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Pickover: Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them

sparkchaser

sparkchaser

Administrator and Stuntman
Staff member
I saw a link to the review of this book on geekpress this morning. It looks interesting.

Every high school physics student knows about Fourier’s Law of Heat Conduction and Hooke’s Law of Elasticity. But not many know that Joseph Fourier lived inside a wooden box in his old age. Or that Robert Hooke’s arch-nemesis, Isaac Newton, hated him so much that he had Hooke’s portrait removed from the Royal Society and tried to have his papers burned. Imagine how much fun science class would’ve been, had these been taught along side all those equations and formulas.

Well, now you can read about the interesting stuff that your school textbooks didn‘t bother to include. In his latest book, Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them, Cliff Pickover takes some 40 eponymous laws of physics and explains the life of the scientists whom these laws are named after. The book is far from a dry listing of scientific formulas - actually, it’s full of quirky trivia and nifty facts about some of the world’s greatest scientists.

So, if you didn’t know that Archimedes sometimes sent his colleagues false theorems in order to trap them when they stole his ideas, or that Daniel Bernoulli‘s father threw him out for winning a science competition, then this Neatorama post is for you. Behold, the 5 Scientific Laws and the Scientists Behind Them (no complicated math, we promise!)
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The article goes on to list five of the theories and tidbits about each.

Sounds like a good read.
 
At first in the review i thought it said "Archimedes’ Principle of Bouncy" ...:p

looks pretty interesting. However what i read of a brief histroy of time was boringgggg, I thought.Of course that book isn't writen by Hawking (maybe he was just boring). maybe the scientific laws hold more excitment.
 
Interesting. As much as like science books, they often don't show much of the personalities of the great scientific minds of our time. One thing I really enjoyed about Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, was that it had some interesting tidbits about these people.
 
The scientific method is about the people as well as the ideas. It would benefit educators and students if science was presented as more of a voyage of discovery and less as a bunch of boring facts to be learned by rote. Inasmuch as this book seems to be attempting to do this, it looks like a welcome addition to the popular-science booklist.
 
Champagne said:
The scientific method is about the people as well as the ideas. It would benefit educators and students if science was presented as more of a voyage of discovery and less as a bunch of boring facts to be learned by rote. Inasmuch as this book seems to be attempting to do this, it looks like a welcome addition to the popular-science booklist.
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One could say the same thing about history.
 
This sounds like a good one Sparky.

Something y'all might be interested in is Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! and What do You Care What Other People Think? both by Richard P. Feynmnan. Funny, tragic, adventurous, and verra irreverent is our Mr. Feynman.
I've only read the first one so far, and if it's any indication, the second will be just as interesting as the first.
 
sparkchaser said:
One could say the same thing about history.
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Well, one could, except that history (especially in monarchies like Britain) tends to deal with people anyway. You can get through an entire science course at school without realising that there are some interesting personal stories behind some of these discoveries and that laws are named after real people rather than some generic scientist type.

The number of people - including schoolteachers - who don't know the basics of how the scientific method works is really worrying, not to say inexcusable.

I've added that book to my list of things to buy at Amazon. This forum is getting to be expensive.:D
 
Champagne said:
You can get through an entire science course at school without realising that there are some interesting personal stories behind some of these discoveries and that laws are named after real people rather than some generic scientist type.
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I cannot really see how anything in the lives of Newton or Einstein would make the slightest bit of difference to the way gravity works. Physics and the understanding of its laws have nothing whatsoever to do with the physicists involved.

Having said that, science classes could be a lot more fun - and a lot more instructive, too - if teachers could be bothered to include more history of science.
 
chuephödli said:
Having said that, science classes could be a lot more fun - and a lot more instructive, too - if teachers could be bothered to include more history of science.
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I agree. Science class makes it seem like everything happened in a vacuum and it's mainly rote memorization of dates and concepts.

There was a show years ago called Connections that was hosted by James Burke that showed how inventions and discoveries were tied to one another as well as the history of the time. Bah, the wiki article on it explains it better than I ever could:

Connections explores an "Alternative View of Change" (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress. Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of their own (e.g, profit, curiosity, religious) motivations with no concept of the final, modern result of what either their or their contemporaries' actions finally lead to. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series and its sequels.
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There was a companion book to it.

Anyone ever see that show?
 
Sounds very intriguing. Except maybe for the use of the word "gestalt", which should have been banned a long time ago, together with "synergy" and pro-active".
 
Checking up on your links (thanks for the links - I really appreciate that about your posts in general, by the by), I might have to get that companion book. Did you see all 3 series?

1978 seems positively antediluvian, by science standards.
 
I have seen all three series and the first is by far the best.

Even though the show was made in 1978 and you can't help but chuckle at his leisure suit and glasses, it doesn't change history. I haven't seen the show since 1994. I need to revisit it on DVD. IF it's on DVD. Hey, it is available on DVD Connections 1 but I am not paying $150 for it.

Oh, and thanks for the compliment. I try to make posts as informative as possible.
 
Champagne said:
Well, one could, except that history (especially in monarchies like Britain) tends to deal with people anyway. You can get through an entire science course at school without realising that there are some interesting personal stories behind some of these discoveries and that laws are named after real people rather than some generic scientist type.
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Most modern science books intended for teaching have quite a bit of historical tidbits in them(at least the ones i have seen). However you cant really devote time to the lives of the scientists behind the theories and still have time left to teach what are are actually supposed to teach.

Sadly too many students are passive, and expects the teacher to push the knowledge down their throats while at the same time entertain them. It does not really work that way. However an active student with interest could easily get a "history of science" type book and read this for entertainment in his spare time. I'm sure many/most teachers would be happy to recommend books to students that take an interest.

Personally i like to read the original works of some of these scientists. If you are interested i can recommend the works of Alfred Russell Wallace, a biologist that is mainly known for proposing a theory of evolution independently of Darwin.
 
Champagne said:
You can get through an entire science course at school without realising that there are some interesting personal stories behind some of these discoveries and that laws are named after real people rather than some generic scientist type.
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One reason to include the stories about the scientists is that the struggle to understand and explain nature is really the story of the scientific method. When you are presented with the results of the search you have theories or facts, but no sense of how they were arrived at. To learn more than we presently know requires continuing the search.
 
I started this book on Sunday and I don't think my brain was ready for it yet. I made it through the introduction which had several interesting questions about math vs. reality.

I think this book will be best used by me as a palette cleanser between books. A chapter or two before I move on to the next book.
 
Robert Hooke’s arch-nemesis, Isaac Newton, hated him so much that he had Hooke’s portrait removed from the Royal Society and tried to have his papers burned.
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Reminds me of a program on TV recently which told the stories of Georg Cantor who first realised that there are different sizes of infinity, and ended up in a lunatic asylum as a result of a lifetime of trying to prove he was right against his critics, and also Ludwig Boltzmann who comitted suicide because no-one would accept he was right either.
 
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