Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time (Science) [Hardcover]

This book is a wonderful adventure that takes you to the edge of forefront thinking and beyond, with all the historical background you need to make sense of it all. (I don't know what that negative reviewer was thinking: The New York Times was so inspired by this book it ran an entire essay based on this book in its "Arts and Ideas" section.) Siegfried is the best. Honest, clear, interesting, original. Everything you ever wanted to know about matters that are strange, and probably even true. Quark stars? Mirror matter? A universe shaped like a donut? How about multiple universes? Multiple dimensions? This isn't science fiction, folks. Just science writing at its best. The perfect holiday gift for everyone you know who's curious about the unreasonably fantastic universe we live in.

"Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time" Tom Siegfried

"Strange Matters" is a sweeping survey of some recent developments in theoretical physics. It is divided into three groups of chapters, entitled "Strange Matter," "Strange Frontiers," and "Strange Ideas." Each chapter connects a recent development with an earlier theoriest, for example "From Einstein's Greatest Mistake to the Universe's Accelerating Expansion."

This book is apparently intended for a general reader with no special training in physics. No math is used. That said, a reader who has already read a few books of this type will probably find the text both frustratingly generalized and annoying overinvested in a math that nevertheless does not appear. The truly general reader will likely find the text readable but dull.

That's an odd bunch of assertions, so let's take it from the top.

For starters, the writing style is somewhat funky. The author is by trade a journalist (he writes for the Dallas Morning News), and the writing is permeated with the style of contemporary journalism: lots of sentence fragments and comma splices, and nary a semi-colon in sight. The tone is aloof and unemotional, yet returns perennially to its preoccupations. The effect is like watching a CNN report done as a 300 page newspaper article. Readily graspable, but not very elegant or imaginative (that was a sentence fragment). Maybe I'm just oversensitive because I'm a teacher.

More importantly, however, the author has an annoying overinvestment in math that clouds the presentation with shaky reasoning. For example, one theme of the text is the capacity of math to "prediscover" elements of physical reality. Thus, Murray Gell-Mann "prediscovered" quarks, Pauli "prediscovered" neutrinos, and Einstein "prediscovered" gravitational lensing. But this is a distortion of language in service of a personal ideology, as American journalists are so prone to doing. When I am half-way to work I have not "prearrived"; when a woman is 4 months pregnant the baby has not been "predelivered." You are not "prefinished" reading this review. Neither does math prediscover anything, which is an oxymoron. The author is merely dressing up the plain idea of prediction.

But there's more to it. The author's use of "prediscovery" is made possible by his belief that math forms the most basic level of reality in the universe. On virtually every page we read that nature totters after math like a toddler being led around on a leash by a calculator. If that judgement seems harsh or improbable, consider this quotation:

"So there is no mystery, [cognitive scientists] say. We impose our math on the world in order to describe it. That's why math works. Frankly, I am not impressed by this argument. Although it is surely true [...] that math is a human invention, it does not logically follow that the universe does not live by mathematical laws. The idea of math as a human invention may explain much of its success. But I do not see how it explains the way that math reveals unseen, even unimagined, features of reality. [...] But perhaps exploring the prediscoveries of the past and the potential prediscoveries of today can provide some clues to that mystery." (9-10).

I would call this a circular argument. First the author arbitrarily installs math at the centre of the universe, and then he invents the tool of "prediscovery" with which to authenticate that claim. My suspicion throughout this text was that the author is basically arguing from a Christian-creationist position, and this may not be wrong; we finally get to the bible in Chapter 8. Leaving this speculation aside, if you've read Spinoza or are familiar with Pythagoras, Plato, or de Chardin, there's nothing new here.

Anyway, if you do like math, as I do, you will also be disappointed. There are no equations to stare at and puzzle out. More pertinently, there is also no depth of detail in most of the chapters. When we encounter quantum entanglement or black holes, the author merely waves us by with a few fairly widely-known facts and more talk about the wonder of math. That's the journalistic writing style again.

Actually, I think its lack of wonder is my most serious complaint about this book. It's bad enough that it's a book about math with no math in it, but it's also a book about wonder with no wonder in it. There is little imaginative speculation, and even less marvelling at recent jaw-slackening developments in cosmology and theoretical physics.

If I had to sum up this book in a word, I would call it suburban. It is polite and accomplished, orderly and discrete. It is very organized and comfortable. You will not encounter anything shocking to middle-class sensibilities. You will not be asked to leave your driveway, though you *will* be asked to keep off the mathematical grass (it's just been sprayed!). But a suburb is also a limiting, troubled place, and throughout this book I was frequently reminded of the film "Pleasantville."

If you are looking for a book that's both more scientifically rigorous and less uptight, then I suggest either Brian Greene or Stephen Hawking. For a more personal account, try Janna Levin or George Gamow.

Tom Siegfried is a science journalist. At the time he wrote this book he was the Science Feature Editor of the Dallas Morning News (I do not know if he still holds this position) and the book reads like a very well written series of long feature articles. They are written in a breezy colloquial style, but without a detailed or systematic approach to any of the topics covered. This may be fine for someone who desires light science reading, but for someone desiring a systematic and in-depth approach this book is "cotton candy" physics. It is light, sweet, but full of empty calories. But then again, there are those who like cotton candy and consume it whenever they can.

I personally was expecting a book with more substance and one that was much better organized, using a much more detailed and systematic approach. Rather, each chapter focuses on a different type of strange matter, i.e., dark matter, super matter, mirror matter, superstrings, etc., but the treatment of each topic is not systematic and is covered only superficially. The book is mostly "gee wiz" physics, with much of the book devoted to technical meetings that the author attended and the people he knows and what they have taught him. All this being said, the reader would be justified in expecting this to be a one star, completely negative, review. Instead I have given it three stars because I found nuggets of superb explanation scattered throughout the book. For instance, there is a nice discussion of Emily Noether's work relating symmetry and conservation laws. This led to an interesting discussion of supersymmetry.

The book cleared up several things for me. For instance, I knew that the idea of a black hole was first broached in the 1700's and that Newton's laws predicted that light would be bent by gravity (although by not as much as predicted by Einstein), but these facts did not make much sense to me. Siegfried explained this, albeit in a very generally way, by reminding me that Newton viewed light as a particle and that this particle could be influenced by gravity. There is also a nice discussion that cleared up (at least for me) the distinction between Einstein's cosmological constant, dark energy and quintessence.

In summary - this book is OK if you want a well written, but superficial, discussion of "Strange Matters", but I think that it falls short if you are looking for a more in-depth treatment. If that is what you are looking for, I recommend Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos".