Tag Archives: science

BOOK REVIEW: How to Read Darwin by Mark Ridley

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How to Read DarwinHow to Read Darwin by Mark Ridley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Few scientific ideas have succeeded so brilliantly and elegantly as Darwin’s theory of what he called “descent with modification” but which we know as evolution—least of all not in the wet and squishy sciences. Darwin realized that if a biologic system had three characteristics, one would end up seeing a wide variety of species, but with common characteristics such that one could discern how a species evolved from common ancestors. (BTW: this is invariably what we see in the world.) The three characteristics are: 1.) variation within the population (i.e. members aren’t carbon copies but have varying characteristics); 2.) inheritance (characteristics are passed from parent to child); and 3.) some individuals produce more offspring than others. Under such conditions, those with variations that allowed them to survive better in their particular environment would produce more children (i.e. natural selection.)

Ridley’s book offers readers an outline of the work of Charles Darwin that’s more extensive than Cliffs Notes but less daunting than the original works written in mid-19th century prose. (Darwin is generally credited as being quite readable for a scientist of that era, but it’s still a large lump of work.) Of course, the book is presented not as an alternative to reading the three major works of Darwin addressed herein (i.e. “On the Origin of Species…,” “The Descent of Man…,” and “The Expression of Emotion…,”) but rather as a preparatory guide.

The question arises as to why one should bother reading such a book if one intends to read Darwin anyway. One reason is to help put Darwin’s discoveries in the context of his time. For example, while Darwin knew of heredity, he didn’t have an understanding of genes and genetics. In other words, a neophyte looking back may not know where to put Darwin’s discoveries amid the important scientific ideas that came before and after. Another reason is to see how the critical claims that have arisen since Darwin’s time are dealt with. Darwin’s theory immediately came under attack (and has continued to) because it is inconsistent with the literal interpretations of most major religions’ creation myths, and, adding fuel to the fire, everything we learn has supported evolution to the detriment of creation myths.

The book consists of ten chapters. The bulk of these chapters (Ch. 1 through 6) lay out the argument made in Darwin’s most influential work, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.” These chapters explore what Darwin described as “one long argument” for natural selection, but in doing so address vital concepts like hybridism, biodiversity, and geological succession. These chapters also discuss the case for Evolution, and the charges that have been leveled against it.

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 describe the ideas of Darwin’s “Descent of Man,” which examines both human evolution and sexual selection. The last chapter introduces the reader to the topic that Darwin took up in his 1872 book on “The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals.” This is an early look at what has continued to be an intriguing field of study, namely what is the evolutionary advantage of conveying emotion and why are we so good at reading other people—or, at least, capable of being good at it.

This book is one in a series of brief summaries of the ideas of important scientists, philosophers, and influential (sometimes infamous) thinkers. Other volumes cover the works of Freud, Hitler, Nietzsche, the Marquis de Sade, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Heidegger, Jung, Marx, Derrida, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare.

The book has no graphics and not much by way of ancillary matter. It does present a timeline of Darwin’s life and achievements, and has a “for further reading” section. Each of these features is just a couple of pages.

I found this book to be concise and readable. It’s only about 100 pages, and doesn’t get into supporting detail (that’s what reading the original work is for.) It does pull key paragraph length excerpts from the source material to discuss ideas in the modern context. I’d recommend this book for someone who intends to read Darwin, who has read Darwin but was left with a lack of clarity, or—even—someone who wants to understand the gist of the argument but doesn’t have time for hundreds of pages of 19th century prose.

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BOOK REVIEW: Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow

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Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your BehaviorSubliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior by Leonard Mlodinow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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If one tries to detect lies using conscious analysis, one stinks—wrong as often as right. However, if one distracts the conscious mind so as to produce what is often called a hunch, one performs much better. This is because not only is there is another mind below one’s conscious mind, but it’s better at many tasks than is our conscious mind. This will be hard news for many readers to take because they are reading and comprehending it with their conscious minds—a conscious mind that thinks it’s better than sliced bread when it comes to things that are awesome. Mlodinow’s book is about the many aspects of this mind that we generally don’t have access to (unless one is skilled in lucid dreaming or is conscientious in the hypnagogic state [on the edge of falling into sleep]—topics the author doesn’t get into.) It’s about why humans evolved to have subliminal mental operations, how they benefit us, and how they sometimes fail us.

Ideas about what the unconscious mind is have varied over the ages, though its existence has long been recognized. Ancient traditions often attributed the unconscious to the supernatural causes like a collective consciousness. Mlodinow begins his book with a chapter entitled “The New Unconscious,” presumably to distinguish it from Freud’s conception and to emphasize the wellspring of results that have come about during the last couple decades of brain research.

