5 comments about J. Robert Oppenheimer: And the American Century.

1. I was disappointed to find nothing in this work I hadn't already read in several other Oppenheimer biographies. Dr. Cassidy seems to have taken upon himself the mantle of chief apologist for Dr. Oppenheimer, dismissing any and all evidence for his leftist connections while consistently leveling equally specious charges against his accusers. In short, if you want fresh insights into this complex personality you will be disappointed. If, however, you share Dr. Cassidy and Dr. Oppenheimer's political bent, you should find this a rewarding read.



2. The life of J. Robert Oppenheimer is one of great mystery and fascination. His role in the development of the atomic bomb and his subsequent role in shaping America's nuclear policy, as well as his rise and fall during McCarthy has been the subject of countless books. David Cassidy, Hofstra University professor, has written an excellent account of Oppenheimer's life and the development of theoretical physics in America during the early part of the 20th century. The parallelism between the life of Oppenheimer and the rise of American science is an intriguing tale that is captured in this book.
   
   This biography is a detailed and beautifully written work. Cassidy expands beyond the traditional scope of a biography and expertly explores the surrounding environment that shaped Oppenheimer's life. He draws upon previously untapped primary documents, and shows the importance and character of Oppenheimer's early education on the rest of his life. Cassidy examines the conflicts between Oppenheimer's liberal education from the Ethical Culture School and the culture that he found at Harvard. Oppenheimer's time in Europe is also recounted.
   
   The book does not become overly focused on the Manhattan Project, but covers the time on "The Hill" in enough detail to keep the story in context. He instead offers insights to the periods before the war, when Oppenheimer taught at Berkeley and Cal Tech. Oppenheimer's genius and ability to inspire his students is shown, allowing us to gain insight into the man before the events that would be the foundation of his legacy.
   
   The 1954 Atomic Energy Commission security review that disgraced Oppenheimer, and stripped him of his security clearance for alleged "red ties," are explored with the same thoughtful insight. Recent documents and information regarding those events are thoroughly and conclusively discussed.
   
   Oppenheimer: and the American Century is a welcome addition to the history of science. (by atomicarchive.com)



3. Oppenheimer was born to a wealthy family in NYC. The family owned a fabulous estate and yacht on Long Island. He wrote poetry prior to later in life achieving greatness in physics.
   
   He went to Harvard and later received his doctorate in theoretical physics overseas. He taught at Cal Tech and Berkeley prior to joining the Manhattan Project during World War II.
   
   The biography then covers the period during the 1940s when Oppenheimer was a principal in the development of the atomic bomb and the dropping of 2 atomic bombs on Japan.
   
   Following the war the USA entered the cold war era. Overnight, nuclear physicists became heros. They had won the war. He was a top scientist on the leading government scientific committees in Washington.
   
   Next, Oppenheimer and other scientists were opposed to building the Super, the hydrogen bomb. However, about a month later on the advice of Teller and others President Truman ordered that the hydrogen bomb be built.
   
   This biography explains how later in life Oppenheimer was denied his security clearance due to his opposition to the building of the hydrogen bomb.



4. In 'J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century', acclaimed biographer and writer David C. Cassidy (Author of the highly readable 'Uncertainty: The life and science of Werner Heisenberg') spins a riveting and extremely interesting tale which puts this great man in context, in the middle of a century that witnessed great upheavals. In these, he was the observer as well as the participant. The most striking general scientific paradigm of the century, apart from the revolutions that were breathing new life into the fabric of the cosmos and of life, was the beginning of 'big science'. It was also the beginning of the 'American century' as we know it, spurred on by the advent of science and technology, and the fortuitous happenstances that the unfortunate act of war brought upon this country. People like Oppenheimer were right in the middle of this prophetic change. Although this particular subject with specific reference to Oppenheimer has been tackled in a disconnected way in many of his other biographies and books, Cassidy is probably the first one to weave the man and his times together into a coherent and insightful whole. In many ways, Oppenheimer defines the scientific and moral personality at the heart of those times. In a way, 'Science' and 'Morality', both in a general way provide a good description of the time that was the twentieth century.
   
