Amazon.com

If you want to understand how something works, you can dismantle it and study its pieces. But what if the thing you're curious about is too small to see, even with the most powerful microscope? Brian Cathcart's The Fly in the Cathedral tells the intriguing story of how scientists were able to take atoms apart to reveal the secrets of their structures. To keep the story gripping, Cathcart focuses on a time (1932, the annus mirabilis of British physics), a place (Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory), and a few main characters (Ernest Rutherford, the "father of nuclear physics," and his protégés, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton).

Rutherford and his team knew that the long-accepted atomic model was held together by nothing more than trumped-up math and hope. They hoped to find out what held oppositely charged protons and electrons together, and what strange particles shared the nucleus with protons. In a series of remarkable experiments done on homemade apparatus, these Cambridge scientists moved atomic science to within an inch of its ultimate goal. Finally, Cockcroft and Walton--competing furiously with their American and German peers--put together the machine that would forever change history by splitting an atom. The Fly in the Cathedral combines all the right elements for a great science history: historical context, gritty detail, wrenching failure, and of course, glorious victory. Although the miracles that occurred at Cambridge in 1932 were to result in the fearful, looming threat of atomic warfare, Cathcart allows readers to find unfiltered joy in the accomplishments of a few brilliant, ingenious scientists. --Therese Littleton ... Read more

Reviews (4)

The soul of a new machine - 1927
The focus of this book is a machine, the first 300,000+ volt proton accelerator.We follow the 'soul of the machine' from conception in beer halls and bordellos to 'graduation' when Nobel prizes are awarded..We watch the first documented design get put down on paper (basically scribbled on the napkins of a German coffee shop).As always, the coincidences of birth are astounding.

Rather than dwell on theory, Cathcart frames 'building the machine' firmly within 1920s living conditions.We walk through Cambridge with new PhD students who end up doing the grunt work.We join them in the 'nursery,' where they learn the mind numbing use of scintillation screens. We learn that the lab didn't have a 24x7 electrical supply and everyone had to go home at 6 when the generators were turned off.When the atom is finally split, Cathcart contrasts the news accounts with reports that got bigger headlines (a peeress was robbed the same day).

Though the subtitle suggests something of a competition was being run, the race gets little attention (if it existed at all).The dramatic tension is generated by contrasting tea parties with 'lab time' and suggesting the 'lab time' couldn't happen without the parties.

This is a history of 'big physics'.Particle physics is not cheap, and I wished Cathcard explored the fund raising activities with more enthusiasm.He concludes his book by quoting Rutherford: "We were like children who need to know how it worked," but this doesn't explain how the monumental costs of the particle accelerator were raised in the depths of the depression.

If you liked Tracy Kidder's 'Soul of a New Machine,' you should like this a great deal.

The Beginning of Nuclear Physics
People had always thought that solid matter was, well, solid.It was only when scientists had an understanding of what atoms were that they began to realize that there were huge spaces between atoms.Later they got to understand that an atom itself consisted mostly of empty space, a big outer shell where electrons whizzed around, containing only a tiny nucleus.The image of the big shell and the tiny nucleus was given by comparison, a comparison that gives the title to _The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom_ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Brian Cathcart.Actually, the atom had been split long before, if the atom, which had been considered indivisible, is split by chipping electrons off that outer cathedral-like shell.But "splitting the atom" has long had the real meaning of splitting the nucleus, and this is the intriguing story of the stolid, energetic and gentlemanly scientists at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge who in 1932 brought forth the birth of nuclear physics.

The commanding presence in the book, just as he was as he oversaw the lab, is Sir Earnest Rutherford, a "barreling, thundering, penetrating presence in the world of physics, a great rowdy boy full of ideas and energy."He was thrilled by the ardor of the chase in scientific exploration, and he was an ingenious experimenter, although he was often clumsy with apparatus.In 1927, Rutherford as its president addressed the Royal Society, proposing a new way forward for solving the problem of the composition of the nucleus.If it were possible to accelerate particles artificially, he said, by huge voltages of electricity, they could be slammed against the nucleus and the scattered wreckage analyzed.This sounds completely sensible now, but there was no equipment that could produce such accelerations.The two heroes of this book, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, worked in Rutherford's lab, and were easily persuaded to join the chase.Cockcroft was so quiet that his children eventually made the rule that "Daddy could not leave the dinner table until he had uttered two whole sentences."He was superb at designing and making experimental equipment that no one else had thought of before, but was not the experimenter that Rutherford would have liked.Walton was.Another quiet man, he was the son of a minister and a devout Methodist who shunned any activity that might be called frivolous.He came up with the idea of accelerating particles electrically on his own, and when he proposed such work to his boss, Rutherford was of course delighted.In 1932, after almost four years of patient, frustrating, exhausting, and inspiring work, protons bombarded a strip of lithium, and the lithium nucleus cracked open into two helium nuclei.

Part of the charm of this book is that it describes work done in a scientific atmosphere that was like none found today.Rutherford, even though a hard taskmaster, insisted that at six at night, everyone had to go home.He would not have his researchers overextend themselves, and at that time, all circuits were switched off, no matter what experiment was in progress.He did, however, allow this strict curfew to be waived once Walton and Cockcroft had made their initial findings, so that they could confirm them and rush into print ahead of the other experimenters in other nations that were trying to break down the nucleus as well.The two experimenters did not exactly become household names, like, say, Watson and Crick, but there was some (often misdirected) praise from the press, and they got plenty of recognition from their peers.Albert Einstein visited the lab and was thrilled with what he saw; incidentally, the experiment was the first laboratory verification of his famous equation E = mc^2.It took almost twenty years, but Walton and Cockcroft were awarded Nobel prizes, which also failed to make them famous.Modest, quiet, gray scientists, they probably were happy to have it that way.

Splitting the atom was never so much fun
The Fly in the Cathedral takes the microscope to Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory in the late 1920s-early 1930s, a period of explosive growth in physics and, in particular, nuclear physics. The knowledge we so take for granted today - that the nucleus (the "fly") is comprised of neutrons and protons with electrons occupying certain energy levels far from the nucleus (the "cathedral") - was suspected but never proven conclusively by the mid 1920s.

The author, Brian Cathcart, does a credible job at introducing the main players - Ernest Walton, John Cockcroft, Ernest Rutherford, James Chadwick - and evinces their personalities by describing their manner of working and by examining their interactions with others. The overwhelming impression is of very modest men making extremely immodest progress in understanding the very fundamentals of nature. Indeed, they all went on to win Nobel prizes; the sheer brain power of these men is inspiring.

The subject matter of the book might be nuclear physics but the author does a terrific job of explaining things and provides some very neat analogies to help the reader, such as describing continuous functions like temperature as "milk" and discontinuous things like quanta of energy as "eggs". In context, this makes a lot of sense for readers without the benefit of a background in physics or chemistry. Those who do understand the essentials of nuclear physics will not feel condescended.

