Science and Inquiry discussion
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What science book is your most recent read? What do you think about it? Pt. 2
Not a "science" book, but a biography of a scientist: What Do You Care What Other People Think?.My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Just finished Frans de Waal's new book on animal cognition, called "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?"Outstanding book, my brief review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I finished Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe last week. A great capture of Ferdinand Magellan's journey around the world. The author did a splendid job describing the past and portraying the hardships the sailors must've faced. Fun fact: Magellan himself never made it around the world. He died on an island in the Philippines.
Ben wrote: "Just finished Frans de Waal's new book on animal cognition, called "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?"Outstanding book, my brief review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/sho..."
Thank you, I enjoyed your review. I absolutely loved this book. It surprised me ... and probably shouldn't have .... that researchers have based their summaries of animal intelligence on experiments which have put them in totally unnatural and often stressful environments. Unlike kids, who are often on their mothers' lap when experiments are done and are treated with consideration, animal researchers often avoid any kind of subjective or emotional attachment to their subjects. Frightened, in strange and sterile envirnoments often lacking in stimuli, we should not be surprised that they underperform relative to their potentials.
I finished Astrophysics for People in a Hurry on audiobook a few weeks ago. I am about half way through Welcome to the Universe: An Astrophysical Tour and I would say that Astrophysics for.... is a watered down version of Welcome to the Universe. They are very good, informative books. If you have a lot of physical science background then Welcome to the Universe is what you want. For people with just an interest in space science Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is your book. Neil deGrasse Tyson narrating the audiobook is a bonus.
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language
Couldn't put it down. Author John McWhorter thinks outside the box about the evolution of languages, and his writing is clever and humorous. Thank you, Joel, for the recommendation. Here's my review:
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by John McWhorterMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
My new favorite author. John McWhorter looks at language from a whole new angle. Languages are never static; by the time the rules are established by the "authorities," the language has changed. The Old English of Beowulf is pretty much incomprehensible to us now; English speakers typically think it is more like German. Since those days English has interbred with Latin, Viking tongues, and French (Normans) ... which results in a colorful language with confounding rules and spellings pulled out of various hats.... makes me a little less critical of the ridiculous way some words are spelled and why the plural of mouse is "mice" but the plural of house is not "hice."
Turns out the French are even lazier speakers than the English, dropping the final sounds off words (and even whole words out of phases) right and left, while retaining the original spellings and, in the written language, the entire phrase.
McWhorter, in a fun way, not only excuses but welcomes the evolution of languages, and explains the logic in some common rule-breaking. ("I didn't see nothing" reeks of ignorance in English, while double negatives are the rule in more languages than not.). And why do we say "He isn't" and "he's not," "you aren't" and "you're not" but can't say "I amn't" for "I'm not?" (I generally get around that one by defiantly saying "I ain't," not sure what McWhorter would say about that one.).
McWhorter also follows the interesting evolution of pidgin languages which just express basic and necessary ideas, to creoles which are languages in their own right, with their own grammars, etc. Amazingly, this only takes about a generation to occur.
Lots of information, easy to digest because the writing is straightforward and sparkles with wit. Delightful!
View all my reviews
Whoops I did not mean to post the whole review, only the link to the review. One of these days I will get this figured out....
Nancy wrote: "The Power of Babel: A Natural History of LanguageCouldn't put it down... Thank you, Joel, for the recommendation..."
You're very welcome Nancy! It was a great book, and I still think about it from time to time. I read it very shortly after reading
by
, and I followed it up with
by
, and I am now reading
by
, and they are all five star books, but
remains my favorite.
Loved those two also, have not read the Bryson book but anything he writes is entertaining so I'll put that one on my list. In fact I think it is already there. The list is so long at this point....
Susanna - Censored by GoodReads wrote: "The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World - excellent."I thought so too. I knew almost nothing about Humbolt. Why is he not as famous as Darwin and Galileo and Dawson? His work was revolutionary in its time and its lasting importance is as much as anyone's.
A group of us decided to buddy read it over at BookLikes, and we were all so impressed by it (and Humboldt) that we've started a science reading group as a result. Also, Simon Bolivar will forever be known as "Iron Ass" over there.
It's a book-oriented blogging/social network.
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Couldn't put it down. Author John McWhorter thinks outside the b..."
Thanks for the recommendation, Nancy. It sounds fascinating. I have put the book on hold at the library.
