Denying Science – John Grant ****

This is a cracking book, a really excellent exposé of the extent to which science is under threat from multiple directions. John Grant dissects the anti-science efforts of religious extremists, big companies, legislators and more in a whole range of fields from evolution to climate change.

The book comes in a long tradition of attempts to support rational thinking in a sea of hogwash. I think, for instance, of Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things and Carl Sagan’s classic The Demon Haunted World. But Grant’s book benefits from being up-to-date and particularly politically aware, emphasising those that actively deny science, rather than concentrating solely on the scientific nonsense of many silly beliefs.

The book takes in complementary medicine, the anti-vaccine brigade (including AIDS/HIV deniers), self help books (yes, really), and has lots on evolution and climate change. Although it can sometimes be a little heavy going in the sheer volume of examples that Grant uses (he might have concentrated on fewer to better effect), it is surprisingly lightly and entertainingly written and really brings home the sheer bonkers nature of some of the opposition to science, and the serious political issues involved, often, though not entirely from religious groups and the US right.

In a way this kind of book is always going to be preaching to the converted. I suspect it will not make a single anti-vaxxer or climate change denier change their views. In fact they won’t read it. Instead it will be read by those who feel that science is under threat – and they are certainly right to be concerned. If you have any feeling for the importance of science to human civilization, then this is an important book to have on your shelves. There is nothing better than knowing what the opposition is likely to throw at you to be better able to defend what is important. But be prepared to throw your hands in the air in horror at the stupidity of a worryingly large proportion of humanity.

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Review by Brian Clegg

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The World According to Physics - Jim Al-Khalili *****

There is a temptation on seeing this book to think it's another one of those physics titles that is thin on content, so they put it in an odd format small hardback and hope to win over those who don't usually buy science books. But that couldn't be further from the truth. In Jim Al-Khalili's The World According to Physics, we've got the best beginners' overview of what physics is all about that I've ever had the pleasure to read.

The language is straightforward and approachable. Rather than take the more common historical approach that builds up physics the way it was discovered, Al-Khalili starts with the 'three pillars' of physics: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. In simple language with never an equation nor even a diagram in sight, the book lays out what physics is all about, what it has achieved and what it still needs to do.

That bit about no diagrams is an important indicator of how approachable the text is. Personally, I'm no…

Until the End of Time: Brian Greene ***

Things start well with this latest title from Brian Greene: after a bit of introductory woffle we get into an interesting introduction to entropy. As always with Greene's writing, this is readable, chatty and full of little side facts and stories. Unfortunately, for me, the book then suffers something of an increase in entropy itself as on the whole it then veers more into philosophy and the soft sciences than Greene's usual physics and cosmology.

So, we get chapters on consciousness, language, belief and religion, instinct and creativity, duration and impermanence, the ends of time and, most cringe-making as a title, 'the nobility of being'. Unlike the dazzling scientific presentation I expect, this mostly comes across as fairly shallow amateur philosophising.

Of course it's perfectly possible to write good science books on, say, consciousness or language - but though Greene touches on the science, there far too much that's more hand-waving. And good though he i…

Jim Al-Khalili - Four Way Interview

Jim Al-Khalili hosts The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4 and has presented numerous BBC television documentaries. He is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Chair in the Public Engagement in Science at the University of Surrey, a New York Times bestselling author, and a fellow of the Royal Society. He is the author of numerous books, including Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed; The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance; and Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology. The paperback of his novel Sunfall is published in March 2020 by Transworld. His latest book is The World According to Physics.

Why physics?

I fell in love with physics when I was 13 or 14, when I realised not only that I was pretty good at it at school – basically common sense and puzzle solving – but because it was the subject that answered the big questions I had started contemplating, like whether the stars in the night sky went on for ever, what they were ma…

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