   Growing up in New York, Robert attended the Ethical Culture School, a school whose strikingly moral looking philosophy believed in the inherent importance of ethics and the noble constraints of morality aimed at the betterment of mankind, independent of creed and religion. However, this institution was torn between the dictums of morality and the callings of practicality when war broke out in Europe. It had to reconcile itself with the Wilsonian Ideal of 'the morality of the victors'. Cassidy lucidly depicts this institution, and the changes which forced it to revisit its professed philosophy, something which has been rarely seen in detail elsewhere. Young Robert was also affected by this philosophy, and later on, coupled with the austere messages from the Bhagavad Gita which he read, it turned his personality into a strange and at many times, tortous, conglomerate of right and wrong.
   
   In the 1920s, Oppenheimer was most fortunate, and well poised to participate in perhaps the greatest revolution that science had seen, the twin package of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. In those days, the focus of scientific excellence was in Europe, with Copenhagen, Cambridge and Gottingen being the greatest centers of learning in the world. There, people like Niels Bohr, Ernest Rutherford, Arnold Sommerfeld and Max Born were training an entire generation of outstanding physicists and chemists, and Oppenheimer was fortunate to be one of them. However, war leaves its deep and far reaching scars, and as the shadow of totalitarianism extended across this magnificent continent, the reins of science became free to be harnessed by men and women who were causing ripples in the scientific world. The practical mindedness and 'can-do' spirit of the American psyche first became apparent in those times. A country that was struggling with depression slowly but surely rose to the cause. The foresight and action that has always characterised American science and business first emerged during those times. Foundations like the Rockefeller foundation started sending promising young men to Europe to quarry in the exquisite knowledge that was being created there. These men and women came back to their country, with a determination to make it second to none in science. Universities forged alliances with industry, unheard of amounts of money started to be donated by wealthy philanthropists for scientific research. The University became the archetypal epitome of discovery and scientific freedom. Men like Oppenheimer and his colleague, Ernest Lawrence, were among the initiators of this wave of technological excellence that can be seen today. Everything suddenly became big; 'big science', 'big machines', like Lawrence's magnificent cyclotron, 'big money', and big America. Cassidy profiles this period of unprecedented progress very well.
   
   Then came war. First and foremost, it brought the United States a windfall of the most brilliant scientists of the time; Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, John Von Neumann, Edward Teller, and the biggest fish of them all, the austere sage Albert Einstein. As someone said, 'The Pope of Physics has moved'. His home became the new Vatican of physics. All of these great men and women came to their adopted country to escape the ravages of racial discrimination and fanatic nationalism initiated by Hitler and Mussolini. Europe, as they knew it, was on the wane. Their beloved continent was never to be what it was before. On the other hand, they had arrived in the new land of opportunity. American science would start booming, and American leaders of science would be ecstatic. A whole group of 'scientific managers' (another creed that would be the legacy of big science) took the administrative responsibility of steering their country's scientific resources, in their hands. Among these were Robert Millikan and Arthur Compton, both Nobel Laureates, Vannevar Bush, a close confidant of Roosevelt, and James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard. They made sure that research was well-funded and scholarships were doled out to bright young people without reservations. Promising American men and women of science would no longer have to leave their nation in order to become scientific apprentices at the meccas of learning. They could now rely on their own leaders, extraordinary men who were poised for breakthroughs in science and technology. Undoubtedly leading this remarkable generation, at least in physics, was Robert Oppenheimer. Under his tutelage and guidance at the University of California, Berkeley, America's best physicists now had a home of their own, and a father figure whom they idolized. Almost every theoretical physicist of the time who later went on to high deeds, sometime trained under Oppenheimer.
   