The second chapter deals with our sensory experience and the role that unconscious elements play in shaping it. People tend to overestimate the extent to which they experience a high-fidelity and high-resolution display of the world, and underestimate the degree to which the brain fudges to make it seem so. Facial recognition, which is one of the most fundamental of human skills, is a centerpiece of the discussion.

The third chapter discusses memory. Again, the underlying theme is how the brain can make mistakes as it tries to cobble together a story with a combination of information we have, blank spots, and guesses. One may be surprised to discover how poorly one is able to describe the details of things that one sees—if not every day—at least thousands of times in a lifetime.

The next chapter examines how our unconscious plays into our social life. The concept of a “theory of the mind” is at the center of this discussion—and it may not be what you think. Theory of the mind is the ability to figuratively see the world through the eyes of others, to understand justifications for what others have done, and to anticipate what they will do in the future. We also learn about oxytocin and vasopressin, the so-called “love hormones,” whose presence corresponds to our fond feelings for others.

Chapter five continues the discussion of the previous chapter along a specific line of discussion—that of reading people. We are wired to make sense of the facial expressions and non-verbal behavior of other people and this chapter explores that ability as well as its limits. Chapter six describes how we draw quick and unconscious conclusions about people on the basis of how they look, feel, and smell. By way of example, I’ll offer a case from another book I read recently (I don’t believe Mlodinow refers to this particular study, but I may be mistaken) in which a mock interview was set up. Right before their interview meetings, some of the individuals were asked to hold either a hot or cold coffee (or nothing.) It turned out that whether a subject had held a beverage (and what kind) had a profound influence on the interviewers’ feelings about that subject (i.e. the degree to which an interview subject was seen as a cold or warm person had as much to do with an unconscious evaluation of a handshake as it did the conscious interpretation of the individual’s personality.)

The next couple chapters (7 and 8) explain the crucial role of the unconscious mind in categorizing things and people, how that skill has been essential to our survival, and how this sometimes gets us in trouble (e.g. racism.) Chapter 9 delves into the role of emotions, and what the author calls “emotional illusions.” Sometimes we make a decision because we have an emotional experience associated with the decision scenario, but being in an emotional state that is unrelated to the decision still affects the decision.

The last chapter is about how our attachment to self can influence decisions. You’ve probably read about studies showing 90+ percent of the population think they are better than average at something. Also, you may remember from Psychology class a discussion of the self-serving bias (attributing positive outcomes to one’s awesomeness, while blaming external forces for negative outcomes.) This chapter deals in these types of phenomena.

The book has a few relevant black-and-white graphics as well as annotations / citations.

I found this book to be interesting, but not unlike many books that are presently available. I thought it could have ventured into more novel and interesting territory. There are actually a number of books that focus on how we are wired, and the glitches that result. Sometimes our evolutionary programming served us well under hunter-gatherer conditions, and sometimes it still serves us most of the time–but fails us on occasion. There are a number of books that discuss this–often using the same or similar examples as Mlodinow (e.g. consider Eagleman’s “Incognito.”) However, the ways in which the unconscious mind can be interacted with, such as lucid dreaming, are now being scientifically studied, and so there exists a capacity to move beyond the blooper reels of the mind—though that topic is certainly a popular subject, both of scholarly study and pop science books such as this one.

If you are looking for a book on how the unconscious mind both benefits and deceives us, this is a good choice. Mlodinow has a sense of humor and writes complex subjects in an easy to comprehend fashion. However, if you’ve read up on the subject, you might not find much new here.

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BOOK REVIEW: Inside Jokes by Matthew M. Hurley, et. al.

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Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the MindInside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind by Matthew M. Hurley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This book examines the science of why we find funny what we find funny. Most people probably feel about this as did E.B. White who said, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” Still, while analyzing humor may not be as fun as reveling in it, it’s fascinating to scientifically inquiring minds.

Humor is universal (not the humor of a specific joke, but the experience of somethings being humorous.) A skilled science fiction writer might conjure up an alien race that is credibly humorless. But it defies credulity that even the remotest of aboriginal Earthling wouldn’t giggle or guffaw at the sight of an off-course ball careening into an unsuspecting man’s crotch. Humor’s universality begs certain questions. First and foremost, one expects there to be some evolutionary advantage to a sense of humor. That evolutionary mechanism is precisely what Hurley, Dennett, and Adams attempt to demonstrate in this book. The authors suggest that the pleasure associated with humor is a reward for recognizing an incongruity, and they go into great deal to fill in the details needed to explain the panoply of things people find funny, while suggesting why alternate explanations are inferior.

