Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules [Paperback]

Ball demonstrates just how really complex the molecular world is, and how the technology is becoming further removed from our everyday world, while the effect on our world grows enormously. The text does not consist of "stories" as such, but rather a broad survey of molecular science, including what's happening in exciting new fields such as molecular electronics, and how new uses for molecular knowledge is transforming older fields such as paleontology, computer science, information theory, forensics, etc. Ball provides some material on cellular construction and metabolism, augmented with drawings from his own hand. He gives us a feel for the invisible, tactile reality of molecular interactions, in which surface structure is paramount. He ends the book with a brief look at the prospects for molecular and DNA computers.

There is unfortunately a kind of veil-like quality thrown between the molecular world and the reader's perception of that world by the very fact of its invisibility that I don't think Ball's text overcomes. It is curious, but it is not a question of readability so much as a question of how to present these very complex structures and ideas in a way that the reader can absorb in some concrete fashion. Ball begins with some dialogue from a fiction set in a Dublin pub about "mollycules"; however this does not help. Indeed I could not see the point of the exchange. At any rate Ball abandons it after the first few pages.

The exposition following that, about what molecules are and how they differ technically from atoms, was one of the strengths of the book. However much of the rest of the book is like a first year survey course of various topics in molecular science, a very diverse subject, but without any insistence on the mastery of fundamentals. This is good, I suppose, and Ball's intent, but since I know little about chemistry, I was left not really appreciating a lot of the text. I express this as more a failing on my part than a criticism of Ball's efforts, and to warn the reader that some serious interactive and imaginative work will be required! Ball does indeed go to great lengths to make the visible real, not only with his drawings, but with "photos" from the "scanning tunnelling microscope" while using other "representations" to make the technically invisible, "visible."

One thing that I felt very strongly in reading this book was the sense of frustration that molecular engineers and others in the world of nano technology must feel when dealing with objects so very, very small. I had the sense that somebody was crying out, "My world for a pair of molecular tweezers!" I suspect when they get those tweezers, our world is going to change enormously.

This book trys, as the author stated, to give chemistry a better overall picture, but the boundries are becouming blurred, even more so when you explain molecular organic chemistry. Now, reading this book, doesn't require a degree in any of these disciplines, but a good grasp of scientific principles helps.

The narrative is easily read and is not difficult to read as the author relates to the reader what is happening in industry today. As more and more of the interworkings are understood in molecular chemistry, mankind should be reaping the benefits, making our lives easiler, and making better products. What I fould to be the most intriguing is a molecular chemical computer more on the order of the human brain.

Life in the next one hundred years will be very different than life was in the last one hundred years and mankind harnessing the molecules of life will be on the forefront. Nanothechnology is another field addressed in the book. As the author makes a good point, if we can find the tools to manipulate this technology, we pretty much can control everything.

All of the subjects within this book are invisible, but with tunneling microscopy, electron microscope, and other tool of the trade, making what was once unseen, now visible. Along with the authors hand drawn art illustrates the point quite well at times. I found the book readable with the caveat... you must have some science orientation.

I downrated this book because it doesn't really do what it says it is going to do. It purports to be about chemistry, and it has blurbs written by four Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry. The book claims it wants to restore chemistry to its rightful position among the natural sciences, having been relegated to a lowly position by New Age environmentalist non-think. However, the book spends most of its time on biochemistry, cell biology, and other biological topics! Phillip Ball does not really address his challenge, because so little of the book is about the chemistry of chemists (molecular engineers?) as opposed to biologists.

I wish Ball would write another book--this one really about chemistry. There's a great story to tell.