   Then came war, and ironically, it brought the United States good tidings, at least in the beginning. More brilliant emigres. And more money to fuel the great machine of technological progress. War production suddenly galvanized into action all that work force that had laid dormant during Depression times. The United States had become the most resource rich and advanced nation in the world. All that 'big science' that had begun could now be put to good use. As if being called to such a cause, an event came to the notice of scientists, one that would change America and the world forever. Fission, and then Pearl Harbour gave an impulsive and unforseen impetus to the nation's scientific and political establishment. The rest is history. Oppenheimer became the head of the world's most top secret laboratory. The war amassed the American work force and capital power as never before. The most expensive project in history produced the most destructive weapon the world had ever seen, obliterating entire generations in a heartbeat. Although it ended the war, it stirred up many more problems and questions than it had solved or answered. Politics had finally become inextricably enmeshed with science, another legacy of the American century. America was a superpower now, although the threat of communism would always be a thorn, in no measure small, in her side. The state of the times was also driven home when Oppenheimer had his security clearance taken away by men from the Government having a perverse sense of patriotism, another instance of the unfortunate but permanent amalgamation of politics and science.
   
   Cassidy's book portrays this century well. It WAS an American century, there is no doubt about that. It changed many things forever. Scientific research would no longer be the same, requiring and engendering intense competition between giant institutions for unheard of funds, a trend that is all too obvious today. It also produced technology that we have yet to psychologically come to terms with, and maybe never will. And it raised eternal and tortous questions of morality that continue to be harrowing. Robert Oppenheimer, in a way, epitomized all of this, many times as an initiator. He and his avuncular predecessor Niels Bohr, both struggled to cope with the paradoxical nature of the most destructive weapon that would possibly end all wars. It did not turn out to be that simple, though, as the years showed, and we permanently became mortals walking a devious precipice. Oppenheimer's brilliance, versatility, and moral persona put him in a position where he could influence the world around him, and he did. But he raised many many questions that he would grapple with till the end, regarding the complex and deep repurcussions which his science had produced in the form of a terrible weapon. Because of his unusual intelligence and foresight, he was in a unique position to be a part and a questioner of those important times. The American century, inspiring as it is, is also sobering. Oppenheimer's life is a telling representative of the problems that we have solved in our quest for scientific as well as moral truth, and the many more new problems that we have created. Most importantly, Cassidy's book and Oppenheimer's life both tell us that whatever else happens, we must never cease to explore.



5. How does one trump a tour de force? Not easily. I greatly admired Cassidy's biography of Heisenberg in which he displayed great sensitivity for his subject, his work, and his times, not an easy task for the complex world of early quantum physics held against the backdrop of Germany's self-destruction. I therefore approached Oppenheimer and the American Century with gusto. Unfortunately, Cassidy has a `problem with Oppenheimer which he did not have with Heisenberg; he detests the man. Consequently, his book contains a disoncerting assortment of irritated criticism and faint praise.
   
   Cassidy takes Oppenehimer to task on a number of points: That he was a snob, that he was fickle, that he was aloof, that he was cowardly, and that he failed to realize his potential as a physicist, to name a few. In fact, Oppenheimer only succeeds after he has been skewered at the hands of the Gray committee. He then enters- and only just- Cassidy's hagiography. Moreover, Cassidy holds Oppenheimer to modern academic standards which include a healthy disdain for government in all its manifold guises. For example, while it may be fair to criticize Oppenheimer for not having been more vociferously opposed to the H-bomb, can Cassidy really fault him for having run the Mnahattan project at a time when Hitlerism threatened to engulf the world? Is it fair to assume that the war against Japan could have been won without the A bombs and still have avoided staggering losses?
   
   Cassidy also minimizes the fear generated by Stalin's usurpation of all eastern European governments save Yugoslavia. He has ostensibly forgotten that Stalin was a bona fide madman who had eliminated at least 20 million of his own people. Casidy suggests instead that there was an equation of sorts between the USSR and USA. I am not interested in apologizing for the lunatic extremes of McCarthyism, but I do think that one ought to look at the whole picture and not just those parts one wants to see.
   
   All in all this is a lackluster performance strewn here and there with occasional discussion about Oppenheimer's science and very little more about the man. Cassidy wants to berate Oppenheimer more than comprehend him. Oppenheimer may not have become all that he might have and he may have been riddled with flaws. All the more reason to grasp the essence of the man.