While there’s a lot of frog-killing academic analytics and needlessly messy scholarly language, this book does offer a vast collection of examples of humor to support and clarify the authors’ points. So, unlike many books on evolutionary and cognitive science, this book does have a built-in light side. WARNING: there’s also a discussion of why some attempts at humor fail. This means one is also subjected to a number of puns, elementary school jokes, and comedic misfires that show the reader why sometimes humor implodes.

The book starts by building a common understanding of what humor is. It turns out that this isn’t simple because people find many different kinds of things funny–from caricatures to wordplay. (And, whatever the initial evolutionary purpose of humor, our species has run with that reward system to places that couldn’t have been readily anticipated.) Next, the authors discuss the many varieties of theories of humor that have been raised. This subject has been studied for some time, and thinkers have suggested that humor’s pleasure derives from a number of different causes from feeling superior to recognizing surprise–just to name a couple. After considering the competition, Hurley et. al. start laying out the basis of a cognitive / evolutionary explanation. In chapter five they describe 20 questions they think must be dealt with, and–in the last chapter (13)–they give their responses as a summation of the book’s main points. Along the way, the authors take on important related questions such as why humor sometimes fails, what others will see as the weakness of their argument, whether a robot could be humorous, and why we laugh. The last point opens another can of worms. Even if one concludes–as the authors have–that humor is a reward system for recognizing incongruities, the question of why there is an advantage to spontaneously announcing that recognition still arises.

There’re are a few graphics in the book, mostly these are cartoons and humorous photos that serve as examples. The book is published by MIT Press, so all the usual scholarly features of notes and citations apply.

I found this book to be thought-provoking, and the plentiful examples of jokes made it enjoyable to read as well. I’d recommend it for those interested in the science of the mind. It’s a bit dry in places for readers looking for light reading about humor.

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BOOK REVIEW: Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying ed. by Francisco J. Varela

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Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of ConsciousnessSleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness by Dalai Lama XIV
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This book is a product of the 4th Mind & Life Institute Conference that took place over five days in October of 1992 in Dharamsala, India. It reads as a narrated description / transcription of the event. The Mind & Life Institute was established as a dialogue between science and Tibetan Buddhism, and is actively supported by His Holiness the Dalai Lama—who is an important figure in the book, both asking questions of the presenters and offering clarification on Tibetan Buddhist thinking on various points. The exact subject of each conference is different, but the mind is a recurring theme. Which makes sense as Tibetan Buddhist practices of the mind are as advanced as any, and it would be of great benefit to understand them better from a scientific perspective.

As the title suggests, this conference (and the book) deal with three topics: sleeping, dreaming, and dying. This may seem like a case of “one of these things doesn’t belong,” but from the Buddhist perspective on consciousness it’s a sensible enough grouping. One can think of it this way, sleeping and dying are points at which consciousness goes bye-bye. [Although, lucid dreamers retain consciousness in REM sleep, and there are unsubstantiated claims of the ability to maintain consciousness in sleep by extremely advanced practitioners.]

There is some front matter (a forward by the Dalai Lama and an editor’s Introduction) and then eight chapters. The first chapter discusses both the Western and Tibetan perspectives on “the self,” what it is, and whether it is [real or illusory.] This topic seems unrelated to the book’s theme, but it’s a way to develop a common understanding for the rest of the discussion. If participants have different views on what a person is, mentally speaking, and what consciousness is, then it’s easy to talk past each other without even realizing it. The second chapter is an overview of what was known about sleep, principally from the perspective of neuroscience (it should be noted that neuroscience was a fairly fledgling term at that time.) The next three chapters (ch. 3, 4, and 5) are about dreaming. The third chapter is a bit unique. The general approach throughout the book is to give the understanding of science and then to compare and contrast that with Buddhist thinking. However, chapter three’s discussion is led by a proponent of psychoanalysis (i.e. the Freudian approach,) which isn’t so scientific, but is a Western philosophical approach. [Chapter one is also heavily philosophical.]

Chapters four and five delve into the subject of lucid dreaming, which is referred to as dream yoga in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. For me this was the meat of the subject, and it was the reason that I bought the book. Tibetan practices on lucid dreaming are incomparable, and at this point science’s understanding was beginning to blossoming as well.

The last three chapters are on death, and each offers a different character. The first two emphasize Western views, but in different ways. Chapter six outlines the Christian position on death—a theological rather than scientific understanding. Chapter seven explains the medical community’s view of death. This sounds straight forward, but it’s a much more technical subject than one might imagine. What organ has to stop functioning and for how long before one is actually dead. Besides all the coma patient stories, one may be aware of cases historically in which people were discovered to have been buried alive accidentally due to bad calls by doctors. The last chapter is about near-death experiences. This is an area in which there is a great potential for differing views. While science doesn’t deny that people have all sorts of fascinating experiences such as seeing bright lights at the end of “tunnels” and out-of-body experiences, scientists tend to attribute such events to material causes. [Neuroscientists can now induce out-of-body experiences by zapping a specific part of the brain.]