Rutherford was the head of the Cavendish Laboratory during this period and his group proved two important things: Chadwick of the existence of the neutron and Walton & Cockcroft the "splitting" of the atom, although technically they weren't splitting so much as cleaving. Rutherford's mind is described as "like the bow of a battleship. There was so much weight behind it, it had no need to be sharp as a razor." With a battleship driving their research, is it any wonder Rutherford's group succeeded?

This is a great book for the lover of science. It is easily digestable and leaves the reader with a real sense of wonderment at just how incredible nature is and how determined men can be in deciphering her. If you like this book you will almost certainly enjoy "Genius" by James Gleick too, it's one of my all-time favorite books.

Exciting account of atomic sudies and early quantum theory
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Maybe it is just me, I relish Scientific American and I as an engineer and I have always been interested in technology and its history. This book made me feel like I was working with Walton and Cockcroft under Rutherford at the famous Cavendish labs in England as they toiled to build a proton accelerator to smash the nucleus before other labs could beat them with cyclotrons and Van de Graf generators. It was an exciting race. It explains how to build a rectifier for 700kv out of huge hand made vacuum tubes. All the big names in early quantummechanics make an appearance. The politics, the challenges, etc. I highly recommend it. ... Read more

Book Description

Combining the logical rigor with the lyrical finesse of a novelist , award-winning author Gregory Benford explores these and other fascinating questions in this provocative analysis of humanity's attempts to make its culture immortal.  In Deep Time he confronts our growing influence on events hundreds of thousands of years into the future and explores the possible "messeges" we may transmit to our distant descendants in the language of the planet itself, from nuclear waste to global warming to the extinction of species.  As we begin our incredible journey down the path of eternity, Gregory Benford masterfully calls forth some of the intriguing, astounding, undreamed-of futures which may await us in deep time.

Reviews (21)

Deep Time/Deep Self-Revelation
I very much enjoyed reflecting on the ideas presented in Benford's discussion. The content and organization of the book are not specifically addressed in previous reviews on this site, so for the reader wondering what the book is about, a road map might be useful.
Deep Time has four sections:
(1) Ten Thousand Years of Solitude describes a project in which the author was involved, which addressed how (or if) society can design safe repositories for nuclear waste with effective means of communicating across millenia to people who will not share our culture, technology, or language, "don't go near this place." Past epic attempts to communicate over the millenia and present attempts to preserve computer data for even a few years do not build confidence that this critical message will speak properly to its unimaginably distant audience.
(2) Vaults in Vacuum is a rather darkly amusing discussion of the etched plates NASA sent out on some space missions intended to communicate with whoever finds them about Earth, Sol, and humans. The unintended humor of the political process surrounding their design communicates more to us about human nature than the disks themselves could ever communicate to aliens! The fate of the diamond disk that was supposed to ride with Cassini-Huygens to Saturn is nothing short of hysterical.
(3) The Library of Life is a depressing description of the potentially Chicxulub-scale loss of biodiversity caused by humans in the last few centuries. It argues almost poignantly, perhaps quixotically, for building cryogenically-preserved DNA libraries to store the basic information on biodiversity, so our far descendants, if we manage to leave any, might be able to resuscitate what we are destroying -- "Jurassic Park" on ice.
(4) Stewards of the Earth: The World as Message is a vaguely postmodern discussion of the earth we're leaving behind us for our descendants as a text and what that text reveals about us. The message is not flattering or hopeful. Should human society with its next-quarter or, at most, decades time frame begin to design and effect centuries-long agendas to assist the planet to support us at a high level of technological civilization, our primate cleverness may yet evolve into wisdom and conscious design of what the earth says about us to our long-distant descendants.

2 years...
It's been around two years since I first read this book, and i must say i reference it to people all the time. the reason: it is so darn fascinating. i really liked how the author put things in context and made me think about media forms and how we transfer data. if i gave you an 8-track tape right now, would you know what to do with it to get the info contained on it? younger folks might not know what it is. they would recognize tape (maybe), but 100 years from now, how many players would be around? the book talks about a project the author was on. a nuclear waste site in new mexico needed to have a way to communicate to humans (or others) in the future that the site is radioactive. since the radiation could last 10,000 years, the message would have to be able to be understood centuries from now. what would the message be like? if you read the book you'll find out! lots of different ideas are kicked around and i just couldn't put the book down. buy it, have fun!

A thought-provoking idea, not completely carried through
This book, by a physicist and science fiction writer, starts off well with a philosophical perspective on Humankind's collective attention span. The desire to convey some essence of ourselves, Benford writes, is the great impulse behind deep time messages. But there also is a desire to shape the future, and to use the idea of the future to shape the present. He describes his personal experience as a member of a group advising the Department of Energy on what kind of markers should be used to warn future humans of an underground radioactive waste depository. He then turns to the design of plaques to be attached to spacecraft that will leave the solar system, unfortunately getting bogged down in bureaucratic and interpersonal battles involving NASA officials. Other subjects addressed are preserving a record of biodiversity in a "Library of Life" and addressing human-caused climate change, leading toward "planetary management." These are all good themes, but Benford's conclusion does not propose an overall approach or a more systematic way of addressing our long-term future.

I found it boring
The concept of public servants trying to communicate messages to a distant future it quite interesting. I found it interesting that even we have lost even the locations of some time capsules even 50 years ago. It certainly had some good ideas.

The main problem I felt was that the writer was trying to write like a science fiction and a philosophical work. It just could not keep my interest up.

However it would make a good project book for someone in a class trying to keep students interested. Which is what I am series thinking of doing.

Interesting Topic, but Benford Skims the Surface
The first third of the book is interesting and enlightening. Benford discusses his work as a consulting scientist on the U.S. government's plans to secure a nuclear waste despository for ten thousand years into the future. There is a lot of unintended humor because it turns out that perhaps the best approach may be to simply leave the site unmarked! But we all know that will never happen because ther's government money to be spent...

The next section describes work he did for a solid diamond marker medallion that was to fly with NASA's Cassini mission to explore Saturn and put a probe on the largest moon, Titan. This section is somewhat silly, and includes a lot of gossip and innuendo about other scientists and the NASA bureacracy. The whole plan falls apart at the last minute, and naturally, the author of _this_ account is not the bad guy. Common sense tells us that casting a 28 mm diameter diamond disk into the methane sea of Titan probably is not the best use of taxpayer dollars.

The last third of the book is largely envrio-paranoia babble from a scientist who should know better. Benford claims we should try to cryogenically preserve thousands or even millions of species so they can be studied in the future. His rationale is they might become extinct before scientists can catalog them. So how do you preserve something that you don't even know about yet? Simple - you go out to the edge of the rain forest (or wherever) and scoop up buckets of junk and - you guessed it - freeze it! Yes, that is the proposal: buckets of mud, sticks, and poop in liquid nitrogen dewars. Never mind the fact that earlier in the book, he comments how our present state of technology and stable civil institutions might be temporary, and we can expect major disruptions in the near future. What happens if some day all of these freezers are "unplugged"?

He redeems himself in the final chapter by admitting that the Human species is at a point where we will soon be able to take charge of our evolution, and that it may be possible to alter global climate through the application of technology and fix problems like excess CO2 production. The afterword is so beautifully written, it makes you pause and wonder, what happened with the rest of the book?

All told, this book presents some valuable ideas and insight into a subject that few people have considered. ... Read more

Book Description

The history of the sciences and the history of the book are complementary, and there has been much recent innovative research in the intersection of these lively fields. This accessibly-written, well-illustrated volume is the first systematic general work to do justice to the fruits of recent scholarship. The twenty specially-commissioned chapters cover the period from the Carolingian renaissance of learning to the mid-nineteenth-century consolidation of science, and examine all aspects of the authorship, production, distribution, and reception of manuscripts, books and journals in the various sciences. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Plenty of books try to explain the origin of the universe, but despite the ascendance of the Big Bang theory, numerous details of that theory remain in flux as new observations are made and new hypotheses formed (and then confirmed or rejected). Timothy Ferris's The Whole Shebang is an up-to-date account of the various mechanisms believed to have contributed to the universe as we now know it, from the Big Bang itself to inflation to superstrings. The Whole Shebang eschews mathematics and formulae and explains cosmological concepts in clear and enticing prose. If you need an update on the state of the universe, you'll find it here. ... Read more

Reviews (56)

Stunning summary of the Cosmos
This is an absolutely stunning summary of the leading edge theories of advanced physics in an easy to read and entertaining format. Although nobody can understand a physics book without at least a modicum of knowledge about the basics, Ferris' work manages to remain easy reading until the end. It addresses everything you always wanted to know about quantum physics, cosmology, space-time, unified theories, superstring theory, etc. More importantly, instead of shoving a long, historical introductory chapter into your face (like most other books in this genre tend to do) it sneaks in the relevant historical facts in the form of small, captivating and humorous personal stories that pepper every chapter.

It is getting outdated, of course, as the years go by, but I still haven't seen anything that would be better while remaining just as comprehensive and readable. It is in roughly the same genre as "The Cosmic Code" or "The Dancing Wu Li Masters", but without any pretentious mumbo-jumbo. Finally, it shows much more respect to religion than other works, which is refreshing.

This book covers the whole....well, you know
Although he taught English and Journalism at the university of California, Berkeley, Timothy Ferris is one of the more knowledgeable fellows on the planet when it comes to cosmology. And this is, in fact, an extraordinary work on cosmology.

As a pre-requisite to Ferris' book, I would recommend "The First Three Minutes" by Stephen Weinberg. Although Weinberg's book is 20 years old (published, 1979), it is nonetheless still a classic in the cosmology field. It is also rather terse - only 150 or so pages in & out.

Ferris brings us up to to date on many of the "happenings" in cosmology since 1979. He discusses such diverse areas of physics as gravity waves, the mystery of singularities, why black holes have no hair and quantum weirdness (although the latter is an understatement...). I actually preferred this book over the much more famous "A Brief History In Time" by the Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking. Hawking's prose is a bit more dry than Ferris' and "Brief / Time" does not go as in depth into many important concepts as this book.

So, for those of you who wonder (like me) how in the world the universe began (or, perhaps, how in the universe the world began), this book is for you. Ferris can't answer all your questions, to be sure. But you can learn an awful lot in the process of engaging what we don't know. Also, in addition to this book I would recommend the PBS home video "The Creation Of The Universe" which is hosted by Ferris. It is the best video cosmological documentary I have ever seen (and I have seen quite a few). It, too, is available at Amazon.com

The Book of the UNIVERSE
Now there is a plenty of the books of the authors of every possible calibers from various schools and predecessors. All of them are good in own way.

However offered book is laborious work of the author giving to generalize and to inform to us in the form the unique summary of a basis cosmology.

And so it is time to begin to understand with this cosmology. Please, take and read this book. It will be useful both schoolboy, and student, and pensioner.

A Brilliant Book on our Universe
This is the most coherent (and in depth) book on the cosmos I have ever read. I have numerous books on "the universe", gravity, astrophysics, physics, etc, but this book is FAR and AWAY the most lucid thing I have ever read on the topic. Generally I like to skip around to certain sections of interest to me but with this book, the WHOLE THING is incredibly fascinating. I also bought the Audio Version (which he reads himself) and it is very well read. If you want to know the fascinating structure and workings of the Universe you live in, THIS IS THE BOOK. I think it is a shame that most people go through their whole lives not knowing how cool this Universe really is. His discussion of Gravity and "the SHAPE of space" is a perfect example. Just read it and you will find out. Things are not always what they seem. An amazing book!

A Great Book.
The Whole Shebang is a marvelous book that expertly explains the working of the universe in a simple and understandable manner, which almost ever reader will comprehend. Whether you're an amateur cosmologist, or just an average Joe (or Joe-Ann) who wants to learn a little about the universe, this book is for you! Ferris does a wonderful job of explaining all the basics of the universe, in a loose and fluid writing style, without overwhelming the reader, making the book a lighter read then some of its counterparts. Does this sound too much like a commercial? Well, if it does, I'm sorry. But this book is by far the best educational literature I have ever read. ... Read more

Book Description

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme brilliance, it captured the imagination of a generation of philosophers. ... Read more

Reviews (26)

Explication of the propositional calculus.
Those not familiar with the proprositional calculus may not like the symbolic logic involved, but it is worth understanding because it is quite simple and makes the rest of the text very easily understandable. Wittgenstein's most important terms like 'elementary proposition' come essentially from viewing natural languages as an imperfect version of the propositional calculus. This idea is quite wrong, in fact even Wittgenstein himself was struck by his own naivety in believing that all language did was put forward propositions capable of truth or falsity. His later view that to understand language you must look at it, seems blindingly obvious, but he was just reacting to the general view of the logical positivist who only saw meaning in propositions capable of truth or falsity, which does not in any way match up with how we actually use language in everyday life. The idea of "pictoral form", a mysterious connection between the object relations of the real world, and the grammatical structure of the sentence is a beautiful and impressive idea, but lacks any real grounding in fact.

Many would disagree, but I say ignore the numbered paragraphs and just read it through, Wittgenstein was just using a technique he learnt from engineering textbooks, and the structure doesn't help understanding. Many people will be frustrated by the lack of argument, and its almost biblical tone, but trust me, anyone familiar with Wittgenstein's life will know that he thought over these problems for a long time.

