A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

4th September, 2009 by Christina - 4 Comments

The problem with a book that has the word “brief” in the title is just that. Brief. Brevity may be the wit of the soul, but when reading about physics theories, I want more. MORE!

A Brief History of Time is a great book. I enjoyed it immensely and it helped me to understand all those chapters about black holes and string theory that seemed to pop up in other books. But with each explanation, I wanted to delve further into theories or history to understand what exactly Hawking is talking about, question upon question piling up and no one around to explain it.

Now Hawking, besides being a physics genius, is a bit of a writing genius as well. Tangent time to explain: When I was a kid, my dad would sometimes help with my math homework. He’d get exasperated that I wasn’t understanding a concept. Things would often end in tears. The problem–he understands precisely what he’s saying and explaining, but he lacks the words to explain things to the lay person who doesn’t know.

Hawking, however, manages to explain singularities and how time evolved for the lay person. He breaks it down and gives the super-basic overview without being patronizing or assuming we know what he’s talking about. However, Joe Schmoe who is happy with the super-basic overview of things isn’t the type of person who’s that interested in actually knowing what E=MC^2 actually means. The people who are going to pick up this book, who are interested in learning more–we’re not going to be satisfied. And like me they want more; the super-basic explanation is not enough.

As I went along reading, it took awhile to realize that time is sort of the protagonist of this particular story. Time as a character, not a concept. And time is entwined with the birth and death of our universe as well as physical space and how it all works and why we’re here. Truly mind-boggling. The more I type, the more I want to just talk about what I read.

At the end of the book (and when he says brief, he means brief), Hawking mentions that it is possible for there to be no answer, just a never-ending series of things to figure out. Granted, he believes there is an answer and that one day in the near-ish future we’ll figure it out. I don’t believe physicists would be happy if that’s the case; it would be the cool guy who figures it all out, but then what is left to keep exploring?

It reminds me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and a very specific quote that seems to aptly apply to everything Hawking talks about:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

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Why Beauty is Truth by Ian Stewart

18th June, 2009 by Christina - No Comments

And with this post we are now caught up on all our reviews! This makes me very excited and very sad. I’m working on some weightier books right now so the next few weeks will most likely be review-scarce and I’ll have to focus on things like comics, decorating with books, and some random news tidbits I’d like to share.

When I last visited my parents, my dad asked if I had nerd envy. I most definitely do. As I discussed in my review of Zero, I believe my educational experience could have been better when it comes to math. Besides different teaching methods, I recall particularly bad experiences that may have turned me against math at a young age. When I was 7, I was given detention for something like not completing my math homework. The teacher was a real witch (and my parents will agree with me on that front) and loved her three little pets who understood things quicker then the rest of us. In another class, a boy would scratch his nails on the chalkboard and I got in trouble for screaming at him. The noise is particularly painful to me and just reading Why Beauty is Truth would make a phantom of that dreadful sound. I’m considering hypno-therapy for it.

So it’s odd to me after years of being disinterested and only adequate in math and science classes that now I should be fascinated by it all. As a result, I’ve been purchasing plenty of math and physics books (never got that far in high school) that are written for people like me who sort of “get it” and are trying to wrap their brains around, well, everything. Like Zero, Why Beauty is Truth spends a lot of time focusing on the history of mathematical development. There is of course some overlap in information (Euclid, Pythagorias) but with focus on slightly different areas. With Zero we were learning about the discovery of infinity and vacuums whereas in Why Beauty is Truth sends us more towards string theory and search for the “Theory of Everything.”

For the most part I enjoyed the book, but I feel very inadequate in my ability to review it. While it is written mostly for the layperson, there’s a slight assumption that the reader is at least vaguely familiar with certain concepts when not all of us are. I’m still not particularly sure what a Lie Group is, but I have a better understanding of Schrödinger’s Cat and am at a loss as to how symmetry applies to natural science. So many other terms are flying around the book that I wonder if I missed something or if it’s just not clearly written. I think I “got” it while reading, but the terms mean absolutely nothing to me outside of the context of their introductions in the book because of my deficiency as a mathematician. Because I’m not one.

However, like I said, I enjoyed the book and found the histories of the mathematicians and physicists who have been able to work through and create a symbolic way of explaining how our world works was quite fascinating. Some of their stories are so tragic and some of them accomplished so much in a very short lifespan. I think that what attracts me to these books is the orderliness of using math to describe…everything. Granted, there is still a ways to go in our understanding of how the universe works, and Stewart points that out while discussing the limitations of string theory and alternative theories working towards explaining everything.