There are graphics in the form of diagrams and tables in the chapters that are most technical (e.g. chapter two and chapter seven,) but they are used sparingly. There’s an appendix that describes the Mind & Life Institute, as well as a glossary that explains both Tibetan and scientific terms. There are also a few pages of end notes that will help one find related material.

The weakness of this book is clearly its age. The Buddhism probably hasn’t changed much, but the science has changed a lot. Since 1992 there has been a revolution in understanding of the brain due to advances in functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and other technologies.

However, despite the book’s age, there’s a lot of thought-provoking discussion, which offers plenty of room for both scientists and Buddhists to gain a better understanding of the mind and consciousness. I’d recommend this book for anyone interested in dream yoga / lucid dreaming, or—for that matter—death.

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BOOK REVIEW: Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks

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HallucinationsHallucinations by Oliver Sacks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Hallucinations are among the most captivating, yet misunderstood, phenomena of the mind. In the popular imagination, they are synonymous with losing one’s grip on reality and are considered evidence of a full-blown psychosis. However, there are a great variety of causes and forms of hallucination, many of which occur among the sane. What Sacks provides in this book is a survey of the forms of hallucination through exploration of cases and anecdotes. To emphasize the point that hallucinations aren’t just for the insane, Sacks doesn’t arrange the book around the idea sanity and insanity. Cases of mental illness are peppered throughout, but there are even more cases of people who fully realize that their hallucinated sensory experiences aren’t real. In fact, he starts with Charles Bonnet Syndrome, hallucinations among blind individuals who are often scared to discuss the phenomena for fear they will be labeled insane even though they know they aren’t really seeing anything. (The brain’s abhorrence of under-stimulation is a recurring theme in the book.)

As mentioned, the approach of the book is to discuss cases of hallucination, and not so much to delve into the research on causes and treatments. This anecdotal approach makes the book readable and offers a unique and intimate insight into hallucination, but it doesn’t drill down into the brain science as much as some might like. This will no doubt be a positive for many, and a negative for others. The author describes several of his own hallucinatory experiences related to drug use, drug withdrawal, and migraine headaches. As I understand it, that level of candor was par for the course for Sacks (though this is the first of his books that I’ve read.) At any rate, his personal experience offers a particularly vivid portrait, and moves the book beyond the sterile feel often found in scientific works.

The book consists of 15 chapters, organized by types / causes of hallucination. After an introduction and the aforementioned chapter on Charles Bonnet Syndrome, there’s a chapter on sensory deprivation hallucinations that’s aptly entitled “the prisoner’s cinema.” Chapters three and four are on olfactory and auditory hallucinations, respectively. The fifth chapter focuses on cases of hallucination experienced by those with Parkinson’s Disease. Chapter six is entitled “Altered States,” but it deals largely with drug-induced hallucinations (it should be pointed out other “altered states” of consciousness, notably sleep, are dealt with in other places), and it’s where Sacks’ personal story begins to be detailed. The next chapter deals with migraine headache related phenomena, and—as the author suffered from such headaches—his story is also imprinted on this chapter.

Chapter eight deals with epilepsy, and, like the Sam Kean book that I reviewed yesterday, is entitled “The Sacred Disease.” That name derives from the fact that those who develop temporal lobe epilepsy are sometimes known to become spontaneously hyper-spiritual in the process. In fact, many scientists now believe that Joan of Arc, Saint Paul (the Apostle), and [for my Indian readers] Ramakrishna were afflicted by this ailment. (Not based on their high degree of spirituality, but rather on accounts of sensory phenomena they were said to have experienced.)

Chapter nine examines cases related to hemianopia—a situation in which one occipital lobe is damaged resulting in a kind of “blindness” in half one’s visual field. While people think of blindness as being a problem with the eyes, it’s possible to have perfectly good eyes and optic nerves and be blind (on a conscious level) due to brain’s incapacity to process the input it is receiving. (Incidentally, in his book “Subliminal” Leonard Mlodinow describes engrossing cases of people who were blind due to brain damage, but–owing to a redundant subconscious systems–they could walk around without running into obstacles.)

Chapter ten describes cases associated with delirium, a common cause of hallucinations that can be the side-effect of any number of physical problems including fever, blood sugar imbalance, and liver failure.