Philosophical Investigations is a more important work, but shares nearly all the concerns of the Tractacus. Read the section in the Investigations on broomsticks and logical atomism, it will show the bankruptcy and arbitraryness of atomism in linguistic practise.

Logic and Mysticism
I read this book in college and loved it. It's beautiful, but you have to know a bit about symbolic logic to appreciate it. The last few pages are really elegant. He writes of ethics: "the world of an evil man must be different than the world of good man." And of mysticism that "the fact that the world exists, that is the mystical."

Wittgenstein's mysticism can be summed up like this. The word "hornet" connects somehow with the real insect, but, when I try to explain what the connection is, I am left with nonsense--this is the mystic--it is how the world is "this is the mystical."

He writes only a few lines about God, but I think he acomplishes more than most writers on this subject, since, as he points out in his "motto": "All that a man knows can be said in three words."

Word Games?
Word games? Logic games? Logic problems? Word problems? I didn't have much fun reading this. It was far more difficult than the MENSA word puzzle book. I liked Ludwig's other books about baseball much more. He seemed to be able to capture a complex game simply. Here the games are merely complex. Rhetoric will never be the same. Was that clear, or should I not have bothered?

a dead philosophy
I am a bit surprised at the positive reviews of this book. Obviously, it has a strong historical importance and as such it should be recognized. But it is a stupid, dead philosophy, as Wittgenstein himself later realized. Now, don't get me wrong, there are details (like stipulation), perhaps many details, that Wittgenstein held onto, but the whole was thrown away and considered "blind." Thus, when I see reviewers having positive things to say about the big picture (A pun!) of early Wittgenstein, I can't help but think they are very confused or ignorent of the larger whole of Wittgenstein's authorship.
Thus, I will say this is an important book. But it is a stepping stone to the later Wittgenstein which is much better philosophy and (heaven forbid!) even phenomenology. Do not just read this book and think it is right. Please read Wittgenstein's own deconstruction of the Tractatus, I mean the Philosophical Investigations.

unreadable garbage
An example of the bandwagon effect. Russell thought he was really smart, got him published, some other influential people decided to listen, then this nonsensical claptrap becomes a classic. Even Wittgenstein later realized it was garbage. But you can pretend to be smart by reading it. ... Read more

Book Description

This latest book by Elof Carlson (The Unfit)is a first history of classical genetics, the era in which the chromosome theory of heredity was proposed and developed. Highly illustrated and based heavily on early 20th century original sources, the book traces the roots of genetics in breeding analysis and studies of cytology, evolution, and reproductive biology that began in Europe but were synthesized in the United States through new Ph.D. programs and expanded academic funding. Carlson argues that, influenced largely by new technologies and instrumentation, the life sciences progressed though incremental change rather than paradigm shifts, and he describes how molecular biology emerged from the key ideas and model systems of classical genetics. Readable and original, this narrative will interest historians and science educators as well as today's practitioners of genetics. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An Admirable Way to do History of Science
This book is a labor of love by a professional geneticist with a sharp intellect and a mature understanding of society as well as science. The book is beautifully produced, with many diagrams and portraits of the scientists, as well as photographed excerpts from famous papers (although there are no color plates).

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of Carlson's approach is the care with which he presents the evidence for specific genetic principles, and the arguments used by opponents of what are now elementary textbook principles. Appreciating basic genetic principles is much enhanced by realizing the intellectual struggle involved in each piece of the puzzle. For instance, I have read a dozen times that quantitative geneticists rejected Mendelism because they believed in evolution by continuous, incremental change, whereas Mendel's laws appear to support discontinuous, saltationist, change. I always thought this to be a quite silly objection, and that R. A. Fisher's demonstration of the compatibility of the two views was stating the obvious. Carlson suggests a far deeper objection. Following Galton, quantitative geneticists believed in regression to the mean and blending inheritance, both seeming incompatible with Mendelism. Overcoming these objections is quite a sophisticated task.

In another passage, Carlson presents Sewall Wright's reasons for developing his position on gene interaction and environmental effects on natural selection, based on his study of coat color in guinea pigs. Again, he shows that opposition to Mendelian segregation was not just conservative stubbornness, but rather a reaction to the fact that a considerable fraction of inheritance studies did not conform to Mendelian segregation. We now know why, with our understanding of transpositions, gene jumping, and the like.

The glory of this book is simply reading the detailed history of marvelous discoveries in an almost blow-by-blow fashion. But, almost as welcome is Carlson's historical method, which he presents briefly at the end of the book. Science, he says, is the "winning of the facts." I interpret this to mean that truth needs no explanation---it is its own justification. "I have read accounts" Carlson says (p. 208) "...that attempted to explain science in sociological (in-groups versus outsiders), political (Marxism versus capitalism), or historical (depression, war, and ideology) contexts, and I found these either false or extraneous." This viewpoint is such a breath of fresh air after plowing through so many insufferable post-modern treatments of science.

Carlson does have strong and interesting arguments concerning the time and place of scientific discoveries. He notes that genetics was a European stronghold in the Nineteenth century and became an American-led endeavor in the classical period from 1900 to 1930. He attributes this to the scientific freedom offered by the American graduate school, among other things. Hitler and Stalin account for the continued prominence of the American school after 1930, since they induced extremely talented scientists to emigrate to the United States, where they had the freedom to do their research. It is not unreasonable to think that if freedom triumphs in the world, it will be in no small part because good science requires it. ... Read more

Book Description

This book introduces students to optimization theory and its use in economics and allied disciplines.The first of its three parts examines the existence of solutions to optimization problems in Rn, and how these solutions may be identified.The second part explores how solutions to optimization problems change with changes in the underlying parameters, and the last part provides an extensive description of the fundamental principles of finite- and infinite-horizon dynamic programming.A preliminary chapter and three appendices are designed to keep the book mathematically self-contained. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

The title says it all
A first course in Optimization theory - that is what the book is. The target audience is those who are inetersted in the theory of optimization. Some familiarity with Mathematical Analysis and Matrix Algebra would be helpful; however the first chapter lays the mathematical foundation and a careful reading would enable the reader to tackle the rest of the book.

Previous reviews have made a chapter by chapter analysis of the book and hence I will just highlight some of the things I liked about the approach used by the author. Whenever a theorem is stated different examples are given to emphasize the points. For example when stating the Lagrange Theorem and Kuhn-Tucker theorem the author points out when the theorems fail and gives detailed examples to illustrate the ideas. The author often draws from examples in finance to illustrate the practical importance of the theory. The one I liked most was how a cost minimization problem was solved by reducing the solution space to a compact space and then applying the Weierstrass theorem. The author also shows how some of the "cookbook" procedures really work and warns the readers against potential pitfalls in applying such procedures. If you are planning to study optimization theory and are looking for a good entry point into the subject this book is for you.

