Skip to main content

The Magick of Matter - Felix Flicker ****

This is a book about condensed matter physics, surely a particularly boring-sounding name for one of the most interesting parts of the subject. It's about the physics of things we encounter. When you think about it, it's quite odd that most popular physics books are about things like quantum physics and cosmology and particle physics that don't deal with things we can put our hands on or see. Of course quantum physics impacts lots of everyday objects through electronics etc., but it's still driven by particles we can't see or experience in a normal sense.

Felix Flicker introduces us to two key aspects of the physics of tangible stuff - emergence and chaos (though in practice, chaos only gets a passing mention). Because, as he points out, the problem with purely looking at the particle level is that stuff really is the more than the sum of its parts. The chaos and uncertainty part was handled excellently in Tim Palmer's recent The Primacy of Doubt, but this book works very much alongside that by focussing more on emergence, rather them competing in any way. 

We start off on the states of matter and, somewhat unexpectedly, magnetism, with Flicker making the kind of statement that needs a lot more unpacking than it gets 'A magnet does everything you'd expect a state of matter to do.' we then move on to phase transitions and so on. Flicker keeps things interest by leaping about and pulling in unexpected little side illustrations and examples, such as the way that a field of bleating virtual sheep that can influence its neighbours' colour.

We then get onto crystals and the special characteristics of the crystalline state - something that extends far beyond our typical association with shiny transparent things to take in metals and polarising materials, lattices and symmetry. A section on thermodynamics seems to me to be cheating a bit - because quite a lot of what's covered is about interactions at an atomic or molecular scale, though you can see that there's an element of emergence involved. I felt the same to a degree about the next chapter on quantum physics. But we do then get into more dramatically emergent stuff with superconductors, Josephson junctions and the like. With the exception of the aspect I'm about to moan about, this is all well-handled and consistently engaging. It combines fascinating facts with real insights into what is in some cases relatively unfamiliar aspects of physics.

So far so good, but there was one aspect of this book that several times inclined me to throw it against the wall - and the four stars are despite, rather than thanks to this. Flicker has decided to try to make condensed matter physics more approachable by framing it as having parallels with magic. (Thankfully, in the text, as opposed to the title, we largely avoid that twee spelling 'Magick'.) This means, for example, that the chapters begin with some frankly pretty unreadable lowest-common-denominator swords-and-sorcery-without-the-swords fantasy writing. It's (thankfully) possible to skip over these and not lose anything, but unfortunately Flicker also regularly brings magic and woo in to give us reference points as he talks about physics. (He seriously includes the sound of one hand clapping.) But the whole point of the book should be that this topic doesn't need gimmicks. It's genuinely interesting in its own right. Why, oh why?

I'm recommending the book despite, rather than because of its magical flummery. This is a really interesting topic. But you may have to restrain that book throwing urge too.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here
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