The next two chapters are about sleep-related sensory imaginings. Chapter eleven details cases of hypnagogic and hypnopompic imagery, which are what we see as we are on the edge of falling asleep or awaking, respectively. Hypnagogic hallucinations may be as simple as shifting shapes, or more elaborate. If you’ve gotten this far in the book without any experience that corresponds to what Sack’s is describing, you’ll almost certainly have some experience with hypnagogic images. If not, you should stop consciously counting sheep (or whatever other daydreaming you do as you fall asleep) and just watch what your mind projects. You’ll know it when you see it because you won’t be able to control the imagery (though you can distract over it with conscious thought) and—as in dreams—it probably won’t make a lick of sense. Hypnopompic images are quite different, less widely experienced, and often more disconcerting. Chapter twelve presents cases dealing with narcolepsy (random spontaneous falling asleep) and sleep paralysis, a common experience on the trailing edge of sleep in which one can’t move and which often comes with imagined sensations of a more nefarious variety—hence the widespread lore of night hags and the like.

Chapter thirteen scrutinizes cases that are associated with traumatic events from one’s past. These can involve sightings of ghosts of departed loved ones or replays (flashbacks) of the traumatizing event. This chapter, in a discussion of dissociation, also foreshadows the phenomena of out-of-body (OOB) experience that’s dealt with in more detail in chapter 14. The theme of that penultimate chapter is seeing oneself. Beyond OOB, it deals with a variety of hallucinations of oneself, including those in which one’s body appears distorted (i.e. so-called “Alice in Wonderland” Syndrome.)

The last chapter discusses hallucinations in the tactile domain, and, specifically, the most widely investigated form of these phenomena—the phantom limb. Phantom limb syndrome is experienced by amputees, many of whom can still feel the lost limb. This has resulted in nightmarish scenarios in which an awaking patient complains of an itch on the sole of his or her foot only to be shown that they have no legs from the knee down.

There are no graphics in the book, but, because it’s based around cases, it doesn’t need them for clarification of complex ideas. There are footnotes, as well as a bibliography.

I found this book to be absorbing, and I learned a great deal from it. I’d recommend it for anyone who seeks greater insight into hallucinations or unusual mental phenomena more generally.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean

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The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and RecoveryThe Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery by Sam Kean
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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Once upon a time, our knowledge of what the brain did, how it worked, and the degree to which its parts were specialized came from observing people who had brain injuries or a disease of the brain. Kean’s book examines the evolution of our understanding of the brain by way of investigations of historic cases. Looking at damaged brains is obvious not the ideal way to study the most complex system in the known universe—accidents and brain-eating diseases aren’t discriminating. Still, over time, a few conscientious [and sometimes warped] doctors and scientists pieced together important clues. From the rudimentary observation that people conked on the head often pass out temporarily, doctors began to learn about the degree to which brain parts were specialized and how changes in the brain effected beliefs, memories, and behavior.

Kean’s book is in part a history and in part a work of popular science, and the cases selected are often of interest both as history and as science. We learn about the damaged brains of kings, assassins, soldiers, adventurers, and those with more mundane jobs but no less fascinating brain trauma (e.g. Phineas Gage, one of the most well-known cases in the book, a construction foreman who had a steel tamping rod rocketed through his skull.)

It’s this historical approach that builds a niche for Kean. There have been a massive number of popular science books on the brain in recent years. (You’ll note that I’ve reviewed many of them.) While other books discuss many of the same intriguing neuroscientific phenomena (e.g. synesthesia [mixing of sense and / or mental data, e.g. people who see colors with musical notes or even with numbers], phantom limbs, epilepsy’s effect on beliefs, and the brain’s role in aberrant behavior) most of them are rooted in the mother-lode of discoveries that have come out of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and other modern technologies. Even the works of V.S. Ramachandran, which largely deal in discoveries rooted in low-tech but exceedingly clever science, are placed in the context of present-day science. (You should read Ramachandran’s book “The Tell Tale Brain” also.)

Kean’s book is complementary to the body of works on popular neuroscience. While some of those books mention the same (or similar) cases as Kean, they do so to illustrate the Dark Age origins of many of these questions. Kean delves into the intriguing details of such cases. On the other hand, while Kean is dealing in the historic, he brings in modern science on occasion to give the reader insight into what ideas have been confirmed and which overturned. That’s important as Kean is often telling the reader about the opposing theories of the day—as the title suggests.

The book contains an Introduction and twelve chapters that are arranged into five parts. The book’s organization is by brain structure and key (interesting) functions tied to those various parts. It’s logically arranged, starting with a question as crude as the skull’s role in brain injury and ending on a topic so challenging that there remains a great deal of mystery (and controversy among scientists) about it, i.e. consciousness. In between, we learn about neurotransmitters, neuroplasticity, and the brains role in sensory processing / presentation, bodily awareness / movement, emotion, belief, delusion, and memory—as well as the degree to which the two halves of our brain are independent and what severing the connection does.