It could be that no Theory of Everything is possible. Although mathematical equations–”laws of nature”–have so far been very successful as explanations of our world , there is no guarantee that this process must continue. Perhaps the universe is less mathematical than physicists imagine. (p.222)

Currently my awe leads me to believe that there is a “Theory of Everything,” even if humans never figure it out. That’s not to say I believe in life on other planets–the jury is still out on that one. But looking at the math around us, in the seeds of a sunflower or understanding the Doppler effect, I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that everything isn’t mathematical. Of course, that’s a rather elitist opinion for a rather small being in a large universe. Stewart continues by questioning: “who are we to impose our parochial aesthetic on the cosmos?” (p.222).

In Why Beauty is Truth, the concept that we don’t know what we don’t know is brought up through the example of Flatland–a two-dimensional being in a two-dimensional world has no reason to know of three-dimensional worlds and shapes. Humans are not different; we are tiny specs in the scheme of things and we want things to make sense. This is why we create gods and symbols to understand math and language. But we can only work within our own limitations and hope that through learning we can surpass those limitations.

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Killer Stitch by Maggie Sefton

12th June, 2009 by Christina - No Comments

Apparently my spurt of fluff reading before picking up some physics and Russian-Lit had a theme of being part of a series. Maggie Sefton’s knitting mystery series is not something I would normally have on my list, but it was recommended at a much needed time. Also, a bit of a spoiler in the review–highlight over the area after SPOILER below if you don’t mind/don’t intend to read the book.

When I lived in Queens I had a crazy landlord. CRAZY!

She would come into the apartment when we weren’t home, go through our trash, there were all sorts of run-ins with her and angry arguments about the cockroaches and clogged drains. The biggest problem with her was the lack of heat. When we spoke to her about it, she said we just needed to knock when we got home and she’d turn it on. However, it would take two hours to kick in and she would turn it off at ten. Mornings were a lot of fun too. On weekends she wouldn’t turn the heat on until she knew we were up–so we’d stomp and drop things to make sure she knew we were awake.

Despite the heat eventually being turned on for the day, we had major drafts and she’d have it on at the bare minimum. Apparently, as she would yell at us, the place would be roasting if only we’d cover the windows in plastic, tape, and thick curtains. Since we were not nocturnal (and I’m still not, no clue about the ex-roommate), we refused and decided to live in many layers of sweaters and socks staying in bed in exchange for sunlight.

Mom lent me the knitting books thinking they’d be a light fun way to spend those hours under the covers. And they were–talk about warm and cozy. The majority of action takes place in a yarn shop as the heroine learns to knit and solves murders. The descriptions of the yarn made me want to knit as this way I’d be doing something and have a blanket over me. So I did learn to knit, but I didn’t finish the blanket until I was in a new apartment the next fall and had an insane amount of heat coming out of the radiators.

The fourth book in the series, Killer Stitch (and by the way, I love the word play of the titles and their knitting references to murder, but they have nothing to do with the particular book’s plot) wasn’t my favorite–it seemed to lack the female-bonding that goes on in the yarn shop in earlier books despite having a plot line that relied much on the comfort and confidence we get from close friendships. It could possibly be that I read the first three books in a row about two years ago. Sefton is a bit cookie-cutter by using a formulaic mystery template–in Killer Stitch it was easy to figure out “who-done-it” having read the previous books as it’s SPOILER always someone on the periphery of the action rather than anyone the book may try to steer you towards as a foil to the obvious innocent first accused. In this case, the friend who makes all of three small appearances that lead us from one incorrect suspect to another. It’s still an entertaining and light read so long as you’re not the type of person who likes mysteries that give them a challenge or are solvable based on the clues given throughout the book–everything is rather circumstantial and based on gut feelings/assumptions in this type of book.

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Hot Dense Space

18th May, 2009 by Christina - 1 Comment

I SWEAR that I have book reviews coming.  Five to be exact.

However, distraction came along when Matt and I had a conversation this morning in which I was being mathematically contemplative until it took a turn for the funny. 

This weekend I received the first disc of the first season of The Big Bang Theory.  The show is hilarious and I definitely know some geeks (and secretly harbor a desire to be one) similar to the characters on the show.  Since I’d just finished some books contemplating happiness (zen/finding yourself) and some fiction, I decided to let the show inspire me into returning to mathematics.  

Now, I could go on and on (and on and on and on if time were linear) about how my education failed me in the math/science department and I have a terrible memory for recalling what happened five days ago to me, much less 300 years ago to someone else.  But I won’t.  Instead, I’ll mention how as I get older, I become more and more fascinated with the beauty of math.  My new book is Why Beauty is Truth by Ian Stewart.  This has nothing to do with shallow behavior or hormones/sexual attraction.  It’s about symmetry and takes the reader through a history of mathematics before segueing into the main subject.  A lot of the books I read on math are for the lay person who isn’t particularly strong in that field, so I’ve heard a lot about the history before (and never remember it). 