While we're on the topic:
by
This book is very similar to many others in the genre, such as John McWhorter’s The Tower of Babel, Guy Deutcher’s The Unfolding of Language, and Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue, all of which I’ve rated very high. But Pinker gets more credit for being one of the earliest in the genre, and he goes into more depth about the neuroscience behind language. In fact, this book covers an exhaustive range of topics, from Chomskyan linguistics, language processing, artificial intelligence, neurobiology, psychology, evolution, and philosophy, politics, and prescriptive grammar. His expertise in all these topics is impressive, and he makes a very persuasive overall argument – that the human mind has built-in modules for specific language-related functions, rather than being born with general purpose hardware that is programmed by its environment.
However, this book just didn’t hook me the same way John McWhorter did. He covers so many topics so quickly that it’s hard to get into it. He does give entertaining examples, and style is swift and humorous, but he fell just short of satisfying me. I guess it’s like having a cup of coffee with one cube of sugar, after getting used to coffee with two cubes. It feels like a tease. Some of the topics he covers deserve a whole book, and in fact, he does have books about those topics – How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, Words and Rules, and others. I will definitely be reading them.
David wrote: "Nancy wrote: "The Power of Babel: A Natural History of LanguageCouldn't put it down. Author John McWhorter thinks..."
Your welcome ... enjoy!
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Just finished Andrea Wulf's Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens, about the first great international science achievement, the measure of the transit of Venus in the 1760s, and it was very good.
I recently finished Marie Curie: A Biography. It was a nice quick overview of Marie Curie and her life. I never knew she was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. I'll probably read another biography about her for more in-depth information.
Courtney wrote: "I recently finished Marie Curie: A Biography. It was a nice quick overview of Marie Curie and her life. I never knew she was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. I'll probably r..."Read Madame Curie: A Biography by her daughter Ève Curie.
@ Joel, that's the plan! I started grad school in August so any reading I have done has been quite slow. However, I have been reading a plethora of journal articles. I have learned that lead can be stored in bones for years and can effect people later. Primarily in the forms of heart problems and kidney problems.
At the Bottom of the World by Bill Nye, the Science Guy, is a mystery for kids, but I really enjoyed it. It's the first of a series & the geniuses travel to Antarctica so the reader gets to learn a lot about it. I gave it 4 stars in my review.https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys into the Time Before Bones by Sue Hubbell is a must read. Part science, part autobiography, & all wonderful, this interesting lady explores some of the spineless creatures of the world along with our places in it. I gave it a 5 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I just finished The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011 . It was great. I listed all the articles with my quick thoughts on them in my review. Occasionally I put in a link to where the article could be found on line. Most can be. My 5 star review is here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Mod
I just finished
. Lovely collection of essays. A wide variety of the different types of field notes and good advice for keeping a field notebook. Not nearly as boring as it sounds, but a non science person probably wouldn't care for it. One of the authors has is a science illustrator and shares some of her beautiful illustrations.
I just finished reading Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughtsby Stanislas DehaeneIn all, I would think that this book is a great place to start for those interested in the brain signatures of consciousness. The book gives good knowledge on experimental paradigms, used in psychology and neuroscience, to investigate biological signatures of consciousness. The chapter on clinical applications of such studies was interesting as well.
That said, the conclusion of the book was disappointing. In the end, it was just another book on 'it wasn't me, it was my brain'. For instance, he suggests that meta-cognition and phenomenal experience will one day be nothing more than the 'sum of my brain doing it'. This has deep implications on the concept of choice and responsibility.
In addition, Dehaene ultimately failed to address the concept of consciousness. What Dehaene did, was merely highlight the biological signatures of consciousness in relation to conscious access. Yet, he doesn't show how these address the problems of consciousness that he brought up in his opening chapters.
In the end, it was just another book that paints a reductionist view of consciousness.
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari was fantastic & terrifying. He has a wonderful ability to see overall trends & where we might be going is a strange place indeed. I gave it a 5 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Don't be alarmed by the length of the review. Most of it is notes to myself. The top few paragraphs are for everyone else.
I read Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life as part of this group's monthly book.I thought this book was a total waste of time. Watered down to nothing. The author was afraid to get into anything more technical than angular momentum. Most of the books was just talking about herself, and when she finally did sneak in some scientific explanation, it wasn't that clear.
And her transitions were just strange - she'd end each paragraph by introducing some new topic out of the blue that was totally unrelated. Then the next paragraph would introduce something totally unrelated and get all poetic and descriptive, like some experience she had in the park, and you're not sure where she's going with it. It was like watching an overproduced BBC TV documentary, which makes sense because the author is a BBC television host in her other job.
