The Edge of the Unknown: 101 Things You Don't Know About Science and No One Else Does Either - Hardcover

Trefil, James S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395728622 ISBN 13: 9780395728628

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1996

Synopsis

A physicist and science commentator for National Public Radio offers an entertaining, highly accessible look at the most pressing questions in science today, including the likelihood of extra-terrestrial intelligence and of a medicinal cure for tumors.

About this title

About the Author

James Strefil is Robinson Professor of Physics at George Mason University.

Reviews

Overlook the fatuous subtitle; here is a competent and sometimes fascinating tour of the frontiers of scientific inquiry. Trefil, a physicist with 20 previous popular science titles to his credit, has chosen an interesting premise: drawing from all the major disciplines, he presents 101 scientific questions, their theoretical underpinnings and likely resolutions, each in no more than three pages. Lay readers will appreciate being able to satisfy their curiosity about the likelihood of time travel, the causes of cancer and the future of the computer with this user-friendly resource. Trefil has a gift for constructing useful analogies?it is no mean feat to explain quasars or dark matter or the intricacies of the human immune system in just a few pages. However, the book lacks an overarching theme, unless it is a pervasive admiration for the accomplishments of the scientific community, and lacks connective tissue between sections and chapters. Readers may wonder how fuzzy logic, treated in one chapter, relates to the binary functioning of computers, discussed in several others. But they will come away sharing the author's respect and awe for the achievements of those who scan the geometric surfaces of viruses and construct molecular remedies for deadly diseases, probe the chaotic system of the earth's atmosphere and even try to save us from our genetically encoded craving for fat.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Designed for browsers interested in science, each topic in Trefil's book manifests at least one of the following characteristics: it addresses an age-old question; a discovery or solution in the area is imminent; or it has, or will have, a practical impact on people's lives. Some questions are hardy perennials, such as the discovery of a comet on a collision course for Earth, but Trefil's largest category concerns newer health-related issues. Of the 10 problems he designates as science's most important, 7 pertain to the human body. Whatever the browser's personal interest (physics, astronomy, geology, or biology), Trefil answers with a three-page brief of the specialty's various areas of ongoing research. The hunt may be cosmic (the search for dark matter thought to be key to the fate of the universe) or it may be pedestrian (the engineering of a fat substitute) but a breakthrough in either will interest many. For libraries, Trefil provides a flexible response to a spectrum of patron requests. Gilbert Taylor

Trefil, a physics professor and a prolific science writer (From Atoms to Quarks, LJ 11/15/94), has expressed concern over the lack of scientific literacy in the general public. He attempts to address this problem by considering scientific questions that are not likely to be answered soon but where progress is being made. All these topics are currently in the news, and many have public-policy implications. The first section is devoted to issues Trefil considers to be the top ten problems in science today, including gene therapy, aging, consciousness, the living brain, and the origins of life. Arranged by general subject, other essays discuss the physical sciences, astronomy and cosmology, earth and planetary sciences, biology, medicine, evolution, and computers. The book's major shortcoming is that treatment of each issue is very cursory (only three-page summations) with no historical context or extended discussion of the philosophical consequences of scientific discoveries. Trefil also does his readers a disservice by failing to provide bibliographies of references that consider these issues in more detail. Of questionable value to public libraries.?Bruce Slutsky, New Jersey Inst. of Technological Lib., Newark
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395728622
• ISBN 13: 9780395728628
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 355