Good introduction to the field of optimization
This book gives a nice introduction to the theory of optimization from a purely mathematical standpoint. The computational and algorithmic aspects of the subject are not treated, with emphasis instead placed on existencetheorems for various optimization problems. The author does an effective job of detailing the mathematical formalism needed in optimization theory. After a brief review of background mathematics in the first chapter, the author outlines the objectives of optimization theory in Chapter Two. He also gives some examples of optimization problems, such as utility maximization, expenditure minimization, profit maximization, cost minimization, and portfolio choice. All of these examples are extremely important in industrial, logistical, and financial applications. The author is also careful in this chapter to outline his intentions in later chapters, namely, that of finding the existence of solutions to optimization problems, and also in the characterization of the set of optimal points. The existence question is outlined in Chapter Three using only elementary calculus, and the Weierstrass theorem is proved. Necessary conditions for unconstrained optima are examined in the next chapter, again using only elementary calculus and linear algebra. Lagrange multipliers and how they are used in constrained optimization problems are effectively discussed in Chapter 5. To discuss how optimization problems vary with a set of parameters, in particular if they vary continuously with the set of parameters, the author introduces the concept of a corespondence. This is essentially a map that assigns sets to points. His discussion of upper and lower-semicontinuity is very clear and I think one of the best presentations given at this level. He then proves a maximum theorem, showing that parametrized optimization problems can have continuous solutions under certain conditions. A game-theoretic application follows along with statements, but not proofs, of the Kakutani and Brouwer Fixed Point theorems. The author introduces an order relation on the parameter space and discusses parametric monotonicity in the next chapter. Again a game theory application is given along with a statement (but not a proof) of the Tarski Fixed Point theorem. The last two chapters cover dynamic programming and these are the most interesting chapters of the book. It is here that the author makes the connection with more advanced treatments of optimization theory, via Banach spaces and nonlinear functional analysis. With further reading in real analysis and topology, readers will be well on their way to understanding more advanced treatments of optimization theory that use nonlinear functional analysis and differential topology.

Unless you're into theory, this book is NOT for you
I'm a applied mathematician with over 40 quarter hours of theoretical math under my belt, and frankly I feel this book would be rough going for anyone who does not have a rigid math theory background. In other words, if you're not a graduate student or a theoretical practioner in the field of optimization, this is NOT the book for you (most likely). But I also have two other problems with this book.

First, it is touted to have numerious examples of both theory and applications. Theory, as I mentioned above, it has in abundance. But it is very thin on practical applications.

Second, this book has numerious problems at the ends of the chapters WITH NONE OF THEM WORKED OUT! Frankly, I'm not really interested in paying almost $30 for a paperback book that is unfinished.

Perhaps I was expecting much more than what I got after reading the glowing reviews above; and in hindsight, I really should have paid more attention to the title as "Theory" is indeed the operative word. My irritation is not in the book itself, as the author states in his forward that he is writing a book aimed the graduate school set; but is aimed at the reviewers above which led me to think that this text was much wider based than it turned out to be.

Great book and an even greater value
This book was organized and written with perfection. The explanations are remarkable and the "cookbook" procedures for Lagrange and K-T methods were great. I especially admired the fact that the author actually mentioned how these procedures could fail to yield an optimized value. This is worthwhile in today's university mathematics where one is simply taught to plug numbers into formulae and algorithms to get the desired answer. The book also slants towards optimization problems in economic theory as well as other disciplines. Finally, in an age when textbooks can easily run over $100, it was nice to see this book, filled with a wealth of information, so moderately priced.

Excellent book for PhD students in Operations Management
This is an excellent book for anybody interested in non-linear optimization within economics framework. The book is self-contained and includes all the basic theory one needs to know to understand optimization. To my knowledge, this is the only book merging non-linear optimization with game theory and such concepts as supermodularity and parametric monotonicity. ... Read more

Book Description

Giuliano Pancaldi sets us within the cosmopolitan cultures of Enlightenment Europe to tell the story of Alessandro Volta--the brilliant man whose name is forever attached to electromotive force. Providing fascinating details, many previously unknown, Pancaldi depicts Volta as an inventor who used his international network of acquaintances to further his quest to harness the power of electricity. This is the story of a man who sought recognition as a natural philosopher and ended up with an invention that would make an everyday marvel of electric lighting.

Examining the social and scientific contexts in which Volta operated--as well as Europe's reception of his most famous invention--Volta also offers a sustained inquiry into long-term features of science and technology as they developed in the early age of electricity. Pancaldi considers the voltaic cell, or battery, as a case study of Enlightenment notions and their consequences, consequences that would include the emergence of the "scientist" at the expense of the "natural philosopher."

Throughout, Pancaldi highlights the complex intellectual, technological, and social ferment that ultimately led to our industrial societies. In so doing, he suggests that today's supporters and critics of Enlightenment values underestimate the diversity and contingency inherent in science and technology--and may be at odds needlessly.

Both an absorbing biography and a study of scientific and technological creativity, this book offers new insights into the legacies of the Enlightenment while telling the remarkable story of the now-ubiquitous battery.

Book Description

David Rumsey's collection of historical maps is one of the largest and most complete of its kind. Focused for the most part on North and South America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the collection is comprised of more than 150,000 items: maps, atlases, and contextual supporting documents. Unlike similar collections, the delicacy and rarity of which necessitate careful storage and restricted use policies, The Rumsey Collection is available in its entirety on the Web and it is this conjunction of old and new technologies that is the heart of Cartographica Extraordinaire.

The maps selected for Cartographica Extraordinaire tell a hundred distinct, exciting, important, and sometimes controversial stories, along two main paths of inquiry: how did a continental wilderness become a civilization, and how has the development of cartographic science changed the ways we perceive, describe, study, and use that land?Geographic information systems have come, as part of the digital revolution, to dominate the cartography of today, but GIS didn't leap into being out of nowhere; all its processes and capabilities have precursors in historical maps. Old maps can therefore tell us not only the stories of their subject matter, but stories about the nature of mapmaking as well: its exigencies and limitations, trends and developments-its theory and practice and what that tells us about the people we were, are, and will be. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

An outstanding and representative collection
The impressively collaborative work of David Rumsey (President of Cartography Associates, a San Francisco-based digital publishing company, and Director of Luna Imaging, a provider of enterprise software for online image collections) and Edith M. Punt (professional cartographer and recipient of the 1996 National Geographic Award in Cartography), Cartographica Extraordinaire: The Historical Map Transformed is a 160-page, hardcover, coffee-table book printed on archival paper which showcases how technology has literally transformed the restoration, re-creation and reproduction of historical maps. The specific focus is upon maps (and the people who made them) that reflect American history and ranges from a 1736 atlas depicting California as an island, to a Civil War era "bird's-eye" view of military positions on the southeastern seaboard. This is an outstanding and representative collection drawn from the David Rumsey Map Collection and illustrates early American history from a uniquely geographic perspective. With it's informed and informative text, Cartographica Extraordinaire is clearly recommended for inclusion into professional, academic and community library Cartography Studies or American History collections. Indeed, Cartographica Extraordinaire would make an excellent selection for a truly unique Library Memorial Fund acquisition.