I gave it two stars. Not sure why I didn't give it one. I guess because there was one interesting passage about tuberculosis and another about countercurrent heat exchange in ducks' legs. Also, she makes a good point about the laws of physics being consistent at any scale, but that at different scales, different forces become dominant. So I did learn something interesting. But two-hundred-fifty pages, when one-hundred-seventy-five of them were about how often she had to change her clothes when she was filming in India and other such trivialities, and the other seventy-five totally watered down science is just not worth anyone's time. There is much better science writing out there, even for those who have no scientific inclination.
Am I the only one who liked Storm in a Teacup? Yes, it was a simple read ... middle school kids could grasp it ... but I managed to learn a lot anyway. I studied electricity in college physics, but this is the clearest it's been to me. I really did not know how electricity works! The author's personal tangents did not bother me, I found them amusing. This is a good book for mentally lazy people who would like a painless way to better our knowledge of physics.
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I just finished “The Great Influenza” by John Barry. I rated it a 4/5. I learned a lot, but I felt like a good 50% of the book could’ve been eliminated or trimmed down. He failed to mention Ms. Rosalind Franklin several times when regarding the discovery of DNA. He also made assumptions about how people felt and that President Wilson developed Spanish Influenza and thus effected his policy decisions.
A while ago I read Dinosaurs Without Bones: Dinosaur Lives Revealed by their Trace Fossils. A thought provoking book about examining long-dead creature's behavior using "trace fossils". That is, "fossils" that are not from bone. Examples include fecal matter, burrows, footprints, bites in bones, etc. It took me about a month to get through it, but it was still enjoyable. Learned quite a bit about dinosaurs.
I recently read A Palette of Particles. It was fun, short and informative. The art metaphor felt a tad forced perhaps but there was also a subtle layer of intention in that. I may have to re-read this one to get a better wrap on the author's thinking.
I'm looking forward to reading this book in 2018 "From American Cockroaches to Zebras, New Book Answers 'Does It Fart?'"https://www.livescience.com/61287-new...
You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself by David McRaney was a good, fun trip through our cognitive biases, shortcuts, & various dysfunctions. I thought it was well worth the time spent & gave it a 5 star review here:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe by Thomas Levenson. Short and sweet. Covers the story of the [spoiler alert: non-existent] planet Vulcan, from Newton to Einstein. Fascinating story with lots of fascinating twists and turns. I've read better science writers, but Levinson is not bad at all, and does the subject justice.
Just have to share this snippet from
. The book is about the accelerating technical and medical evolution of mankind. Now that we've got epidemics and war virtually licked (relative to the recent past) what's next for the human race? Attempts at immortality and divinity, Harari suggests. Very fast paced book, no time for boredom here.Recalling a few teenaged boys visiting a geek friend:
"I still remember that day when I first came across the internet. It was back in 1993. .. He connected the phone cable to his computer and pressed some keys. For a minute all we could hear were squeaks, shrieks and buzzes, and then silence. It didn't succeed. We mumbled and grumbled, but Ido tried again. And again. And again. At last he gave a whoop and announced that he had managed to connect his computer to the central computer at the nearby university. 'And what's there, on the central computer?' we asked. 'Well,' he admitted, 'there's nothing there yet. But you could put all kinds of things there.' 'Like what?' we questioned. 'I don't know,' he said. 'All kinds of things.' It didn't sound very promising.
I just finished reading Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif and am completely blown away by it. Being a microbology researcher myself, a lot of the stories in the book were ones I was aware of but the passion of the narrative that came through is truly unparalleled and very inspiring. A real science classic this one is!
Nancy wrote: "Am I the only one who liked Storm in a Teacup? Yes, it was a simple read ... middle school kids could grasp it ... but I managed to learn a lot anyway. I studied electricity in college physics, but..."Currently reading it, and enjoying it.
Just finished The Hunt for Vulcan: . . . And How Albert Einstein Destroyed a Planet, Discovered Relativity, and Deciphered the Universe - pretty good. What's fascinating is how many 19th century observers convinced themselves they saw Vulcan. (They couldn't fool the handful of astronomical cameras that were in use, though.)
I read Wie bedroht sind die Ozeane?: Biologische und physikalische AspekteThe World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World's Food SupplyPlastic Planet: Die dunkle Seite der KunststoffeTo give you an overview, I will introduce some of the topics.
