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Short Book Reviews
Short notes 1993
Title THE RISE OF PUBLIC SCIENCE. Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660-1750 Author L. Stewart. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. xxxiv + 453, ,45.00/US$69.95. What became of the rhetorical promises of the early Royal Society? How was it that the experimental philosophy of the early Newtonians was regarded by some as destructive of British society and by others as its saviour? Why did numerous entrepreneurs in the eighteenth century come to see Newton's disciples as the means to ensure success in the wild world of technical adventures? These are some of the questions, the author seeks to answer by exploring the social attitudes to-ward the claims and activities of the natural philosophers in Britain from the Restoration to the first stage of industrialization.
Title THE VOICE OF THE DOLPHINS AND OTHER STORIES. Expanded edition. Author L. Szilard. Introduction by B.J. Bernstein. Publisher Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1992, pp. vi + 182, US$24.50 Cloth; US$10.95 Paper. This volume was first published in 1961. It comprises a collection of stories by the physicist Leo Szilard (1898-1964). This edition includes a further story which was the origin of the idea for the Moscow-Washington hot line.
D.J. Kevles wrote of the book, "The book is fiction, but it is fiction of a Swiftian nature, ad-dressed to major issues, including those of geopolitics, the arms race, disarmament, population control, the morality of war, and the mismatch between modern man's enormous technical capabilities and his limited moral capacities. There is a continuing vitality in much of the material, which is instructive about apprehensions manifest not only in Szilard's day but in our own concerning the social role of science and technology. I know of no other modern book like it."
Title GLOBAL WARNING ... GLOBAL WARMING. Author M.A. Benarde. Publisher New York: Wiley, 1992, pp. xi + 317, ,24.50. e book begins with a discussion of seasonal and atmospheric factors and the potential effects of a higher CO2. It describes the work of many researchers who are seeking ways to cope with the expected changes and others who are finding some solutions to the problems.
Title GLOBAL ENVIRNOMENTAL CHANGE. Understanding the Human Dimensions. Author P.C. Stern, O.R. Young and D. Druckman(Eds.). Publisher Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1992, pp. ix + 308. ,21.95. This volume gives a strategy for combining the efforts of national and social scientists to understand how the actions of humans influence the global environment and how change in the environment better influences humans.
Title ADVERSE EFFECTS OF PERTUSSIS AND RUBELLA VACCINES. A Report of the Committee to Review the Adverse Consequences of Pertussis and Rubella Vaccines. Author C.P. Howson, C.J. Howe and H.V. Fineberg (Eds.). Publisher Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1991, pp. xii + 367, US$39.95. There is some evidence that vaccination against pertussis, whooping cough, and rubella, German measles, is in a small number of cases associated with increased risk of serious illness. Here the controversy over the evidence is examined and a documented assessment of the risk of illness following immunization is presented.
Title THE HEAVENS ARE FALLING. The Scientific Prediction of Catastrophes in Our Time. Author W.J. Karplus. Publisher New York: Plenum, 1992, pp. xviii + 320, US$24.95. The most debated catastrophes, that many scientists have predicted will endanger the lives of many people all over the world, are discussed. These catastrophies include: the depletion of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect, nuclear radiation, the population explosion, earthquakes. The strengths and weaknesses of arguments of the seriousness of these calamities are given. The shortcomings of scientific prediction are presented.
Title ELEPHANTS IN THE VOLKSWAGEN: Facing the Tough Questions About Our Overcrowded Country. Author L. Grant (Ed.). Publisher New York: Freeman, 1992, pp. xii + 272, £18.95 Cloth; £11.95 Paper. In the last century, the United States of America has grown from seventy-five million people to two hundred and fifty million. How can an optimum population be identified and achieved? The answers to these questions are discussed. The editor is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environmental and Population Affairs for the U.S. government.
Title STATISTICAL PROBLEM SOLVING. Author W.E. Carr. Publisher Milwaukee: ASQC Quality Press/New York: Dekker, 1992, pp. xv + 204, US$30.00. Two hundred and fifty-one problems and their solutions are given here. These problems are divided into fifteen categories: probability, combinations and permutations, games, sampling, surveys, population percent defective, statistical process control, measurement accuracy, quality control audits, sampling plans, correlation, reliability, moving averages, significance tests, confidence intervals, nonstatistical problems.
Title LIKELIHOOD. Expanded edition. Author A.W.F. Edwards. Publisher Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, pp. xix + 275, US$48.00 Cloth; US$18.00 Paper. The main text of this expanded edition is the same as that of the 1984 paperback edition except for a few corrections. An added appendix contains five re-printed papers of the author.
