Origin by Dan Brown A Review Dan Brown has established a very successful formula for his thrillers, entwining religious and scientific ideas with art and conspiracy theory. His latest, Origin, published in 2017, is no exception. It addresses two questions, posed by both science and religion for hundreds of years (in the case of religion, …
Category: Science
Only Too Brief
A Tribute to Stephen Hawking What is time? If the Universe began with a big bang, what happened before? Was there a before? What are black holes, and why aren't they really black? These are some of the questions that Professor Stephen Hawking addressed during his lifetime, questions that are profoundly philosophical as well as …
In Wine Is Truth
The Critic by Peter May A Review I had previously read two of this author's books, one a detective story set on a Hebridean Island, the other a mystery coming of age story set in Glasgow and London. I enjoyed both. 'With great apprehension she leaned over to smell the fermenting juice and felt her …
Pareidolia
[Pareidolia: - defined as the mind's ability to form images of things that aren't really there] The Nature of the Beast by Bryan Sykes A Review For a mainstream scientist, especially one as distinguished as the geneticist Bryan Sykes, to apply his knowledge and talents to a fringe study is unusual to say the least. …
E=mc2 and all that jazz
Relativity by Albert Einstein Considering the number of books I've read about Einstein's theories of Relativity, and about Einstein himself, it's surprising I didn't acquire this one until quite recently. As so often happens, I was probably browsing the shelves for something else. In case anyone doubts, this is THE book about Relativity, the original, …
Why bother with sex?
Adam's Curse by Bryan Sykes 'The human Y-chromosome is a graveyard of rotting genes, whose corpses are still sufficiently similar to active counterparts on the X-chromosome to be recognisable by their DNA sequence, but whose festering remains contain the evidence of their own demise.' I seem to have a talent for picking up books with …
Homo Deus
A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari WARNING! - This book contains spoilers - spoilers of liberal humanism, and possibly of the whole human experience. 'People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. But the single greatest constant of history is that everything changes.' Harari's earlier book Sapiens challenged us …
Ghosts in the Atom
Review Schrödinger's Kittens by John Gribbin 'The special theory of relativity tells us that it is impossible to run alongside a beam of light at the same speed the light is moving; relative to some chosen inertial frame, you can in principle get your own velocity up as close to the speed of light as …
Life Lessons
Continuing my science theme, I have been reading No Dream Is Too High by Buzz Aldrin. It's not exactly a book about science, nor is it strictly an autobiography. Rather, it's one man's recipe for life, peppered with anecdotes from 87 years of living. Everyone knows Buzz Aldrin as the second man to set foot …
Book Review: Measuring the World
by Daniel Kehlmann (Die Vermesserung der Welt) This novel is a double biography of two of the giants of science, Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt, fast-paced and told with irreverent humour. 'It was both odd and unjust, said Gauss .... that you were born into a particular time and held prisoner there whether …
Bookheathen Scribblings 