mmm, lots of books
My parents had put a new desk in my room when I was away. All of my carefully organised mess turned into a chaotic mess, and I'm in the process of sorting through it all. There are books and papers all over the place, and when I'm sorting through books and papers I tend to get easily distracted. In amongst the clutter I found a couple of primary school class photographs, some drawings I had done in the early 90s, old high-school English essays, our high-school yearbook from 1997, one hundred or so red-packets from past Chinese New Year celebrations, old movie tickets, old tickets to sporting events...
According to the movie tickets I found, here are a few of the movies I have seen in the past:
- Dirty Deeds (27 Jul 02)
- Saving Private Ryan (28 Nov 98)
- American Splendor (27 ep 03)
- The Fellowship of the Ring (29 Dec 01)
- The Sixth Sense (30 Oct 99)
- Lethal Weapon 4 (29 Sep year torn off)
- Shrek (7 Jul 01)
- Spellbound (1 Dec 03)
- Die-Day (21 Dec 02)... what the on earth is "Die-Day"? Obviously not very memorable
- Charlie's Angels (28 Nov 00)
- IMAX T-rex (18 Dec 98)
- Chicken Run (8 Dec 00)
- Angst (3 Sep 00)
I'll stop before I get too carried away... see how distracting my junk is?
I will, however, let myself become distracted by several of the books that are currently sitting in front of me, because I did intend to write a little about each of them.
Science: A History 1543-2001
by John Gribbin
My dad gave me this book for my 21st birthday, and after letting it sit unread for several months, I foolishly started reading it just before leaving for my holiday. I finished it in Japan, so this meant that for much of my trip, I was lugging around a big, fat book that I had already read.
I'm not surprised that it took me so long to decide to pick it up. I was afraid that by starting the book, I'd be creating a chore for myself. I imagined six-hundred-and-fifty pages of cold, encyclopaedic facts abouts people and knowledge that I'd already spent plenty of time studying. Thankfully, the book proved to be a lot more than that.
I'm no longer a completely ignorant high-school student. I'm now a naive, slightly less ignorant undergraduate. Uni and work experience over the past few years had made me a bit less clueless as to how scientific knowledge builds up. I had become very much aware that scientific progress is heavily reliant upon a foundation of work created by past generations. Despite this, I was still under the impression that Western society's general understanding of the world and our place in it was almost a sole result of the influence of a limited number of irreplaceable geniuses. Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein... it's hard not to think this way when such names are put on a god-like pedestal. This book changed my perception of things. The author celebrated the brilliance of countless individuals whilst making the point that such individuals are hardly irreplaceable in terms of scientific progress, that technological advances have a far greater influence upon the generation of scientific insights than individual geniuses, and that when the time is ripe, certain insights will often be made simultaneously and independently. He made the point that had Newton not existed, scientific progress would probably have only been set back a few decades, and had Darwin not been born, we'd probably regard Wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection as arguably the greatest scientific ideas of all time. After reading the book, his point seems well justified.
The book changed my perception of things in other ways as well. Recently, I had become increasingly sceptical of the perception that scientists, in particular physicists, had a stranglehold over what was to be considered the ultimate "truth" of things. Perhaps it was due to my own lack of appreciation for what was being said, but even Stephen Hawking seemed to be talking above his head when he mentioned the "mind of God" at the end of A Brief History of Time, when talking about a unified field theory. Such comments seem extremely premature, and as a result I find them quite off putting, and somewhat arrogant. As a result of comments such as these, I'd let people's interpretations of and reactions towards scientific facts undermine the worth of science itself.
John Gribbin's book helped restore a lot of my respect for the scientific search for objective truth, by putting this search into context. After reading up on a history of science, I'd feel like a drongo if I did not accept that there are indeed objective truths to be found in the world, and such truths do indeed have great worth in our understanding of our place in the universe. It's not hard to see that people would have a problem with Newton's universe being completely pre-ordained, implying that there is no free will. In a similar way, I don't like reductionism's implication that things like religious experiences, emotion and cognition could be reduced to chemical reactions and the interaction of molecules. I'm uneasy that Hawking thinks that the current state and direction of modern physics allows scientists to justifiably speak of the "mind of God". But such problems do not undermine the fact that, for example, the structure of DNA is a double helix, or that in our everyday experience of the world, F = m.a.