1 comments about Radioactive Substances (Great Minds Series).

1. Marie Curie's Radioactive Substances provides an intriguing description and first hand account of the lab research which led to her discovery of radium - and her eventual death. Curie's own words, charts, and calculations tells of her work with radium and the advance of a scientific wonder.

3 comments about Living Your Dream.

1. Living Your Dream is a book with something most unusual: a combination of practical information about a delightful animal (the Icelandic horse)with storytelling sequences as inventive as any myth or legend. The reader who both practices animal husbandry and enjoys a touch of the magical (we are not all that rare, by the way) will enjoy double-dipping. The many illustrations make it clear how well-adapted these horses are biologically as well as how inspirational they must be upon acquaintance.

   Living Your Dream is written in a consummately modern spirit. In the age of hypertext (the kind of point-and-click-on-what-you-want-to-see-now programming upon which the WWW is based), this book fits right in. The reader can segue between realistic stories of actual horse treks or ranching and story sequences highlighting the spiritual aspects of the Horse archetype in creation mythology. Or, the reader can sample a bit of each but mainly go crazy over all the photographs. Or read the creation story straight through, and then the narrative about the modern-day Icelandic Horse. Etc. In other words, this is a book laid out so you can custom read it, a book in which people/families with different or overlapping interests and reading styles can easily find something to share.

   The attribution of authorship to one of these remarkable horses, Gletta, may be viewed in a number of ways. This reviewer is simply impressed by the nature of the bond that is possible between the Icelandic horse and the human, as experienced and chronicled by Gletta and Elisabeth Haug. Living Your Dream is truly an uplifting book. We need more uplifting books at this point in human history. Well done, Gletta and Elisabeth. -- Meredith J. Merritt, MLS




2. This book is a breath of fresh air! It is a flowing tale of friends and soulmates. Living Your Dream makes you take a step back and look at your own situation through its kaleidoscope of knowledge. Your mind will wind through fact and fiction, finally weaving the two into a blanket of serenity. A must read!



3. I took a chance on this book but I did not enjoy it. I feel that it is much more suitable for juveniles than grown adults. Some of the descriptions are nice but if you are looking to understand horses, the horse's mind, and your own life's path, there are many, many other books around better suited to the purpose.

5 comments about Scientific Conversations: Interviews on Science from The New York Times.

1. An exploration of our great scientists from the unique perspective of a New York Times writer. Dreifus's knack is to draw out her interviewees and distill complex subjects into compelling, easily understood science. I never miss her interviews in Science Times.



2. This upbeat book about thirty eight fascinating figures in contemporary science, makes their universe accessible to the outsider. The pieces are easy to get in to, witty and--dare one say it?--FUN. Suggestion: this is the book for a young person interested in a science career--as well as for routine science buffs.



3. Claudia Dreifus has done a tremendous job in compiling interviews from a vast array of scientists of various expertise. The interviews are generally provacative and allow the reader (better than any other book of this kind that I have read) to understand the mind and passions of the scientists. Very highly recommended!!!



4. What comes through loud and clear from Dreifus's interviews is how much fun her subjects are having doing cutting-edge science. They love their work and love talking about it, and Dreifus manages to convey their enthusiasm to the reader, incidentally passing on a good bit of information from the scientific frontier. You're hooked from the beginning, when Dreifus asks Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, "So what's your sign?" Think of this as the best cocktail party you've ever been to.



5. This collection of interviews from the New York Times by one-time political journalist Claudia Dreifus works well as an introduction to various areas of current scientific interest.

   Each of the 38 conversations (11 with women) includes a two and a quarter by one and a half inch black and white photo of the interviewee, an introduction, some Q and A, and a postscript in which Dreifus reports on a follow-up. The persons being conversed with are mostly scientists, but there are medical practitioners, a couple of politicians, an AIDS victim, and some administrators. There are some superstars (Martin Rees, Arthur C. Clarke, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Jay Gould, Roger Penrose) and some others who are not very well known outside their area of expertise (e.g., Luis F. Baptista, Birute Galdikas), and still others who are perhaps best known for being in the public eye (Princess Diana's psychiatrist, Susie Orbach; National Public Radio's Ira Flatow; maverick science writer John Horgan). One has the sense that the conversations have been distilled from a larger essence.