The book is end-noted and has a works cited section, but it has a couple other noteworthy features. A fun feature of note is that each chapter begins with a rebus, a kind of word puzzle that relates to an anatomical part relevant to that chapter. There are also graphics in the form of both diagrams and black-and-white photos, and they are interspersed throughout the book with the relevant text (as opposed to in special sections.)

I’d recommend this book for individuals not only interested in neuroscience, but in the history of science generally. Even history buffs who don’t think much about science will likely learn a thing or two from Kean’s presentation of the cases—e.g. there is much discussion of Civil War wounds.

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BOOK REVIEW: Fooling Houdini by Alex Stone

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Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the MindFooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind by Alex Stone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This book operates on two levels. The first is the autobiography of a magician, telling a tale from being gonged off stage at the “Magic Olympics” through a rising obsession with the craft before rolling into his redemption. On a second level, it’s a history of magic in the modern age (although there are occasional forays into more ancient history.) The author tells of the magicians that inspired him, some of whom he learned from personally and some were from the preceding generation, such as Dai Vernon—the magician who actually fooled Houdini. However, the book’s title doesn’t come from Vernon’s feat with the Ambitious Card Trick, but is instead a more general statement about the challenge of tricking magicians—an accomplishment a great deal more prestigious than fooling a pod of eight year olds at little Timmy’s birthday party.

Stone was a science writer turned Physics graduate student, and so the science of magic and mentalism comes out frequently. However, this book is distinct from one such as “Sleights of Mind” by Macknik & Martinez-Conde, which is focused entirely upon conveying the science of how magic tricks work (primarily neuroscience with a focus on how the sense organs and brain interact to a magician’s advantage.) In truth, I expected this book to more along the lines of “Sleights of Mind.” However, in a way, it’s a good thing that it wasn’t. Stone reviews the science that Macknik and Martinez-Conde drill down into enough so that it’s a good review if one has read that book (I had) or an introduction if one hasn’t. What Stone does a great deal more of is describing the perfection one’s craft. Along the way he shows us a blind card handler with a preternatural capacity for tactile control of the deck, he takes us to clown college to improve showmanship, and he meets up with some street hustlers of the 3-card monte variety.

Throughout the course of the book are ups and downs that maintain the tension. In fact, one chapter is actually entitled “It’s Annoying and I Asked You to Stop,” about the inevitable point at which a magician’s obsession with improving his/her skills stops being cute to loved ones. There is also a chapter about Stone’s [almost] being blackballed from the magic community for revealing secrets in a general readership magazine (I guess that’s a muggle-mag?) An important part of the story is Stone’s search for a Yoda, a wizened member of the magic community who can give him the deeper insight needed to fool a room of experts. He eventually finds said individual, but is not quickly adopted. (It has a hero’s journey feel through this part.)

I thought that the author did a good job of building an interesting story arc within a work of nonfiction. This increases the book’s readability, particular if one has no particular interest in magic. One need not be knowledgeable about the discipline to find the story interesting and to learn some fascinating tidbits. If nothing else, one will learn how con men cull marks, so one can avoid falling prey to their potent psychology (though I expect the subset of readers of books and those tricked into gambling 3-card monte is probably not huge.)

One area in which a reader might be dissatisfied is in the coverage given to mentalism and math-based tricks. The alliterative subtitle makes reference to “magicians, mentalists, and math geeks…” but the bulk of the book is about close-up magic; mentalism and mathematical methods don’t come in until the last few chapters. If you’re expecting that the coverage of those topics will be on par with that of close-up magic, this may not be the book for you. Still, while this was different from I expected, it didn’t hurt my impression of the book.

I enjoyed this book, and received some intriguing insights from it. I’d recommend it for those interested in magic and in particular the craft and science of it. Even if you aren’t that interested in magic, you might find the story of one man’s development of his discipline to be worth reading.

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BOOK REVIEW: This Explains Everything ed. by John Brockman

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This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World WorksThis Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works by John Brockman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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A theory that explains a lot with a clear and simple set of ideas is much beloved by scientists and social scientists alike. In this book, about 150 renowned thinkers were asked what theory they thought explained the most with the least. Every year, Edge.org (the online face of an Algonquin Round Table-like group called “The Reality Club”) produces a question to direct toward members, and this book resulted from the 2012 question. The editor, John Brockman, had his work cut out for him given limited space and the fact that a few theories (e.g. Darwinian Evolution) would be rehashed ad nauseam without coordination. (Many authors sited Darwin, even if they weren’t discussing evolution because they knew it’d already been addressed from many angles.)