Title BEYOND THE LIMITS. Global Collapse or a Sustainable Future. Author D.H. Meadows, D.L. Meadows and J. Randers. Foreword by J. Tinbergen. Publisher London: Earthscan, 1992, pp. xix + 300, ,9.95. This volume is the sequel to The Limits to Growth which was published twenty years ago by The Club of Rome. The first volume showed that, if growth trends continued unchanged, the limits to physical growth on the planet would be reached within one hundred years. The book made headlines around the world and sold nine million copies in twenty-nine languages. Many refused to accept the book's conclusions, but global scientific evidence has confirmed the conclusions. In the new volume, it is shown that the world has already overshot some if its limits and if present trends continue, it is virtually certain there will be global collapse.
But there is a choice. It is shown that a sustainable society is technically and economically feasible if growth in material consumption and population are eased down along with more efficiency in the use of materials and energy, thus achieving a sustain-able global future.
Title A SCIENTIST'S VOICE IN AMERICAN CULTURE. Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Scientific Method. Author A.E. Moyer(Ed.). Publisher Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1992, pp. xviii + 301, US$40.00. Simon Newcomb was born in 1835 and died in 1909, his life spanning the interval between two visits of Halley's Comet. Although a mathematical astronomer, Newcomb spent a large part of his life as a spokesman for the scientific community. The book is divided into three parts: (i) an introduction to the rhetoric of scientific methods, (ii) Newcomb's life and thought, and (iii) a commentary on pragmatism and scientific method.
Title EMINENT ECONOMISTS. Their Life Philosophies. Author M. Szenberg (Ed.). Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. xvi + 304, ,24.95/US$34.95. Twenty-two short autobiographies of economists are contained in this volume. Those included are: M.Allais, K.J. Arrow, W.J. Baumol, A. Bergson, K.E.Boulding, K. Brunner, J.M. Buchanan, G. Debreu, E.D. Domar, N. Georgescu-Roegen, F. Hahn, C.P. Kindle-berger, L.R. Klein, R.A. Musgrave, A. Robinson, W.W.Rostow, P.A. Samuelson, T. Scitovsky, H.A. Simon, R.M. Solow, J. Tinbergen and S. Tsuru.
Title SCIENCE WITH A SMILE. An Anthology selected by Author R.L. Weber. Publisher Bristol: Institute of Physics, 1992, pp. 452, ,19.50/US$39.00. In this volume, Professor Weber once again shows the humorous side of science and scientists. His previous anthologies include A Random Walk in Science (1973) and More Random Walks in Science (1982). An article from the statistical literature is H. Wainer's article, "How to display data badly" American Statistician, 38 (1984) 137-147.
Title MATHEMATICAL CRANKS. Author U. Dudley. Publisher Washington, D.C.: The Mathematical Association of America, 1992, pp. x + 372, US$25.00. From the back cover: "Mathematical Cranks is about mathematical cranks: people who think that they have done something impossible, like trisecting the angle, squaring the circle, duplicating the cube, or proving Euclid's parallel postulate; people who think they have done something they have not, like proving Fermat's Last Theorem, verifying Goldbach's Conjecture, or finding a simple proof of the Four Colour Theorem; people who have eccentric views, from mild (thinking that we should count by 12s instead of 10s) to crazy (thinking that second-order differential equations will solve all problems in economics, politics, and philosophy); people who pray in matrices; people who find the American Revolution ruled by the number 57; people who have in common something to do with mathematics and something odd, peculiar, or bizarre."
Title SCIENCE AND TECHNICAL WRITING. A Manual of Style. Author P. Rubens (Ed.). Publisher New York: Holt, 1992, pp. xxiii + 513, US$40.00. This manual aims to teach writers how to plan consistent and useful scientific and technical documents.
Title THE ECONOMIST. DESK COMPANION. How to Measure, Convert, Calculate and Define Practically Anything. Author P. Butler(Ed.) Publisher New York: Holt, 1992, pp. 272, US$40.00. This volume is divided into four parts: Part I describes the metric, British and American measurement systems; Part II gives an A to Z subject listing of definitions, special measurements, formulae and calculations for specific industries; Part III gives conversion tables for length, area, volume, etc; Part IV includes common abbreviations and symbols.
Title COMPARABLE WORTH. Theories and Evidence. Author P. England(Ed.). Publisher New York: De Gruyter, 1992, pp. xii + 346, US$46.95 Cloth; US$22.95 Paper. This book attempts to give an interdis-ciplinary examination of the issue of comparable worth, i.e. the comparisons between the pay in different jobs.