   The most striking interview is with Dr. Nawal M. Nour, a Sudanese-born gynecologist who treats African-American women in the Boston area who have been mutilated by so-called "female circumcision." Dreifus asks Nour if "These operations" are used "as a means of social control."
   Dr. Nour's surprising response is that "the people who are perpetuating the practice are usually the women themselves." She adds, "I find that people do it because of a deeply ingrained belief that they are protecting their daughters. This not done to be hurtful, but out of love." (pp 171-172) Dr. Nour's prescription is to dispel such grotesque ignorance with education.

   One of the most interesting interviews is with medical researcher Polly Matzinger, whom I've read about elsewhere. She is the ex-Playboy bunny and waitress who famously began her scientific career when a UC Berkeley professor, Robert Swampty Schwab, to whom she was serving beer, realized her talent after hearing her ask, "Why has no animal ever mimicked a skunk?" She is currently a leading proponent of the exciting idea that it is not "self" and "non-self" that our immune system distinguishes between, but instead between the benign and the dangerous. This is a radical idea that is "turning the world of immunology upside down." (p. 191)

   Perhaps the most unusual "scientist" interviewed (at least in terms of his occupation) is self-styled "forensic mathematician" Charles Brenner. He does the mathematical calculations necessary to analyze DNA evidence.

   The interview with physicist Freeman J. Dyson is interesting mainly because Dreifus got him to voice lukewarm support for the idea that Werner Heisenberg, Hitler's most talented physicist (and subject of the recent play Copenhagen) in part kept the bomb from the Nazis by not giving the project "the kind of push it needed." Dreifus also elicited Dyson's opposition to Bush's new Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars redux) "because the system doesn't work, mostly because it can be easily outwitted." (p. 22)

   As a sometime sampler of "food supplements" I was interested in the conversation with Stephen E. Straus, the virologist who serves as Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine in our government's National Institute of Health. He has a $90-million budget to test alternative approaches to medicine. This is significant because no one else has the resources do this sort of research on a scale large enough to be worthwhile. The drug companies will not do extensive research on food supplements because they can't patent the supplements and therefore feel such an investment will not pay off.

   I enjoyed reading this collection and was intrigued to see how much Dreifus did with the limited space she had available for each interview. Her disarming style with a sharp sense of how to probe often overcame the inevitable superficiality inherent in conversations lasting only about six pages each. A case in point is the question she springs on celebrity psychiatrist, Susie Orbach: "Your highly influence 1978 book, Fat is a Feminist Issue, posited the idea that some women had eating disorders because they had been undernurtured by their mothers. Do you still believe that?" This is the kind of question--like "Do you still beat your wife?"--that one doesn't have to stick around to hear the answer to. The point has been made. Orbach does allow that if she were writing that book today, she "wouldn't write it in the same way."

No comments about Koji Nakanishi: A Wandering Natural Products Chemist (Profiles, Pathways, and Dreams).

3 comments about A Life of Sir Francis Galton: From African Exploration to the Birth of Eugenics.

1. A comprehensive life of Sir Francis Galton busting with detail. Unfortunately more about what he did than about what he was or how he came to be. In the later parts he is hardly mentioned in page after page while the abstruse arguments of his disciples are rehashed ad nauseum. There is a "tinge" of calling Galton a racist and he's connected to Herrenstein's The Bell Curve -- which dates this book. In truth, Galton was an amazing and varied genius who created much of statistics and the idea of "intelligence." One can't help but notice the incredible group of connections between Galton and other Victorian intelligensiae such as JBS Haldane, J Clerk Maxwell, William Kingdon Clifford (whom some think is the model for H.G.Wells' "Time Traveler") and others. On balance, a qualified recommendation. Lots of notes and a remarkable subject. Yet, I would have liked more information on Galton's own mental processes. The story reinforces the idea that the Victorian age was really interesting and chock-o-block with interesting people.