Quantum physics caused Newton's clockwork universe to fall apart, and relativity goes beyond Newton's laws. We all learnt in high-school that Newton's laws are not "wrong", but they're not the complete picture. Gribbin makes the point that scientific knowledge is a result of an incremental progression. Scientists "stand on the shoulders of giants" (by the way, Gribbin's interpretation of what Newton really meant when he wrote that is kinda fun). New theories must incorporate the truths of old theories. From this broader perspective, scientific facts and our interpretations of these facts become more clear cut. Newton's laws aren't wrong, but we can no longer seriously consider the implications of his clockwork universe. Perhaps it won't be long before people widely see reductionism's limitations, or that people working in the life sciences start speaking of the mind of God with more weight than physicists. In any case, the way in which Gribbin wrote his book put a lot of things in perspective, and when the implications of science feel abhorrent, I no longer feel that such percieved implications make the persuit of scientific truth itself feel abhorrent.
Perhaps it's my turn to start talking above my head, but that last paragraph may have struck a chord if you've ever read anything about paradigm shifts. It was interesting that one of the main points of Gribbin's book is his rejection of Kuhnean revolutions, and hence, I'd assume, the rejection of the notion of scientists operating within paradigms (once a paradigm is overturned, you have a Kuhnean revolution, right?). He is convincing in his argument that science is a gradual progression, where technology plays a large role in producing scientific insights, but from my limited knowledge of Kuhn's ideas, a complete rejection of scientific "revolutions" based on such arguments seems off the mark. It is as though Gribbin feels that a Kuhnean revolution must take place suddenly and within a short space of time, drastically altering the way in which people view the world. I don't doubt it when he says that science is essentially an individual persuit, that scientists are in fact primarily driven by the search for objective truth, that people make science but science does not make people. However, Gribbin's own entertaining biographical accounts of scientists show that these people were by no means isolated from their social environments, and that even the most revolutionary of scientists were not brought up without some set of recieved beliefs. His book also makes it clear that such recieved beliefs have had a strong influence on scientists (Newton's huge influence, for example). Perhaps it's due to a lack of knowledge on my part, but the gradual, incremental progression of science that Gribbin describes does not appear to contradict the idea that paradigms exist and that paradigm-shifts do occur. If it was his point that Kuhn's idea of "normal" science does not exist, this book did not convince me. Gribbin's descriptions of the quantum "revolution" sounded very much like descriptions of a Kuhnean revolution to me. This made me quite keen to hear what he had to say in In Search of Schodinger's Cat, another book that I read whilst on holidays. I'll write about this book some other time.
According to the movie tickets I found, here are a few of the movies I have seen in the past:
- Dirty Deeds (27 Jul 02)
- Saving Private Ryan (28 Nov 98)
- American Splendor (27 ep 03)
- The Fellowship of the Ring (29 Dec 01)
- The Sixth Sense (30 Oct 99)
- Lethal Weapon 4 (29 Sep year torn off)
- Shrek (7 Jul 01)
- Spellbound (1 Dec 03)
- Die-Day (21 Dec 02)... what the on earth is "Die-Day"? Obviously not very memorable
- Charlie's Angels (28 Nov 00)
- IMAX T-rex (18 Dec 98)
- Chicken Run (8 Dec 00)
- Angst (3 Sep 00)
I'll stop before I get too carried away... see how distracting my junk is?
I will, however, let myself become distracted by several of the books that are currently sitting in front of me, because I did intend to write a little about each of them.
Science: A History 1543-2001
by John Gribbin
My dad gave me this book for my 21st birthday, and after letting it sit unread for several months, I foolishly started reading it just before leaving for my holiday. I finished it in Japan, so this meant that for much of my trip, I was lugging around a big, fat book that I had already read.
I'm not surprised that it took me so long to decide to pick it up. I was afraid that by starting the book, I'd be creating a chore for myself. I imagined six-hundred-and-fifty pages of cold, encyclopaedic facts abouts people and knowledge that I'd already spent plenty of time studying. Thankfully, the book proved to be a lot more than that.
I'm no longer a completely ignorant high-school student. I'm now a naive, slightly less ignorant undergraduate. Uni and work experience over the past few years had made me a bit less clueless as to how scientific knowledge builds up. I had become very much aware that scientific progress is heavily reliant upon a foundation of work created by past generations. Despite this, I was still under the impression that Western society's general understanding of the world and our place in it was almost a sole result of the influence of a limited number of irreplaceable geniuses. Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein... it's hard not to think this way when such names are put on a god-like pedestal. This book changed my perception of things. The author celebrated the brilliance of countless individuals whilst making the point that such individuals are hardly irreplaceable in terms of scientific progress, that technological advances have a far greater influence upon the generation of scientific insights than individual geniuses, and that when the time is ripe, certain insights will often be made simultaneously and independently. He made the point that had Newton not existed, scientific progress would probably have only been set back a few decades, and had Darwin not been born, we'd probably regard Wallace's theory of evolution by natural selection as arguably the greatest scientific ideas of all time. After reading the book, his point seems well justified.
The book changed my perception of things in other ways as well. Recently, I had become increasingly sceptical of the perception that scientists, in particular physicists, had a stranglehold over what was to be considered the ultimate "truth" of things. Perhaps it was due to my own lack of appreciation for what was being said, but even Stephen Hawking seemed to be talking above his head when he mentioned the "mind of God" at the end of A Brief History of Time, when talking about a unified field theory. Such comments seem extremely premature, and as a result I find them quite off putting, and somewhat arrogant. As a result of comments such as these, I'd let people's interpretations of and reactions towards scientific facts undermine the worth of science itself.
John Gribbin's book helped restore a lot of my respect for the scientific search for objective truth, by putting this search into context. After reading up on a history of science, I'd feel like a drongo if I did not accept that there are indeed objective truths to be found in the world, and such truths do indeed have great worth in our understanding of our place in the universe. It's not hard to see that people would have a problem with Newton's universe being completely pre-ordained, implying that there is no free will. In a similar way, I don't like reductionism's implication that things like religious experiences, emotion and cognition could be reduced to chemical reactions and the interaction of molecules. I'm uneasy that Hawking thinks that the current state and direction of modern physics allows scientists to justifiably speak of the "mind of God". But such problems do not undermine the fact that, for example, the structure of DNA is a double helix, or that in our everyday experience of the world, F = m.a.
Quantum physics caused Newton's clockwork universe to fall apart, and relativity goes beyond Newton's laws. We all learnt in high-school that Newton's laws are not "wrong", but they're not the complete picture. Gribbin makes the point that scientific knowledge is a result of an incremental progression. Scientists "stand on the shoulders of giants" (by the way, Gribbin's interpretation of what Newton really meant when he wrote that is kinda fun). New theories must incorporate the truths of old theories. From this broader perspective, scientific facts and our interpretations of these facts become more clear cut. Newton's laws aren't wrong, but we can no longer seriously consider the implications of his clockwork universe. Perhaps it won't be long before people widely see reductionism's limitations, or that people working in the life sciences start speaking of the mind of God with more weight than physicists. In any case, the way in which Gribbin wrote his book put a lot of things in perspective, and when the implications of science feel abhorrent, I no longer feel that such percieved implications make the persuit of scientific truth itself feel abhorrent.
Perhaps it's my turn to start talking above my head, but that last paragraph may have struck a chord if you've ever read anything about paradigm shifts. It was interesting that one of the main points of Gribbin's book is his rejection of Kuhnean revolutions, and hence, I'd assume, the rejection of the notion of scientists operating within paradigms (once a paradigm is overturned, you have a Kuhnean revolution, right?). He is convincing in his argument that science is a gradual progression, where technology plays a large role in producing scientific insights, but from my limited knowledge of Kuhn's ideas, a complete rejection of scientific "revolutions" based on such arguments seems off the mark. It is as though Gribbin feels that a Kuhnean revolution must take place suddenly and within a short space of time, drastically altering the way in which people view the world. I don't doubt it when he says that science is essentially an individual persuit, that scientists are in fact primarily driven by the search for objective truth, that people make science but science does not make people. However, Gribbin's own entertaining biographical accounts of scientists show that these people were by no means isolated from their social environments, and that even the most revolutionary of scientists were not brought up without some set of recieved beliefs. His book also makes it clear that such recieved beliefs have had a strong influence on scientists (Newton's huge influence, for example). Perhaps it's due to a lack of knowledge on my part, but the gradual, incremental progression of science that Gribbin describes does not appear to contradict the idea that paradigms exist and that paradigm-shifts do occur. If it was his point that Kuhn's idea of "normal" science does not exist, this book did not convince me. Gribbin's descriptions of the quantum "revolution" sounded very much like descriptions of a Kuhnean revolution to me. This made me quite keen to hear what he had to say in In Search of Schodinger's Cat, another book that I read whilst on holidays. I'll write about this book some other time.
posted by Gene at 3:32 pm
I used to think that the Elizabethan view of the world - everything in a particular chain of order, and people consisting of a balance of humours - was a very beautiful way of working things (as long as you weren't on the lower rung of the order, in which case you were stuffed).
Another thing I liked about it was their belief that unnatural human deeds could lead to disturbances in nature (murder plans, storms, Julius Ceasar, etc). I suppose that in a way that, as out of date as their other beliefs were, in this regard they weren't really that far off.
You should read 'Mendeleev's Dream' - I can't tell you the author because the book is in another city at the moment.
Thanks for the book recommendation, mr/mrs anonymous :)
According to my google search, it's by Paul Strathern.
Maybe I'm just sadistic, but I agree with you. The Elizabethan world view certainly is beautiful if you're looking at the poor, tormented characters in a Shakespearean tragedy. I wouldn't like to live in a world like that though... I'd probably end my days wandering around in a storm as a homeless blind man with countless murders hanging over my head.
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