideas and wait to see where they lead.

The Trouble with Physics

We accept that science (unlike religion, say) is a rational, objective search for verifiable truth. It is not subject to orthodoxy

In this 2006 book, physicist/cosmologist Lee Smolin argues that this is no longer so.  It has become virtually impossible for researchers to get funding for novel research.  A small number of approaches (e.g. string theory) are the established  orthodoxy of modern physics and to stray outside these is to invite ridicule and exclusion.  This, despite the fact that these approaches are still at the speculative stage and not yet verified (indeed some are unlikely to be verifiable). Smolin makes the point that physics has not had a significant breakthrough in 30 years (and that was 12 years ago).  The true scientific approach has been subverted by a new brand of dominant and dogmatic high priests.

The book created something of a storm across the wider scientific community in many other branches of science where the same limitations have come to apply.

Smolin writes well and accessibly,  an interesting and thought-provoking read which cautions against assumptions that science is objective and free from orthodoxy

 

The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

David Deutsch is a Professor of Physics at Oxford University, expert on Quantum Computation and proponent of the theory of the multiverse but his interests – and this book – go far outside the realm of physics and even science.

 

Why I Like it: Some books challenge your outlook – this one challenged mine more than most and in a very uplifting way.  Yes it’s a science book but also much more.  History, Philosophy, Ecology and Political Science.  Is man “A chemical scum on an average planet of a typical star on the fringes of a galaxy?” (Hawkins) – Deutsch argues convincingly that conscious beings are cosmically hugely significant.

It’s a very wide ranging book  –  some parts I’ve read with delight several time – others I’ve skimmed or not read at all.  Most of it is very accessible to the general reader – some a bit more difficult. Really interesting stuff on ecology, environmentalists, democracy, the scientific method, evolution, physics (of course), art

Above all,  this is a hugely positive book.  In fact he argues very convincingly that not only have we reason to take an optimistic approach to life but we have a duty to do so.

Really not your average science book

‘Tis Brillig

Review: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Rating: 10/10

If I could take only one book to the proverbial desert island, this would have to be it.

GEB, as it is affectionately known to thousands of fans, is hard to classify.  It is possibly a philosophy book, or maybe a primer on Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem* or perhaps it’s a plaything. Gödel’s theorem represents to me one of the high intellectual achievements of the 20th century.  It was a devastating hammer-blow to mathematicians; imagine that you’ve given your life’s work to proving, say, Goldberg’s Conjecture.  Gödel says that not everything that is true is provable; so maybe you’ve wasted your life on one such unprovable conjecture!  (The very fine novel: Uncle Petros and Goldbach’s Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis imagined just such an outcome and is well worth reading).

Using an intricate structure where each idea is presented first using very witty Plato-like dialogues which draw on the art-work of M. C. Escher and the fugues of J. S. Bach, Hofstadter introduces us to a range of topics from mathematics and meta-mathematics, computing and logic and (most fun for me) recursion, self-reference and self-representation which are found throughout the works of these two creative artists.  After every chapter you’ll find yourself with pen and jotter (or computer) playing about with his ideas.

An example of the delights to be found in GEB are the translations of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky into French and German.

*Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem states that no consistent system of [mathematics] is capable of proving all truths about the natural numbers. There will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system, and statements that are false, but not disprovable within the system. Furthermore the system will not be able to demonstrate its own consistency.