The Magic of Reality: how we know what's really true, by Richard Dawkins
This book really left me in a tizzy. On one hand, it's an excellent (and I do mean excellent) primer on the scientific method and how it's used to know things (altho there are things he acknowledges skipping because he's not an expert on those), and on the other hand it's a primer in the most condescending sense of the word. I'm not sure I've ever felt more talked down to by a book in my life -- it reads like it was written for 3rd graders, or not very bright 5th graders. Several times while reading it I checked thru the early chapters to see if there was any mention I missed of it being written specifically for kids (and he's written for kids before), but nothing. It seems to be for general consumption, which irritates me even tho I realize I probably wouldn't have understood as well anything written at a higher level. So you can see where my tizzy comes in.
Altho most chapters start off with various myths pertaining to the chapter's subject, they buckle down quickly to the nitty gritty of science in the emergence of humans, the diversity of life, cellular biolgy, the seasons, planets, stars and the vastness of the universe, etc. One of my favorite subjects was the chapter on rainbows which dealt, of course, with light:
When a beam of light travels through air and hits glass, it gets bent. The bending is called refraction. Refraction doesn't have to be caused by glass: water does the trick too, and that will be important when we come back to the rainbow. It is refraction that makes an oar look bent when you stick it in the river. But now here's the point. The angle at which light bends is slightly different depending on what colour the light is. Red light bends at a shallower angle than blue light. So if white light really is a mixture of coloured lights, as Newton guessed, what's going to happen when you bend white light through a prism? The blue light is going to bend further than the red light, so they will be separated from each other when they emerge from the other side of the prism. And the yellow and green lights will come out in between. The result is Newton's specturm: all the colours of the rainbow, arranged in the correct rainbow order -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.
And so on. I think I finally understand infrared and ultraviolet, and how sunlight going thru moving rain creates a static rainbow, I just wish he hadn't made me feel like such an idiot while explaining it to me. Carl Sagan never made me feel like an idiot, Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't. But enough of my whining and sniveling.
The first chapter and final two chapters are more philosophical in nature since they discuss the difference between reality and magic, why bad things happen and what miracles are. I'll skip to the end on the bad things question: bad things happen because things happen, we just tend to remember the bad ones more because wariness is a useful survival trait (remembering bad things from the past helps us avoid them in the future). As for the nature of reality and miracles, Dawkins relies on evidence and probability -- and really, science not being faith, what else is there to rely on?
He ends the book with this paragraph:
Miracles, magic and myths -- they can be fun, and we have had fun with them throughout this book. Everybody likes a good story, and I hope you enjoyed the myths with which I began most of my chapters. But even more I hope that, in every chapter, you enjoyed the science that came after the myths. I hope you agree that the truth has a magic of its own. The truth is more magical -- in the best and most exciting sense of the word -- than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.
To this I could not possibly agree more.
Reading next: Shakespeare Saved my Life: ten years in solitary with the Bard, by Laura Bates. A memoir about Shakespeare professor Bates' program to teach Shakespeare in the solitary confinement section of a super-max prison, and the convicted murderer with whom she developed a lifelong friendship.
Altho most chapters start off with various myths pertaining to the chapter's subject, they buckle down quickly to the nitty gritty of science in the emergence of humans, the diversity of life, cellular biolgy, the seasons, planets, stars and the vastness of the universe, etc. One of my favorite subjects was the chapter on rainbows which dealt, of course, with light:
When a beam of light travels through air and hits glass, it gets bent. The bending is called refraction. Refraction doesn't have to be caused by glass: water does the trick too, and that will be important when we come back to the rainbow. It is refraction that makes an oar look bent when you stick it in the river. But now here's the point. The angle at which light bends is slightly different depending on what colour the light is. Red light bends at a shallower angle than blue light. So if white light really is a mixture of coloured lights, as Newton guessed, what's going to happen when you bend white light through a prism? The blue light is going to bend further than the red light, so they will be separated from each other when they emerge from the other side of the prism. And the yellow and green lights will come out in between. The result is Newton's specturm: all the colours of the rainbow, arranged in the correct rainbow order -- red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.
And so on. I think I finally understand infrared and ultraviolet, and how sunlight going thru moving rain creates a static rainbow, I just wish he hadn't made me feel like such an idiot while explaining it to me. Carl Sagan never made me feel like an idiot, Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't. But enough of my whining and sniveling.
The first chapter and final two chapters are more philosophical in nature since they discuss the difference between reality and magic, why bad things happen and what miracles are. I'll skip to the end on the bad things question: bad things happen because things happen, we just tend to remember the bad ones more because wariness is a useful survival trait (remembering bad things from the past helps us avoid them in the future). As for the nature of reality and miracles, Dawkins relies on evidence and probability -- and really, science not being faith, what else is there to rely on?
He ends the book with this paragraph:
Miracles, magic and myths -- they can be fun, and we have had fun with them throughout this book. Everybody likes a good story, and I hope you enjoyed the myths with which I began most of my chapters. But even more I hope that, in every chapter, you enjoyed the science that came after the myths. I hope you agree that the truth has a magic of its own. The truth is more magical -- in the best and most exciting sense of the word -- than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.
To this I could not possibly agree more.
Reading next: Shakespeare Saved my Life: ten years in solitary with the Bard, by Laura Bates. A memoir about Shakespeare professor Bates' program to teach Shakespeare in the solitary confinement section of a super-max prison, and the convicted murderer with whom she developed a lifelong friendship.