Let me tell you, base-sixty is a bitch.  Seriously.  Babylonians and their stupid wedge writing confuses the hell out of me.  Anyway, I’m not particularly far into the book yet, but reading in this vein always gets my brain going on a physics track and contemplating black holes, the fourth dimension, etc.  Combined with the show, I haven’t thought of much else for the past two days.  Which leads us to my reading an article on the Hubble Telescope repairs and degeneration into the following (which Matt also posted on Good Old Rock):

Christina:  They just fixed Hubble which they say should let us see back 13 billion years (approx.).
Christina:  With speed of light and all that jazz – if there was life on another planet in another galaxy – wouldn’t we find out about them after it was too late.
Christina:  Like they could build a teleporting ship to come kill us, and we wouldn’t know because we’d be dead cause we didn’t see it coming?
Matt:  They probably already did.
Matt:  And we just didn’t notice yet.
Christina:  Because it just hasn’t happened in linear time yet?
Matt:  Or because we are paying too much attention to Grey’s Anatomy.

—

Christina:  Stupid humans.
Christina: “Why didn’t you scientists see the aliens coming?”
Christina: “Well, we noticed bacterial life on another planet, but that was 12 billion years ago based on speed of light…and we were too busy reading Twilight to bond with our tween daughters to give it more thought.”

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Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife

21st January, 2009 by Christina - 5 Comments

As a former art student, I have a fond place in my heart for the Golden Ratio. 1.618 might just be my favorite number (in fact, I included it on a dating profile once. Nerds apparently don’t use Match.com). After reading The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number, I decided that my bookshelves needed more math oriented tomes.

Enter Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife. For quite a while, it spent time on my Amazon Wish List before my receiving it as a Christmas gift this year. Most likely, it would have sat longer on my shelf had I not seen a man thoroughly engaged in reading his own copy on the subway while I finished reading book 005.: The Masque of the Black Tulip.

In theory it’s set-up similarly to The Golden Ratio: the book starts by talking about how early man counted and the absence of zero in that counting system; it is more philosophy than practice. It goes from there to discuss how mathematics grew with different cultures and the effect of the Christian Church through suppression of idea that contradicted the Aristolian theories. There’s a good dose of theology – I had no idea that mathematics were so closely related to religion – that the absence of zero and infinity proved God; and later vice versa, their existence proved God. (Amazon even recommended a book to me today: Is God a Mathematician?. I definitely need to add that book to the list.) Zero makes me re-evaluate the organization of my bookshelves – should math share a shelf with religion now? Or do I keep it in the natural sciences & non-fiction shelf?

I wish I could write the enthusiam I felt while reading – my notes questioning the vacuum/infinity of the universe (“What are we expanding in to? But if the universe is infinate, how can we be expanding?”). Although formulas and concepts are broken down for the lay person, I still have notes scribbled to learn more about Zeno’s Paradoxes and atomism.

While it never probed too deeply into the philosophy, the book was rather difficult for me. Reading Zero made me realize how woefully inadequate my education was in the field of mathematics. The more I read, the more I become fascinated by the natural place mathematics has in nature and our lives. I want to devour more and more information but am stunted by what little I know. Early on the book only deals with basic mathematics – it’s easy for me to understand the general concepts of base systems and quadratic equations. And then we get to calculus…

The better one’s grasp of complex formulas and theories, the easier the book will be. But even for the non-mathematically inclined, it’s a pretty easy read. The philosophy is really interesting and a break-down of how different theories were created and tested is what grabs you. The dissection of how Fermat’s Last Theorem works is left out but it’s mention will either make sense to the reader or cause someone to do as I do by scanning Wikipedia or calling my math genius father.

As a kid, my father would often reduce me to tears helping with my homework. I would guess – subtract? 5? 3? Multiply? Word problems were the worst – they made no sense to me. He would get frustrated at my inability to understand that which made perfect sense to him (he’s not a teacher by any means but rather a genius electrical engineer) and I lacked the communication skills at that age to explain what was making me confused.

Over the MLK, Jr. holiday, we attempted this again as I had my father teach me Binary. We discussed the educational system’s approach to math and this discussion leads me to firmly believe we approach math in schools by catering to a few students who quickly grasp the material and let the rest shuffle through on a syllabus of required material – open book tests in algebra or geometry, grading on a curve, and advancement on barely passing grades does a disservice to students. I wonder if a different teaching approach would have made it easier and more interesting for students like me – or anyone seeing as how many finance people I work with balked at the copy of the book whenever it sat out on my desk.

I could probably go on and on about education. Chances are I’ll peruse a few used book stores for old text books in order to re-teach myself algebra until I can work my way up to more complex areas. Zero was engaging enough to further my interest and was written in an entertaining way that had me chuckling along with the crazy adventures of mathematicians – oh that silly world of numbers!

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