Middle World – Mark Haw ****

This is a classic case of judging a book by its cover. I have been putting off reviewing this book for ages, because, frankly it looks very dull and the title, sounding like a compromise between Tolkein and Middle England, is equally uninspiring. I should have followed the old adage, and not been too influenced by the cover, because it’s an excellent read.

In part it’s the subject. Mark Haw starts with Brownian motion and goes on to explore the nanoscale world of (mostly natural) objects too big to be quantum particles, but too small to be everyday macro world – they tend to be constantly in motion, buffeted around by the atoms that are hitting them, always in a random dance.

The two most interesting parts for me were getting some information about Robert Brown, who I’d come across but hadn’t really absorbed any details about, and the remarkable biological machines on this scale that make muscles work, do jobs in cells and much more. The way these make use of the random walk of the ‘middle world’ rather than fighting it is fascinating.

Mark Haw writes in a very approachable fashion – certainly without any of the problems many scientists writing on their topic have. If this book has any faults it’s that it is too short – very rarely a complaint from me, but it’s true here – and that he can try just a bit too hard to be a bit of lad and in touch, meaning that just occasionally we get the sort of sweeping generalization in a biographical/historical statement that’s typical of a cheap TV documentary – but that apart it’s excellent. It might be too late to recommend, but I hope it’s not – go for it, it’s excellent!

Hardback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune ) underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...

The AI Paradox - Virginia Dignum ****

This is a really important book in the way that Virginia Dignum highlights various ways we can misunderstand AI and its abilities using a series of paradoxes. However, I need to say up front that I'm giving it four stars for the ideas: unfortunately the writing is not great. It reads more like a government report than anything vaguely readable - it really should have co-authored with a professional writer to make it accessible. Even so, I'm recommending it: like some government reports it's significant enough to make it necessary to wade through the bureaucrat speak. Why paradoxes? Dignum identifies two ways we can think about paradoxes (oddly I wrote about paradoxes recently , but with three definitions): a logical paradox such as 'this statement is false', or a paradoxical truth such as 'less is more' - the second of which seems a better to fit to the use here. We are then presented with eight paradoxes, each of which gives some insights into aspects of t...

Search This Blog