2. This biography of Sir Francis Galton is clearly well-researched. The difficulty, however, is that while the author writes individual paragraphs in an interesting, descriptive style, the paragraphs themselves come one after another in confusing sequence, with so much detail that it is difficult to follow or focus on the main thread.
   
   A much more readable Galton biography is the one published in 2004 by Martin Brookes, which obviously used the same primary sources and contains much of the same information (in some instances, almost word-for-word.) The Gillham book has the advantage of having visual representations of Galton's graphs, tables, etc., and contains a deeper level of scientific detail. If you are more interested in the life of the man, what made him tick, and his place in history, go with the Brookes version.
   
   Note: Gillham's version has an extensive index; Brookes' version has none.



3. A word to the wise, heed the title and sub-title of this book. It is not a very good all around biography of Sir Francis Galton. The book does bring you up to his first accomplishment, African exploration, very directly. Other chapters occasionally touch on some of his life-milestones like marriage and his relationship with the Royal Geographical Society. The majority of the book discusses his theories and scientific achievements. The book delves deep when it arrives on Galton's ideas and experiments in the field of genetics and hereditary traits. The reader will wonder why the book takes such great pains to explain Galton's outdated Victorian genetic theory. A quick perusal of the author's bio shows that he is a professor of genetics.
   Sir Francis Galton does not have much name recognition today, but his name pops up in various books about the history of African exploration, statistics and genetics. He was one of a hand-full of renaissance type geniuses that Britain produced during the Victorian Age. They had wide ranging interests and consequently wide ranging discoveries. Galton is also credited with discovering the uniqueness of fingerprints to each individual. He began the modern type of data collection through scientific surveys and he correlated the results statistically. His improvements in the field of statistics are still used today.
   There are not too many biographical books about Sir Francis Galton
   This book may be a little too much for the casual reader looking for some general information . The reader must be prepared to skim over the deeper sections.

5 comments about Linus Pauling in His Own Words: Selections From his Writings, Speeches and Interviews.

1. i hope that everybody who read this book realy deeply,could understand the true meaning of the two times noble price winner wich is gathered and explained in a very easy to follow,and the real messages that he explined in this super-book!this book reflects his total life-history, philosophy,orthomolecularly,and the real man as a human.very interesting book, and highly recommanded.



2. Book is about more his professional life more than his private life. After very short introduction his scientific life story is told through abbreviated sayings, speeches of his own. Since most of the text is from his speeches and abstracts you get a lot of his opinions and comments on various subjects including use of atomic power.



3. Linus Pauling is the only person to date to win two unshared Nobel Prizes in science. His researches were in a wide variety of areas including nuclear science, genetics, molecular biology , X-ray chrystallography, mineralogy, physical chemistry.
   The most valuable parts of his memoirs are his descriptions of his own scientific work and discoveries.
   Pauling's motto was " Never put your trust in anything but your own intellect" and he was a tremendously independent researcher, and thinker.
   His reputation and his great work were in science, but he also thought out loud and independently on political and health subjects.
   I remember hearing him talk years ago at Harpur College in Binghamton New York. I was expecting to hear him talk about his scientific work and discoveries. Instead he went on endlessly about Vitamin C as a cure to all our health problems. Yes, Pauling along with being a pioneering intellect and scientist was a crank also.
   His crankiness had its political side in his Pacifism , a pacificism which led to his being accused of being a fellow traveler.(i.e.Communist ).
   In fact the idea that nuclear war is insane is one of the most sane ideas imaginable. But equating the US and the late Soviet Union as Pauling often did was mistaken and wrongheaded.
   Above all it is best to think of Pauling as a scientist. The enthusiasm he had in exploring nature is felt throughout this work.
   He believed himself and other scientists fortunate in that he thought scientists could appreciate and enjoy so much more of the world than others.
   He was a true American original , a pioneer researcher at the highest level, and not without a certain sense of humor.
   This book may not bear a cover- to - cover reading but whoever looks and searches in it will find much material for the investigating human soul.



