Galileo's Finger : The Ten Great Ideas of Science
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Amazon.co.uk Review
These days we have this worryingly facile expectation that everything can be easily explained in 20 seconds or 20 words. Many things, especially those in philosophy and science are not easily explained but are well worth the effort required to understand them. In Galileo's Finger: the Ten Great Ideas of Science, Peter Atkins gives those of us who are not specialist scientists a great opportunity to get to grips with some of the most interesting, important and generally complex scientific concepts which have emerged over the last 500 years or more since modern science began its renaissance. Galileo's Finger covers topics that impact our everyday lives such as evolution by natural selection, inheritance encoded in DNA, the conservation of energy, entropy, the atomic structure of matter, quantum theory, the idea of the expanding universe, spacetime and mathematical reasoning. No doubt some will be disappointed that their favourite concept is not included in Atkins' top ten but as Peter Atkins explains, he focuses on ideas rather than applications; his idea has been to identify the ideas that illuminate and, in most cases, provide the foundation for technological advance, concept-driven rather than tool-driven science. There are diagrams and some formulae but anyone who can text a message on a mobile phone or negotiate the complexities of the English language should get a pretty good idea of these concepts from Galileo's Finger. As with so many things in life, motivation is half the battle. Peter Atkins is very well qualified to write with authority about such a range of topics as he is Professor of Chemistry in the University of Oxford. And because he has written several widely used textbooks on the subject he knows how to explain clearly and engagingly without getting caught up in often misleading analogies as some popular science writers do. It needs confidence in your own grasp of a subject to write straightforwardly about it as Peter Atkins does. For anyone who has always wanted to try and get to grips with some proper understanding of entropy or all those links between DNA, proteins, amino acids, RNA or PCR, here is your chance, but do not expect a quick fix. --Douglas Palmer
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"An accessible and informative introduction to Western scientific thought."--Science News
"For the uninitiated, this is remedial education that is pleasurable rather than punishing."--Booklist
"The Nobel Prize for Literature has never been won by a scientist. It is high time it happened, and Peter Atkins would be my candidate. He is not a popularizer of science in the ordinary sense.... He is not afraid to lead us toward the far horizons of scientific understanding but, rather than oversimplify and trivialise, he uses his powerful mastery of the English language to open our eyes to the poetry of deep science.... Atkins's literate prose leaves us inspired, fulfilled, enriched, and properly alive."--Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene and Unweaving the Rainbow
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Panoramic view of modern science,
By
This review is from: Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science (Paperback)
This captivating book deals with the ability of the scientific method to explain the wondrous nature of the universe. The author's elegant style, clear explanations and understated humour ensure an engaging read. Atkins has chosen 10 simple concepts of great import that manifest into a giant tree of application. With its patient explanations, it is an excellent guide for the lay reader to become literate in modern sciene. The major insights of modern science discussed here are evolution, DNA, energy, entropy, atoms, symmetry, quanta, cosmology, spacetime and arithmetic. The book includes black and white photographs and illustrations, a bibliography arranged by chapter and an index. Galileo's Finger is the perfect guide for those who wish to understand science more clearly.
33 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Grand Tour of the conceptual landscapes of science,
This review is from: Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science (Hardcover)
De Rerum Natura badly needed updating. And Atkins's masterly survey of the great ideas of science contains echoes of Lucretius's classic work in its breadth, ambition, confidence, and clarity of exposition (also, occasionally, in the same imperiousness of tone - my one small complaint). But the similarities stop there. The ideas represented in this modern, scientific summary of the nature of things have been tested, sharpened, honed by experiment. Experiment, and generalization and abstraction, the powerful moulding agents of science's conceptual landscapes, form the underlying themes of this book. They are perhaps better epitomized by Galileo's inclined plane than his finger (it would not have made a catchy title). While Atkins's earlier work, Creation, had a rarefied elegance, in Galileo's Finger he deploys the remarkable gift for explanation that has made his textbooks so hugely successful. That makes Galileo's Finger a wonderfully accessible handbook of the key ideas of modern science. But to describe it in these terms alone would be to miss its spirit and driving force, which can be distilled into one short statement: from supreme simplicity does complexity arise. This book is about the handful of simple but intensely powerful insights that lie at the heart of our whole modern understanding of the world. Their reach is breathtaking. Packed into this book are evolution, quantum theory, thermodynamics (never underestimate the significance of thermodynamics), the conservation laws and the deep symmetries of which they are a manifestation, string theory, number theory, spacetime. The journey takes us through landscapes at vastly different scales, and increasing levels of abstraction, right into science's mathematical soul. There are highly complex ideas here - too complex for the non-specialist to confront directly. But when viewed, like the Pleiades, surreptitiously from the side, via analogies and judicious simplifications, their basic forms can be grasped, and their significance and implications appreciated. Spreading light over such wide-ranging landscapes is no mean feat. And Atkins is not only a reliable and authoritative guide. He displays an Epicurean fearlessness in confronting the vertiginous, sometimes bleak, vistas that open up before us that is exhilarating. The result is a book that offers an astonishingly rich feast of knowledge and leaves us inspired and wanting more. Read it if your background is science. Read it, even more, if it is not.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Glimpses of wonderment,
By
This review is from: Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science (Paperback)
I can only surmise that the bulk of reviewers of this wonderful book are ersatz intellectuals - Galileo's Finger counts as one of the most exciting, lively and enlightening popular science books I have come across. Atkins writes with a fizz, vim and clarity that beguile you into complex spaces where startling ideas and deep insight ballet within your reach. The reviewer below is undoubtedly right - you damn well do need to be a bright student with an interest in science to appreciate this book. Go figure.
If you tick the boxes, buy it. Only Pinker rivals Atkins in my view for acuity and penetration of the reserves of earthly knowledge.
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