The Electric Life of Michael Faraday

The Electric Life of Michael Faraday – Alan Hirshfeld ****

This book is a fascinating look at the scientific life of Michael Faraday, the man whose major discoveries made possible electrical generators and transformers. Interestingly Faraday had no formal scientific training yet became one of the all-time great experimentalists. Not only was he an accomplished scientist, but from Alan Hirshfeld’s description, he was an amazing man as well. He had the foresight to know that future generations might prove his scientific work incorrect. Although this did not really happen, it demonstrated his great belief in the scientific method. He was indeed the ultimate experimental physicist and he truly cared for the accuracy of data. Although he was highly religious, he was able to separate his scientific self from his religious self and did not allow his beliefs to taint his scientific conclusions.

The book is titled The Electric Life of Michael Faraday but Hirshfeld is very selective when it comes to describing Faraday’s life. He does a very credible job of communicating his scientific work, but there are large gaps in Faraday’s personal story. His marriage was mentioned only in passing. I can’t help but feel that my knowledge of Faraday is cursory, that there is a lot missing. Hirshfeld’s writing style was comfortable; the story moves along at a good clip and is very compelling reading.

Hirshfeld does an admirable job of covering Faraday’s relationship with prominent British chemist Humphrey Davy and thoroughly explains the resistance (no pun intended) Faraday faced to his ideas because he had no formal education and was unable to couch his discoveries in mathematical terms. This was later done by James Clerk Maxwell, as explained in The Man Who Changed Everything: The Life of James Clerk Maxwell by Basil Mahon. I read these two books consecutively and it gave a great overview of 19th century British physics. I recommend that anyone interested in the history of science read both of these books and in historical order (Faraday first, then Maxwell).

Hardback:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Stephen Goldberg

Comments

The Laws of Thought - Tom Griffiths *****

In giving us a history of attempts to explain our thinking abilities, Tom Griffiths demonstrates an excellent ability to pitch information just right for the informed general reader. We begin with Aristotelian logic and the way Boole and others transformed it into a kind of arithmetic before a first introduction of computing and theories of language. Griffiths covers a surprising amount of ground - we don't just get, for instance, the obvious figures of Turing, von Neumann and Shannon, but the interaction between the computing pioneers and those concerned with trying to understand the way we think - for example in the work of Jerome Bruner, of whom I confess I'd never heard. This would prove to be the case with a whole host of people who have made interesting contributions to the understanding of human thought processes. Sometimes their theories were contradictory - this isn't an easy field to successfully observe - but always they were interesting. But for me, at least, ...

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...

Einstein's Fridge - Paul Sen ****

In Einstein's Fridge (interesting factoid: this is at least the third popular science book to be named after Einstein's not particularly exciting refrigerator), Paul Sen has taken on a scary challenge. As Jim Al-Khalili made clear in his excellent The World According to Physics , our physical understanding of reality rests on three pillars: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. But there is no doubt that the third of these, the topic of Sen's book, is a hard sell. While it's true that these are the three pillars of physics, from the point of view of making interesting popular science, the first two might be considered pillars of gold and platinum, while the third is a pillar of salt. Relativity and quantum theory are very much of the twentieth century. They are exciting and sometimes downright weird and wonderful. Thermodynamics, by contrast, has a very Victorian feel and, well, is uninspiring. Luckily, though, thermodynamics is important enough, lying behind ...

Search This Blog