Not just extraordinary, it's amazing
At first sight, this is a gorgeous book. It exhibits historical maps made in nineteenth century America, and the reader might expect a reverential approach of the map collector that David Rumsey exemplifies. But David Rumsey is also the person who provides amazing open access to his collection through the highest tech web site. He sees maps not just as curiosities, but as a way to get inside the past. With Edith Punt, they have tied the maps into the social, environmental and technological changes that are shown. They use the most current geographic information systems technology to spark a connection to the current landscape. The old fragile maps come alive. While this book has the format and polish of your average coffee table book, this is a book to read and reread.

Maps: A Fascinating Study
Maps are fascinating and CARTOGRAPHICA EXTRAORDINAIRE takes us back to the beginnings of mapping what we know now as the United States. It reveals such mysteries as how a survey of a piece of land in California is tied to a point on the north shore of the Ohio River. One can look at how the land was settled and mapped in Illinois or examine an early map of Boston and compare it with the transformation by Frederick Olmstead. This is a book for history buffs. ... Read more

Book Description

This book contains 500 problems that range over a wide spectrum ofmathematics and of levels of difficulty. Some are simple mathematical puzzlers while others are serious problems at the Olympiad level. Students of all levels of interest and ability will be entertained by the book. For many problems, more than one solution is supplied so that students can compare the elegance and efficiency of different mathematical approaches. A special mathematical toolchest summarizes the results and techniques needed by competition-level students. Teachers will find the book useful, both for encouraging their students and for their own pleasure. Some of the problems can be used to provide a little spice in the regular curriculum by demonstrating the power of very basic techniques. The problems were first published as a series of problem booklets almost twenty years ago. They have stood the test of time and the demand for them has been steady. Their publication in book form is long overdue. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Maths Challenges from MAA
As are all maths challenges from MAA, the problems in this book take a long time to solve for the average reader. It can be used for polishing up your skills or as extra projects. ... Read more

Book Description

The University of Cambridge's 1702 chair of chemistry is the oldest continuously occupied chair of chemistry in Britain. This book's descriptions of the lives and work of the 1702 chairholders over the past three hundred years paint a vivid picture of chemistry being slowly transformed from alchemy into a major academic discipline. Containing personal memoirs and historical essays by acknowledged experts, this book will engage all readers interested in the pivotal role chemistry has played in the making of the modern world. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (9)

A literary, absorbing work
In Bright Earth, science writer Philip Ball presents a fine guide that examines the practical side of art throughout history. From its gains from technological advancements to cultural influences on art directions, Bright Earth surveys how color is invented, reinvented, and presented. A literary, absorbing work.

Historical review about color pigments
If you have a deep interest in color and how pigments and materials have been developed or discovered this is a book to read. There are only a few illustrations and lots of text, it is not a light book to read cover to cover. It is not a handbook and not a book of facts, its more like a history book.

I value the effort put in the book, but it wasn't exactly what I expected and I won't read it twice.

History of color and pigment!
Great art requires talent, hard work, and a singular vision-and it doesn't hurt to have a chemistry set nearby. So demonstrates prolific science-writer Ball (Stories of the Invisible, p. 910, etc.) in this remarkable examination of color in all its glory: physical, chemical, and cultural. Resolutely nonreductivist, Ball looks closely at the practical side of art throughout history: at the early-19th-century technological advances, for example, that made Impressionist trompes l'oeil possible ("after a half-century of some of the most dramatic innovations in pigment manufacturing that visual art had ever seen, the stage was set for the plot to take a new direction"), and at the range of color choices available to the painters of the early Renaissance. But he is just as concerned with examining the cultural and personal side of art, and his text offers data aplenty on such matters as how the ancient Romans carved up the color spectrum ("there is no Latin word for brown or gray, but this does not imply that the Roman artists did not use brown earth pigments"); how a Pacific islander sees the world with a differently tuned eye from that of, say, a Scandinavian; and how modern visual artists are busily remapping the old, inadequate Newtonian rainbow scale with the aid of digital technology. Though Ball, a chemist, is more inclined toward scientific description than aesthetic judgment, he is quick to point out that although science has always accompanied artistic advances, it is "a mistake to assume that the history of color in art is an accumulation of possibilities proportional to the accumulation of pigments"-and a mistake to overvalue science at the expense of art in general. Ball has devoured whole libraries to turn out this work, and though there are a couple of puzzling silences (Goethe, that great theorist of color and art, isn't much heard from, for instance), Ball's study is an altogether pleasing embarrassment of riches. A welcome addition to any artist's-or art lover's-library.

interesting science, poor art history
If you are a painter, or other artist interested in science you should get this book. This is the only book I have seen that focuses on the history of pigment, especially in relation to painting. And the book starts with a useful overview of the physics and physiology of color, though there are many other books that go into more detail on that subject.

Why isn't this book worth 5 stars? The art historical sections that situate the artists are shallow, trite, and full of clichés. I get the sense that the author researched the artists for this book, and regurgitated some of these notes. Great art history requires the meditation of a lifetime.

I recommend "The Renaissance Artist at Work", by Cole, to dispel the notion that art historians do not care about materials. I recommend "The Nude", by Kenneth Clark, as a book that manages to say something profound in nearly every paragraph. I also recommend buying "The Bright Earth", it is the best book I have found on this topic.

color the old fashioned way
ball's theme is disarmingly simple: that the history of western art can be illuminated by the history of the physical substances used to create color.

ball explains very early that his materialistic approach has often been disparaged by artists, who do not want to be seen as mere craftsmen but as visionaries and poets. his reply is simply that the luxury of buying premade paints is a relatively new phenomenon; before this century artists almost always made their own paints and for that reason understood in great detail the best ways to use them for permanency and color effects. ball describes these uses in great detail, in artists as diverse as titian, cezanne and yves klein, and the insights he provides into painting techniques are fascinating.

trained as a physicist and chemist, ball understands the scientific aspects of color perception and pigment manufacture, and has mastered the basics of how these are used in artworks; better yet, he can describe all these facts clearly and enjoyably, with vivid images and graceful writing. i found a few details that struck me as inaccurate or incorrectly interpreted, but as a whole the book is extremely reliable and informative, a testament to careful research and editing.

ball's book is well worth reading along with john gage's "color and culture" (a book ball quotes with approval), which focuses on the social and intellectual aspects of color in art. ball's title might be "pigment and technique," since he shows that the continual appearance of new pigments opened up new technical problems, and technical possibilities, for artists to work on. this is still a relatively new approach to art history and art interpretation, but it is gaining influence: see for example james elkins's "what painting is" for a free interpretation of the parallels and points of contact between painting and alchemy. ... Read more

Book Description

In Infinity and the Mind, Rudy Rucker leads an excursion to that stretch of the universe he calls the "Mindscape," where he explores infinity in all its forms: potential and actual, mathematical and physical, theological and mundane. Rucker acquaints us with Gödel's rotating universe, in which it is theoretically possible to travel into the past, and explains an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which billions of parallel worlds are produced every microsecond. It is in the realm of infinity, he maintains, that mathematics, science, and logic merge with the fantastic. By closely examining the paradoxes that arise from this merging, we can learn a great deal about the human mind, its powers, and its limitations.

Using cartoons, puzzles, and quotations to enliven his text, Rucker guides us through such topics as the paradoxes of set theory, the possibilities of physical infinities, and the results of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. His personal encounters with Gödel the mathematician and philosopher provide a rare glimpse at genius and reveal what very few mathematicians have dared to admit: the transcendent implications of Platonic realism. ... Read more

Reviews (14)

A passionate introduction to the theme of infinity
The book mentiones : Infinity commenly inspires feelings of awe, futility and fear. Reading of the book makes one agree to it. The book is written for a reader who is philosophically curious and patient in reading. After introducting the various context ( spatial, temporal , physical) where one encounter the issue of infinity, the author explain clearly the debate of potential vs actual infinity. Here author points out about the Greek philosophical tendencies. Chapter two discusses the revolution brought by Cantor's works. He explains the concept using a lot of symbols, diagrams and illustrations. The reader is made to understand the notion of transfinite number. The chapter ends with an extract from his novel White Light which deals with the idea of the chapter. Next chapter discusses the kind of paradoxes one encounter in thinking the theme of infinity within modern mathematical logical framework. Chapter four discusses the implications of Godel's theorems in question of Robot consciousness. He gives details about his personal interactions with Godel. He mentiones about his dream about Godel the day before Godel's death. This is most humanistic chapter. Last chapter discusses the abstract philosophical reflections. There are two well written excursion chapters : one on Cantor's set theory and one on Godel's Incompleteness theorems. Every chapter has well thought puzzles and paradoxes section.

Infinity made simple and understandable
In many ways, infinity is the most abstract concept of all. Many of the advances in understanding how to manipulate infinities had unpleasant consequences. As the legend goes, the first one to announce that there are infinite non-repeating decimals was rewarded by being drowned. Georg Cantor, the first to prove that there are different levels of infinity, faced extreme criticism and ultimately went mad. Fortunately, Rudy Rucker provides a gentle introduction to this concept, one that can be read by most with the only consequence being enlightenment.
The entire range of infinities (what a phrase!) is covered in this book. From the simplest infinity (omega), to the multi-universe theories of quantum theory. All are put forward in a very readable style, although there are times when one must slow down and read very carefully if one is to understand. Rucker's encounters with Kurt Godel is a welcome contrast with the common depiction that he was a dry, humorless man. It is refreshing to hear that he laughed and had a sense of humor.
Many different test scenarios have been put forward to determine if a computer is indeed intelligent. At this time, I would propose that any machine that can understand the concept of infinity must be considered intelligent. Any human wishing to pass that test need only read this book. It should be required reading in all undergraduate mathematics programs.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission.

At the intersection of parallel lines...
Rudy Rucker, son of a cleric and mathematics whiz kid, produced this book on 'Infinity and the Mind' years ago, but reading and re-reading it, I continue to get insights and the chance to wrap my mind around strange concepts.

'This book discusses every kind of infinity: potential and actual, mathematical and physical, theological and mundane. Talking about infinity leads to many fascinating paradoxes. By closely examining these paradoxes we learn a great deal about the human mind, its powers, and its limitations.'

This book was intended to be accessible by those without graduate-level education in mathematics (i.e., most of us) while still being of interest to those even at the highest levels of mathematical expertise.

Even if the goal of infinity is never reached, there is value in the journey. Rucker provides a short overview of the history of 'infinity' thinking; how one thinks about divinity is closely related often, and how one thinks about mathematical and cosmological to-the-point-of-absurdities comes into play here. Quite often infinite thinking becomes circular thinking: Aquinas's Aristotelian thinking demonstrates the circularity in asking if an infinitely powerful God can make an infinitely powerful thing; can he make an unmade thing? (Of course, we must ask the grammatical and logical questions here--does this even make sense?)

Rucker explores physical infinities, spatial infinities, numerical infinities, and more. There are infinites of the large (the universe, and beyond?), infinities of the small (what is the smallest number you can think of, then take half, then take half, then take half...), infinities that are nonetheless limited (the number of divisions of a single glass of water can be infinite, yet never exceed the volume of water in the glass), and finally the Absolute.

'In terms of rational thoughts, the Absolute is unthinkable. There is no non-circular way to reach it from below. Any real knowledge of the Absolute must be mystical, if indeed such a thing as mystical knowledge is possible.'

At the end of each chapter, Rucker provides puzzles and paradoxes to tantalise and confuse.

* Consider a very durable ceiling lamp that has an on-off pull string. Say the string is to be pulled at noon every day, for the rest of time. If the lamp starts out off, will it be on or off after an infinite number of days have passed?

Rucker explores the philosophical points of infinity with wit and care. He explores the ideas behind and implications of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, and leads discussion and excursion into self-referential problems and set theory problems and solutions.

He also discusses, contrary to conventional wisdom, the non-mechanisability of mathematics. We tend to think in our day that mathematics is the one mechanical-prone discipline, unlike poetry or creative arts and more 'human' endeavours. But Rucker discusses the problems of situations which require decision-making and discernment in mathematical choices that no machine can (yet!) make.

* Consider the sentence S: This sentence can never be proved. Show that if S is meaningful, then S is not provable, and that therefore you can see that S must be true. But this constitutes a proof of S. How can the paradox be resolved?

This is a beautifully complex and intriguing book on the edges of mathematics and philosophical thinking, which is nonetheless accessible and intellectually inviting. You'll wonder why math class was never this fun!

a mind-blowing trip to the infinite
What is infinity? How do we train our minds to understand the idea? This one of the hardest questions to answer for non-professional mathematicians, and one that Rucker address superbly - and, believe it or not entertainingly in this excellent book. And once you think you grasped that, how about a higher level infinity? Next one? Infinite series of higher level infinities? Sound very scary, and it is. It takes an amazing capacity to explain these concepts to a (relative) layman, and Rucker has it in abundance. An exhilarating intellectual tour de force, perhaps comparable to climbing mount Everest - infinite number of times, with deep philosophical, and perhaps, religious connections, presented in a light, funny, and yet rigorous manner. The book also provides a history of the concept of the infinite, and interesting people who developed it. A must read for a curious mind.