Pollution of the oceans
Some of the points that come to my mind are
1. feminization or infertility of the fish. Thus danger for the stocks up to the extinction. 2. The death zones in the deltas of rivers. The vast amounts of waste, toxins, pesticides, etc that carry the rivers.
3. The melting of the polar caps. The associated mixing of salt water with fresh water can in the worst case, for example, bring the Gulf Stream to a standstill. The shift of the climatic zones and the change of the water temperature endangers the spawning grounds.
4. Legal and illegal capping of various toxins
5. The long-term consequences of various atomic bomb tests, the sinking of nuclear submarines and toxic waste.
6. The relative legal freedom in international waters.
7. The microplastic and the toxins that accumulate in the marine animals. As the crown of the food chain, we also consume that too.
8. The noise of international shipping. This massively affects dolphins and whales.
9. Trash in the oceans. The effects on all depths from the sea surface to the deep sea. 10. Algal blooms and similar monocultures. Thereby
11 coral death.
12. Overfishing and general formation of ever larger, deserts of similar zones. In combination with monocultures of a dominant species that could adapt to the circumstances. It all comes together in the sea.
Disappearing of insects
1. The role of neonicotinoids.
2. The entire industrial agriculture. Over-fertilization and leaching of the soil.
3. Sprays such as fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, etc.
4. Use of genetic engineering for hybrid seeds.
5. Contamination of the natural varieties with the stronger hybrid seeds.
6. NRA sprays
7. The effects on animals that are not as popular as bees. But equally important for the ecosystem. Like ants and termites, supposed insect pests, beetles.
8. The ever-increasing resistance of pests and weeds to spray.
9. The dead soils where nothing can grow properly.
The dangers of plastic
The problem with plastic is so complex and multi-layered that one could argue for days at a time. A few of the key issues are:
1. Phthalates and other chemicals contained in plastics. Both the enrichment in the environment and in humans are massive. Whether animal or human, the masculine and the unborn baby are already massively impaired. The influence of the hormone balance and the control processes of the body are unclear.
2. Smaller and smaller particles: As the microplastic continues to degrade, it eventually comes in orders of magnitude that act at the cellular level. Plastic builds up in body cells and influences processes. Theoretically, the degradation could go on and on until you reach the genetic level. Especially with the advent of nanotechnologies, this option seems more and more likely. If the raw materials are already so small, there is no fair way to degrade to the right size to fit inside the DNA.
3. Pollution of the environment: On the one hand the garbage strudel. Furthermore, fouling one level of the food chain could destroy everything. When microplankton, plankton, algae, plants or certain small fish are extirpated, everything collapses.
4. The massive industrial interests of almost all lobbies.
5. Peak Oil. Not as a panic scenario, but rather in terms of the really irreplaceable raw materials. Such as essential components for many machines and infrastructure. Which one can produce in the right condition with no sustainable methods? The same problem arises with medicines and in other areas. With special fuels and liquids that you cannot or only very expensive products in other ways.
6. The conversion of the infrastructure to decentralized energy production, which must go hand in hand with a reduction of the dependence on plastic and fossil energy sources.
I hope one or the other useful new fact was included in this condensed summaries.
I have posted long reviews about some nonfiction topics and I will continue with the most popular and controversial nonfiction books. Yes, that´s some kind of shameless self-promotion, but at least for a good propose.
Best regards
@ Mario: Have you read "Our Stolen Future" by Dianne Dumanoski, John Peterson Myers, and Theo Colborn?
Mario, thanks for that. It sounds like a must-read.
Mario wrote: "I read Wie bedroht sind die Ozeane?: Biologische und physikalische Aspekte[book:The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of the World's Food Supply|658..."Very good overview. Thank you. I would look into this on the basis of your review.
Just finished Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich. He and his book were mentioned in a recent National Geographic article. It was excellent. Here's my review:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan is a fascinating book to consider reading on Earth Day. Much of the book is about how invasive species and fertilizer have changed the ecosystems of the lakes. Here's my review:https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Connie wrote: "The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan is a fascinating book to consider reading on Earth Day. M..."I agree, a very good read.
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Science and Inquiry
Books mentioned in this topic
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Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Betsey Dexter Dyer (other topics)Carl Sagan (other topics)
Carl Sagan (other topics)
Yuval Noah Harari (other topics)
Carlo Rovelli (other topics)
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I pretty much skipped that part. I got what he was talking about, but I didn't care to read about the dangers of living in a city in regards to a bomb.