4. This book is a good introduction into the world of Linus Pauling, a most fascinating person; rather than tell his story for him, Barbara Marinacci allows him to tell his own story. For those, who have already read a good biography or good biographies of him, this book contains no surprises.
   
   All the same, it certainly is inspirational and worth reading.



5. Linus Carl Pauling is regarded by many as the premier chemist of the twentieth century. Pauling received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his campaign against above-ground nuclear testing, and is the only person to win two Nobel prizes that were not shared with another recipient. The other people who have received two Nobel prizes are Marie Curie (physics and chemistry), John Bardeen (both in physics) and Frederick Sanger (both in chemistry). Later in life, he became an advocate for greatly increased consumption of vitamin C and other nutrients. He generalized his ideas to define orthomolecular medicine, which is still regarded as unorthodox by conventional medicine. He popularized his concepts, analyses, research and insights in several successful but controversial books centered around vitamin C and orthomolecular medicine

5 comments about Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think: Reflections by Scientists, Writers, and Philosophers.

1. As usual I found myself wondering around the science section of a local bookstore. I tried to convince myself that I should finish reading one of the seven books by my bed before spending anymore of my, rent, money. After browsing the covers of numerous books, I was just `looking', one caught my eye. A very visible font read: "Richard Dawkins". I picked it up assuming, wrongly so, that this was Dawkins biography. I usually have a habit of reading the preface of the book I have my eye on, this time I went straight to the register. I started reading the book in the car when I walked out of the bookstore. Two days after, of non-stop reading, I have just put it down.
   
   The book is a collection of essays from a wide range of fields including biologists, writers and philosophers. They all describe the ways in which Dawkins has affected their academic life, field of study or the effects of his books, mostly the selfish gene, on the way we think of evolution. The first section, titled `Biology', is a collection of essays describing how the genes eye view of evolution is sculpturing their research and how Dawkins's explanation had shed a new light on evolution that continues to this day.
   The sections titled `The Selfish Gene" addresses this now infamous book and its impact on humanity, the view of culture (through Memes) and arguments for a reductionism approach when dealing with human behavior. The next three sections (Logic, Antiphonal Voices and Humans) contain essays that continue the Selfish gene theme and address the impact of Dawkins writing on some fundamental human questions. The sections titled `Controversy' reviews the most controversial side of Dawkins, the Dawkins that is never afraid to be straight forward when attacking religious dogma and promoting atheism. Finally the section on `Writing' sums up this book perfectly. In the midst of all the controversy and scientific arguments it is not difficult to forget that Dawkins is truly mesmerizing with words. The two essays in this section sum up his writing technique and perhaps clarify why even those who don't agree with his views are so captivated by his books.
   
   If you are a fan of Dawkins, or even if you are not, this is a must have.



2. Richard Dawkins is brilliant. Because he writes so clearly, his colleagues and students learn from him with ease; because he writes so entertainingly, they thoroughly enjoy the learning process. In Grafen and Ridley's compendium, other scientists who have benefited from Dawkins' brilliance build on his work, and provide important commentary and instruction on how to think and reason.



3. The subtitle, after the title naming the subject of the tributes, says: "HOW A SCIENTIST CHANGED THE WAY WE THINK". Who is "WE"? Certainly not anyone. Rather, it may apply to the contributors to the book, and more widely to Darwinians. My drift is that if that scientist, Richard Dawkins, indeed changed the way someone thinks, it concerns those who accept Darwinism as axiomatic, the change concerning how they think Darwinism can be detailed.
   
   To me this is like thinking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Despite the authors' absolute certainty that Darwinism is true, it is, as I have tried to show elsewhere, not only a theory, but a false one. Its refutation is in fact quite simple, but it resides in what has been a blind spot on both sides of the dispute for or against the theory.
   
   One of the authors in the book quotes Dawkins in matters that highlight the essence of the dispute (p.233): "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist." (As an aside: What about spiritually, emotionally, fulfilled?) And "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference."
   