The contributors are a veritable who’s who of science, and include: Matt Ridley, Richard Dawkins, Leonard Susskind, Frank Wilczek, Steven Pinker, Martin J. Rees, Max Tegmark, Freeman Dyson, V.S. Ramachandran, David Eagleman, Robert Sapolsky, Richard Thaler, Daniel Dennett, Howard Gardener, Lisa Randall, Eric R. Kandel, Alison Gopnik, Lee Smolin, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Jared Diamond, and Michael Shermer. One may note that not all of the authors are, strictly-speaking, scientists. The book even ventures into the arts and humanities, including contributors such as Alan Alda and Brian Eno. Of course, this means that the book sometimes veers away from theories that have explanatory power on the scale of natural selection or the neat offerings of physics and chemistry, but these entries often provide some intriguing food-for-thought.

All of the entries are short; some are less than a page and most are less than three. Given the range of authors, the approaches and the degree of colorfulness employed in entries varies greatly. There are few graphics and no ancillary matter (notations or bibliography) except for an editor’s introduction. It’s good bathroom reading, or for any other time when one has a couple free minutes to take in an idea.

I enjoyed this book, and found it thought-provoking. Often it wasn’t the expected theories (i.e. the most parsimonious) that provided the greatest revelatory insights. There were even responses that challenged the nature of the question. One won’t necessarily find all the responses present elegant theories, or that all of them even are theories, but that’s not the point. They are all ideas that have merit in some regard. One will see old standards (e.g. the 2nd law of thermodynamics) from new angles and will be exposed to ideas that might be entirely new (e.g. the Faurie-Raymond hypothesis that suggests the advantage of lefties in fighting.) I found essays on swarm intelligence and frames of reference taking my thinking in new directions.

I’d recommend this book for those looking for some interesting thinking on elegant ideas.

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BOOK REVIEW: Astrobiology by David C. Catling

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Astrobiology: A Very Short IntroductionAstrobiology: A Very Short Introduction by David C. Catling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This book explains how life came about on Earth and what that might mean for life elsewhere in the universe. It may seem odd that life’s origins on Earth is relevant to this otherwise extraterrestrial sub-discipline, but that bit of biology offers insight into what is necessary for life—at least life as we know it. There is also the question of whether life originated entirely within Earth’s primordial soup, or whether there was an extraterrestrial ingredient necessary.” [Note: we aren’t talking about an advanced civilization placing creatures here so much as raw materials frozen in space dust or a meteorite. This is the idea of panspermia that once had a substantial following.]

If you’re interested in whether there might be life beyond our planet, this little introduction will give you the basic insights into where it might be found and what it might be like. Though the book deals with a highly technical subject, it’s written with the non-expert in mind.

The book consists of eight chapters. The first chapter defines the subject of “astrobiology,” which is important as it’s not exactly a household term—and is arguably an ill-chosen term to boot. However, chapter one also defines life and outlines what are the necessities for the development of life. The second chapter explores what type of celestial body life might reside upon–or in. We tend to think narrowly of other planets like ours, but what about moons or meteorites, or even space dust? More broadly, this chapter gives the reader a primer on cosmology and astronomy as is relevant to the development of life. Chapter three evaluates the conditions which proved conducive to spawning life on Earth. This is followed by a chapter that looks at how the Earth provided an environment in which life could flourish, even allowing for the evolution of intelligent lifeforms. Chapter five explains how genes and the chemistry of life contribute to the perpetuation of life.

Chapters six and seven both answer the question of where we might expect to find extraterrestrial life. The former discusses promising locales for life within our solar system and the latter is about the space beyond. Needless to say, chapter six is a great deal more specific; it actually proposes nine celestial bodies in the solar system that could theoretically harbor life, and expounds upon which are most and least promising and why. Chapter seven is more about what kinds of places we might expect to find life, and where we might direct our investigations. While scientists are finding new planets all the time, it is a relatively new capability and these distant bodies are only discovered through indirect evidence. The last chapter is a brief one that discusses “controversies and prospects.” With respect to controversies the primary contender is the Rare Earth hypothesis that suggests that life may not be so common as we expect by virtue of the massive number of solar systems out there. As for prospects, that is just a couple of pages on the most likely contenders at the time the book was written.

The book has about a dozen illustrations, mostly explanatory diagrams and all in black-and-white. It also has a two-page further reading section. However, that’s it as far as ancillary matter is concerned.

