BOOKS DO FURNISH A LIFE: Reading and Writing Science. Richard Dawkins. Edited by Gillian Somerscales. A fine
collection of short writings by Dawkins, the noted
zoologist and master of science communication. All are
in some way connected with books (“the love of books,”
Dawkins says) that have furnished his life in science.
They include forewords, afterwords, introductions,
reviews, and essays. An introduction, “The Literature of
Science,” celebrates science (“the poetry of reality”)
as a vehicle for great literature. Dawkins extolls such
notable science-poets as Sir James Jeans, Carl Sagan,
Carolyn Porco, Peter Atkins, Lawrence Krauss, Lewis
Thomas, and Peter Medawar (“the greatest literary
stylist among the scientists of the twentieth century”).
The chapters are organized into six sections that pretty
much sum up the vast range of Dawkins’s interests:
Writing Science, Celebrating Nature, Exploring Humanity,
Supporting Scepticism, Interrogating Faith, and
Evangelizing Evolution. The beautifully written book
again shows why Dawkins might have included himself
among great scientists who are equally at home in
science and literature. (U.S. edition coming in
September.) Bantam Press/Penguin Random House, 2021, 453
pp., £25.00.
COSMIC QUERIES: StarTalk’s Guide to Who We
Are, How We Got Here, and Where We’re Going.
Neil deGrasse Tyson with James Trefil. Everyone’s
favorite astrophysicist Tyson and physics educator
Trefil combine on a beautiful book on the deepest
questions that come our way: What is our place in the
universe? How do we know what we know? How did the
universe get to be this way? How old is the universe?
What is life? Are we alone? How did it all begin? How
will it end? What does nothing have to do with
everything? Going deeper than his popular
StarTalk show can, Tyson notes that the book
nevertheless uses the “informative but still breezy DNA
of StarTalk itself.” With spectacular color
photos and artwork. National Geographic Partners, 2021,
309 pp., $30.00.
GOOD THINKING: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk
and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World. David Robert Grimes. Grimes (a UK physicist, science
communicator, and John Maddox Award recipient) takes us
on a lively ride into why we go so badly askew with our
thinking and how to avoid the worst consequences. “The
truly staggering events” (his description) of the past
year have made the book even more timely and important.
Topics includes formal fallacies and how to defeat them,
spotting and debunking dubious rhetoric, the struggle
between reason and belief, how numbers can mislead us,
how media indulge in bad thinking, and what science is
and what it is not. “This is not a textbook,” says
Grimes, “it’s a collection of incredible stories delving
into the missteps that underpinned them.” The
Experiment (New York), 2021, 385 pp., $15.95.
MYSTERIES & SECRETS REVEALED:
From Oracles at Delphi to Spiritualism in
America. Loren Pankratz, PhD. Pankratz,
a retired psychiatry professor and CSI fellow, takes us
on a wide-ranging journey focusing on courageous people
throughout history “who asked uncomfortable questions.”
They all “experienced an unconquerable desire to uncover
reliable information … no matter the consequences.” He
starts with the ancient Greeks and “the doubting of
oracles” and then the leading figures of the Italian
Renaissance. Probably most interesting for SI readers is
a series of core chapters on investigations of the
“poster boy for clairvoyants” Alexis Didier, claims of
remote travel, the work of French conjuror Jean-Eugene
Robert-Houdin, mesmerism, modern hypnosis, spiritualism,
the Turing test, Faraday’s investigations of table
turning, tests of Eusapia Palladino, and slate writing.
Heavily researched and documented, with many sources
from the author’s own extensive collections. Prometheus
Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2021, 456 pp., $29.95.
A THOUSAND BRAINS: A New Theory of
Intelligence.
Jeff Hawkins. Foreword by Richard Dawkins. Silicon
Valley neuroscientist Hawkins, who talked about this
book in an April Skeptical Inquirer Presents online
talk, here describes extraordinary new (starting in
2016) findings about how the brain works—one of life’s
most fundamental mysteries. It involves the brain’s
making maps and reference frames and multiple models of
the world, hundreds of thousands of them. Most of the
cells in your neocortex are dedicated to creating and
manipulating these reference frames, one in each of many
neatly stacked columns, which the brain uses to plan and
think. With this new insight, some of neuroscience’s
biggest questions start to come into view, says Hawkins.
“Don’t read this book at bedtime,” Richard Dawkins
writes in his introduction. “It won’t give you
nightmares. But it is so exhilarating, so stimulating,
it’ll turn your mind into a whirling maelstrom of
excitingly provocative ideas.” Basic Books, 2021, 272
pp., $30.00.
THREATS: Intimidation and Its Discontents.
David P. Barash. Barash, a noted evolutionary biologist
and professor emeritus of psychology at the University
of Washington, examines the nature of threats. Divided
into three sections (The Natural World, Individuals and
Society, and International Affairs), his book explores
the dynamics of threat and counter-threat, including the
fear of death, Hell, and strangers. The whole book is
insightful, though the sections of most interest to
skeptics involve inflated and exaggerated threats,
including Stranger Danger: “Fearing leads to
threatening, and threats, in turn (whether real or
imagined), lead to greater fear, resulting in a closely
coupled system of reciprocal stimulation” (89). This has
broad implications for society, ranging from gun
violence (two-thirds of gun owners are motivated by fear
of violent crime, despite a steep decline in violence)
to police misconduct and nuclear deterrence. Oxford
University Press, 2020, 248 pp., $18.21.