   Ironically, the just spoken "blind" indicates the blind spot mentioned above. The dire views expressed in the preceding quotations are belied by an overwhelming phenomenon completely overlooked. It is the activities characterizing every live organism. Their directions toward its preservation display the opposite of "blind pitiless indifference", of "no good", of "no purpose".
   
   I shall not go further here into the questions of theism or atheism; it should, however, be clear from the aforesaid that the presence of directedness in nature, contrary to the claim of its absence, is, in the functionings of organisms, very much part of science, as exemplified by medicine.
   
   It is instead Darwinian aimlessness which contradicts these observations. In this respect one may take a look at a prevalent theme in the reviewed book, regarding what "changed the way we think". Dawkins proposed (p.55) that the gene, "defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially lasts for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection", must be recognized as "the fundamental unit of natural selection, and therefore the fundamental unit of self-interest."
   
   This has to do with the microscopic unit transmitting hereditary characters and which Dawkins for the preceding reason called "the selfish gene". Of interest now is of course that the gene or anything else in organisms is called without hesitation a unit of, aimless, "natural selection". As seen above, organismic parts do act with aims and are correspondingly replicated through generations with aims.
   
   Dawkins called the gene "the fundamental unit of self-interest" because it is so replicated, and as known, "natural selection" is to favor that which survives, and the gene appears to survive longer than other units of organisms. But in the organism's activities aimed at its survival the genes are merely instruments by which organisms propagate for that survival. In other words, genes do not act in self-interest but in the interest of organisms.
   
   More importantly, as here again called attention to, the living do not adapt as a result of undirected effects of natural selection, but as a result of their directed activities toward self-preservation.



4. If you have read Richard's books over the years, you will enjoy reading some other prominent peoples' opinions. I am now re-reading "The selfish gene"



5. I can't help but feel that the reviews thus far for this book have only been favorable due to the contributions that Dawkins himself has made to the field of evolutionary biology.
   
   What was most troubling about this book was the contradictions which the editors themselves (Grafen and Ridley) managed to incorporate. They say that Dawkins uses "impeccable logic" and yet they also claim that he's "often misunderstood". Grafen claims that The Selfish Gene caused an "immediate revolution in biology". Yet, Andrew Read, one of the contributors, said he didn't encounter the book until after he completed his four year zoology degree (and yes, it had been published before that time). One also gets to read about, from the accounts of several scientists, how The Selfish Gene "taught me to think" (from Read's essay, but this is only an example). Grafen then tells us that it is noteworthy that Dawkins was elected to the Royal Society for his "contributions to the public understanding of science, not for his contribution to science itself."
   
   The Selfish Gene is a masterful book and it's certainly worthy of praise, but 283 pages of praise with intercalary superfluous biographic accounts by the authors makes this book one for the trash bin.
   
   It is nothing but an academic circle jerk. Very disappointing.

No comments about Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

2 comments about The Goodyear Story: An Inventor's Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly.

1. Korman hits a home run with his portrait of the inventor Charles Goodyear and his self-destructive mania surrounding finding a way to make rubber a useful industrial product. The craziness continues when Goodyear claims the credit for the invention (and the royalties) as his own.

   The book is a time-traveling glimpse into industrial revolutionary America and England and the swirling energy surrounding the changes happening at the time.

   A must for ambitious business people and basement tinkerers!




2. The Goodyear Story: An Inventor's Obsession And The Struggle For A Rubber Monopoly by Richard Korman (Senior Editor, Engineering News-Record, McGraw-Hill) is the amazing and informative biography of Charles Goodyear, the man who in the 1830's began his efforts to create rubber -- a material, in his belief, which would forever alter the world and the course of human civilization. His dream cost so much that his family lived in poverty and he suffered in debtor's prison. Yet his dream was not only to make rubber, but also to reap the wealth of controlling its creation and distribution; when others tried to lay claim to the manufacture of his miracle, only a lawsuit as argued by the famous Daniel Webster could settle the dispute once and for all. The Goodyear Story is a fascinating, true-life tale of science, business, and the striving of human nature against great odds and adverse circumstances.