I found this book to be interesting and a good way to get up to speed on the basic concepts necessary to understand the search for extraterrestrial life. I’d recommend it for others who’d like to do the same.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking w/ Leonard Mlodinow

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The Grand DesignThe Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Why is there a universe, and why is it as it is? This is the question addressed by “The Grand Design.” These questions have been taken up in many ways by many disciplines in addition to science (e.g. mythology, religion, and philosophy), and science, itself, is continuously attempting to hone in on an explanation that is consistent with observed reality. Hawking and Mlodinow suggest that, for now, the leading contender is M-theory.

The authors advocate for M-theory, but also for the [relevant] notion of model-dependent realism. M-theory predicts that quantum fluctuations are causing a continuous spawning of new universes—each with its own laws of nature (or lack thereof.) Most of the bubble universes in this frothy multiverse don’t have staying power, but a few—like ours—are governed by laws that not only allow them to blossom, but also to spawn life. Besides the existence of a multiverse of universes governed by differing sets of laws, there are some other predictions of the M-theory model that remain to be proven. These include the existence of eleven dimensions, most of which are curled up and must be curled up in a certain way according to a set of laws and conditions. The theory also predicts that there will exist “objects” of various dimensionality up to nine. [Whether we will ever be able to test any of these predictions remains unclear.]

What’s this model-dependent realism bit? This is the idea that what we know of reality exists through models that connect observations to a set of rules. Within the limited space for which we have observations, there is no requirement that there be a solitary model or mapping between rules and observations. Because of this, there may be multiple theories. Physics has been long looking for a grand unified theory (GUT) or a Theory of Everything (TOE) that explains all the laws of the universe in one fell swoop. Hawking suggests that such a solitary theory may not be found given our limitations, and that we may have to exploit different theories for different situations. This belief is important because M-theory isn’t a unified theory but a grouping of theories that each work well in certain domains. Needless to say, this isn’t a particularly satisfying notion for the many physicists who are hoping for a more satisfying level of elegance.

The book consists of eight chapters. The first, entitled “The Mystery of Being,” is a brief description of the central question and an outline of why M-theory is proposed as the answer. Chapter two gives an overview of our evolving understanding of the laws that govern the universe, and sets up the important idea that the configuration of the universe is contingent upon the form of the laws governing it. The third chapter is where the authors argue for model-dependent realism, while discussing the arguments of realists and anti-realists as well. Chapter four describes alternate histories and the idea that the probability of an observation is dependent upon all possible histories that could have led to said observations. This bit of quantum strangeness is crucial to reconciling the central question. The next chapter describes the forces seen in our universe and considers attempts to unify the four forces (i.e. gravity, electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force) in a single theory that explains it all—a ToE. Chapter six discusses our universe with particular respect to its steady expansion that has allowed galaxies and solar systems to form. Chapter seven goes further, exploring the nature of a universe that could support the development and evolution of life. There are a wide variety of precise conditions needed to produce intelligent life. We live in a narrow band with respect to our distance from our star in which our type of life could be created. If the orbit of the sun was more elliptical or our axis wasn’t stabilized by a moon, we couldn’t be—and those features require laws that support them. The authors also examine how the chemistry of our universe is conducive to the development of complex life. The final chapter uses a discussion of a primitive computer game called “the game of life” to show how a model shapes reality as we know it. This grid-based game has only a few rules, and yet if there are more than a few pixels at the beginning, it becomes impossible for us to predict an outcome. With the complexity we see in our universe, this situation is vastly greater.

The book contains many graphics, mostly color, to clarify ideas that are difficult to comprehend via verbal description, or sometimes just to add levity. The only ancillary matter is a brief glossary of terms that come up in the book. There are no notes and no bibliography.

I found this book to be thought-provoking. However, I don’t know why it had the feel of a sales pitch. It repeats the theme of “M-theory is the best game in town” ad nauseam. This repetition draws attention to itself because the book fails to directly challenge those who critique M-theory in any depth or detail. It also fails to take on the question of how it is that M-theory might be taken from a purely theoretical construct to one that can be tested. (It makes falsifiable claims, but does that matter if we may never have a capacity to test those claims?) Those aspects wouldn’t be necessary if the book wasn’t making a pitch. [It felt like the book may have wanted to convince its pop-sci readers that–while they would only have a foggy idea of the why M-theory might have merit at the end of the book–they should remember that it’s the best–so that no funding gets cut from M-theory research and delivered to other lines of inquiry. In other words, the take-away sometimes feels like: “Stephen Hawking is super-smart, and he says ‘vote M-theory.’”]

I would recommend this book for those interested in the big picture of our universe’s existence, but as a neophyte it has made me want to read Woit’s “Not Even Wrong” or Smolin’s “The Trouble with Physics” just so that I’ll know what the critics are saying.

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