A perfect book for someone like me
I know very little about any of the subjects discussed in this book, although I do have a degree in philosophy of science, and I liked this book a lot.

I can't believe I made it through 7 years of senior school and 2 years of degree level maths and nobody ever bothered to tell me about infinity, transfinite numbers, set theory and its relationships with, and underpinning of other branches of mathematics in a way I could understand rather than simply regurgitate. Rucker on the other hand manages to do this in 362 pages.

I slso found the stuff about Godel and the impossibility of complete formulisms very useful, not only philosophically, but also just for my own peace of mind. ... Read more

Book Description

How can we identify events due to intelligent causes and distinguish them from events due to undirected natural causes? If we lack a causal theory how can we determine whether an intelligent cause acted? This book presents a reliable method for detecting intelligent causes: the design inference. The design inference uncovers intelligent causes by isolating the key trademark of intelligent causes: specified events of small probability. Design inferences can be found in a range of scientific pursuits from forensic science to research into the origins of life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This challenging and provocative book will be read with particular interest by philosophers of science and religion, other philosophers concerned with epistemology and logic, probability and complexity theorists, and statisticians. ... Read more

Reviews (22)

Best book by a creationist I have ever read
I just finished a two-month reading group consisting of both supporters and critics of Dembski, so I finally feel competent to review this book.

While I am a naturalist and evolutionist, I greatly appreciate the writing of anybody who is intellectually honest and attempts to be rigorous: at least in this book, Dembski shows these traits with flying colors. 'The Design Inference' is Dembski's attempt to formalize valid inferences about design. That is, how can we validly infer, for any event E, that E is the product of intelligent design? Most people make such inferences all the time (how does the average person explain Stonehenge). What is the logical structure of such inferences?

Despite the math, the argument structure is actually quite simple. The way to infer that E is the product of design is to run it through what Dembski calls the 'explanatory filter.' Try to explain event E according to presently known statistical regularities (e.g., Newton's laws). If event E cannot be explained by any such statistical regularity, then it passes through the explanatory filter, and is therefore the product of design.

This argument structure is the first main weakness in Dembski's book. In employing the explanatory filter, TDI elevates an anachronistic fallacy to an imperative. Simply showing that we can't presently explain a phenomenon is not sufficient to show that it can never be explained! In the nineteenth century, the precession of Mercury in its orbit could not be explained in a well-confirmed classical worldview, but to infer design based on that would not be good science. The problems with this kind of reasoning are made clearer when we consider our early ancestors who made poor design arguments about weather patterns and illness that they couldn't explain based on physical principles.

The inferential strategy outlined above sounds rather simple, so where does all the notorious math come in? It comes in as Dembski attempts to quantitatively unpack just how to demonstrate that an event cannot be explained by a statistical regularity. For those who know some statistics, this is essentially a detailed account of how to rationally generate a rejection region in a probability distribution. The formalism emerges because Dembski's account is idiosyncratic, as he tries to show that you can generate a rejection region even *after* you have already observed the event. Most scientists would balk at this, as it would allow you to retroactively put a rejection region over the event, which to put it simply, is cheating (imagine drawing a bull's-eye around a randomly shot arrow and saying that you hit the bull's-eye by skill).

Dembski claims that it is perfectly appropriate to retroactively generate rejection regions if it would have been *possible* to specify the region before the event E actually occurred. For example, say you see someone shoot an arrow that hits a tree at a seemingly random location where there happens to be a worm. Later, however, you find out and that the person was actually hunting worms and was wearing infrared worm-hunting goggles. In such a case, you would rightly conclude that the worm was hit because of skill rather than blind luck. More importantly, it would have been possible to predict that the arrow would land on tree-worms even if you hadn't seen it happen.

While many people in our discussion group disagreed, I think this is a reasonable way to retroactively reject a chance-based explanation. However, I do *not* think that Dembski is simply describing the rejection of a hypothesis. Rather, he is describing the replacement of one hypothesis with a more reasonable alternative (in this example, the alternative to chance is that the person is a skilled worm-hunter). This leads to what I think is the second main weakness in *The Design Inference*: the engine driving the inference is not a positive theory of design, but simply the elimination of other theories. The problem is that this does not seem to conform to how people do (or should) perform design inferences. That is, people don't run through an explanatory filter, eliminating all possible statistical explanations of something, and then end up with 'design' as the last node in an explanatory filter (or explanatory sink, as I like to call it). Rather, people have a *positive theory* of intelligent agents (i.e., things with desires, beliefs, and certain capacities) and they apply this theory (or network of theories) to explain events in the world. Design inferences are not different in kind from explanations of physical, biological, social, or psychological phenomena. It is the development of such a theory and its predictions which should be the focus for Dembski.

A final note: to those interested in the debate about creationism and evolution, caveat emptor. This book contains very little direct discussion of that issue. Rather, it does what should have been done long ago: tries to outline the inferential strategy people should be employing in this debate.

Despite the two main problems outlined above, I still recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in how we make inferences about design, in particular those interested in the creation-evolution debate. While the book does no damage whatsoever to the evolutionist (partly because, as mentioned above, it does not directly address that debate) it at least makes for stimulating, thought-provoking reading. Most importantly, it will direct the creationists to be more rigorous in their arguments about design.

Book destined to endure
Depsite Eli Chiprout's critical review of The Design Inference, readers can be assured that Dembski stands by his calculation and is prepared to defend it. Chiprout's chief objection seems to be that Dembski's conditional independence condition founders when human agents get into the act. Chiprout may register his complaint, but we should all note that this book and the theories it puts forth have been thoroughly vetted: it was Dembski's doctoral dissertation, it went through a grueling review process with Cambridge University Press, and the author sent preprints to probably fifty or so scholars and academics for comment. No one, and I mean **NO ONE**, corrected Dembski on what Chiprout suggests is an obvious oversight. Long after the dust of criticism settles, The Design Inference will surely stand as an important and enduring advancement in our understanding of the theory of Intellgent Design.

Consistent inconsistency
This book has been highly aclaimed by Dembski's cohorts as a revolutionary breakthrough on a par with the work by Newton. It is saturated with mathematical symbols creating an impression of inordinate sophistication. However, an elementary analysis of Dembski's opus reveals that whereas he indeed is well versed in many fields of knowledge and is a man of many talents, his book actually is full of inconsistencies. His treatment of probability makes no sense whatsoever. For example, his alleged definitions of probability and likelihood are pure tautology. According to his definition, whatever has a larger likelihood is more likely to occur. True. Also whatever is larger has a larger size, but does such a platitude require a special scientifically sounding definition? The same relates to his quasy-defini