Skip to main content

Seven Pillars of Science - John Gribbin ****

I was highly sceptical of the very short hardback science book form when Carlo Rovelli started the trend with his woffly Seven Brief Lessons, however, I've been proved wrong - the last couple of years we have seen a string of books that pack bags of science in a digestible form into a small space. John Gribbin has already proved himself a master of this approach with his Six Impossible Things, and he's done it again with Seven Pillars.

The title echoes that of T. E. Lawrence's feels-even-longer-than-it-is Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but Gribbin's book is that volume's antithesis - light, to the point and hugely informative. Strictly speaking, perhaps this book should have been titled Seven Pillars of Life, as its linking thread is seven scientific occurrences needed for life to exist. As Gribbin makes it clear, these were all ideas that when first put forward were considered unlikely contenders, but now have mostly become mainstream.

The seven ideas span the nature of atoms, what stars are and how they work, the chemical nature of life, the existence of organic molecules in abundance in the galaxy, the resonant surprise that leads to the relatively abundant formation of carbon, the genetic code and the nature of hydrogen bonding. Each of these contributes to the existence of life, and each provides a fascinating story in the history of science. Some of these stories are more widely known than others, but even where they are familiar, Gribbin brings in small and delightful insights that are less familiar to the reader of popular science. It's also the case that Gribbin provides particularly clear insights into what can be relatively technical topics, for example in describing Fred Hoyle's contribution to our understanding of the way that stars created the elements (and rightly pointing out how much Hoyle should have had a Nobel Prize for his efforts).

Gribbin bookends the story with thoughts on how relatively unique the intelligent life on Earth might be in the galaxy. In his opening prologue he introduces Giordano Bruno and his idea of multiple worlds inhabited by intelligent life, teasing us with the prospect that there may be many such planets out there... only to rein this concept in at the end of the book, in the face of the narrow squeaks life on Earth has gone through to end up with intelligent lifeforms, making it seem more of an unlikely occurrence.

That approach is fun, but does give me my only slight moan about the book, which is that Bruno is given too much credit. Gribbin does not fall into the trap of some science writers of setting Bruno up as a saint, martyred for his scientific genius. However, he does tell us that Bruno was the first to identify the stars as other suns with their own inhabited systems - but Bruno seems to have taken this from Nicholas of Cusa, who lived over 100 years earlier. Similarly, though Gribbin recognises that the main heresy charges Bruno faced were purely theological, he tells us that 'speculating about the plurality of worlds' was one of the charges, where the actual point at issue was 'a plurality of worlds and their eternity', the second part being the important bit as it challenged the idea of the creation.

This is a very minor issue though, and has no impact on the effectiveness of the book as whole. It packs in the science, tells an intriguing story and is beautifully packaged. (In fact, for the price differential, it's well worth going for the hardback as this is a lovely book to hold and read.) Deserves to do very well indeed.

Hardback:

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more