Title PI IN THE SKY. Counting, Thinking and Being. Author J.D. Barrow. Publisher Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. xii + 317, £14.95. J.D. Barrow presents a study of the origins, the meaning and the mystery of mathematics. He explores the answers to questions like "What is mathematics?" "Why does it work?" "Is it just an elaborate computer game?" In the last paragraph of Chapter 1, he writes: "Ever since ancient times philosophers have wrestled with the problem of the relation between the world as it really is and our perception of it. We have seen that mathematics is a peculiar part of the world in which we live but its exact nature is tantalizingly different from just about everything else we encounter. In the chapters that follow we shall explore some of the ideas that have been proposed to explain what mathematics is and why it describes the way of the world so widely and so successfully. We shall find reflected there many of the traditional alternatives that human minds have grasped when coming to grips with the problems of the nature and meaning of the world around us. There are those who seek to explain the problem away, concentrating instead upon strait-jacketing things within a rigid logical system which isolates them from the values and meanings in the outside world. Then, there are the 'doubting Thomases' who wish never to stray too far from what they can simply see and touch. They believe only in what they can make or measure. There are those who perceive only the fruits of their own minds; their world is of their own making. And then there are those who believe the ultimate nature of things resides in another world, a world whose contents we can by some means discover like explorers in the dark: for them 'pi' really is in the sky. Before we see what these searchers think about mathematical thinking, we need to look into the past to see just how 'natural' a human activity counting really was, and is; where and how it began and spread. To do this we must begin to uncover something of the origins of numbers in the dim and distant days before there were any mathematicians at all."
Title REVOLUTIONS IN MATHEMATICS. Author D. Gillies (Ed.). Publisher Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. viii + 353, £55.00. Reprinted and new papers concerning patterns of change in mathematics are included. The volume be-gins with M. Crowe's ten 'laws' concerning patterns of change in the history of mathematics; the tenth law being "Revolutions never occur in mathematics". Crowe justifies Law 10 by stating "... this law depends upon at least the minimal stipulation that a necessary characteristic of a revolution is that some previously existing entity (be it King, constitution or theory) must be overthrown and irrevocably discarded. Others believe that although older theories have not been discarded, there have been radical innovations which have altered mathematics and may be considered as revolutions. The book makes interesting reading.
Title BEFORE WRITING. Volume I. From Counting to Cuneiform. Author D. Schmandt-Besserat. Foreword by W.W. Hallo. Austin, Publisher Texas: University of Texas Press, 1992, pp. xv + 269, US$60.00. Before Writing points out that when writing began in Mesopotamia it was not a sudden and spontaneous invention. It was the outcome of many thousands of years' worth of experience at manipulating symbols.
A system of counters (tokens) appeared following the invention of agriculture (8000 BC) as the immediate precursor of Sumerian writing. These tokens constituted the first system of signs for communication. Before Writing shows how numeracy was the privilege of an elite and shows how the more complex the token system became the more power it conferred. The book includes many pictures and illustrations.
Title REALITY RULES: PICTURING THE WORLD IN MATHEMATICS. Volume I. The Fundamentals. Volume II. The Frontier. Author J.L. Casti. Publisher New York: Wiley, 1992, pp. xix + 388, pp. xx + 424, £42.50. From Chapter 1, "This book is about the ways and means of constructing "good" models of reality, the properties of such models, the means of encoding specific realities into definite formal systems and the procedures for interpreting the properties of the formal system in terms of the given real world situation."
Title FOURFIELD: COMPUTERS, ART AND THE 4TH DIMENSION. Author T. Robbin. Foreword by R. Rucker. Introduction by L.D. Henderson. Publisher Boston: Little, Brown, 1992, pp. 199, US$35.00. Using the computer as a tool, the author has devoted his life as an artist to depicting the fourth dimension. The book is a record of the author's quest.
Title THE DYNAMICS OF AMBIGUITY. Author G. Caglioti. Translated by A.D. Gucci. Publisher Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992, pp. xx + 170, DM.98.00. The original edition was published in Italian in 1983. H. Haken writes in the Preface to the English edition: "Quite often, science and art are considered as the "two cultures" dividing our society into two groups. But Caglioti, who is an excellent physicist and has a deep understanding of art, shows how this gap can not only be bridged, but how important phenomena in science and art have a common root. To this end he uses concepts such as symmetry, order, entropy, and information and refers to synergetics and nonequili-brium thermodynamics. He develops the most remarkable ideas on the perception of ambiguous figures and thus establishes relations with the cognitive sciences.
This book will be of great interest to all people who are interested in art or science. I am sure that anyone starting from his own background soon will enter into resonance with Caglioti's approach, which will carry him beyond the cultural "gap".
There is one issue on which I do not entirely share Caglioti's opinion. Synergetics and nonequili-brium thermodynamics do not only have different and independent roots, but also their concepts and methods are entirely different. This comment of mine does not lower the value of Caglioti's book, however. Quite on the contrary it shows that Caglioti is dealing with "hot subjects" presently occurring in a revolution of our scientific thinking. I am sure the readers will be fascinated by this book."
The book also contains many diagrams and pictures.
Title PREDICTING THE FUTURE. The Darwin College Lectures. Author L. Howe and A. Wain (Eds.). Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. v + 195, £18.95/US$29.95. "Predicting the Future" examines man's urge to look into the future. The essays included are: "Introduction: Predicting the Future" by L. Howe; "The future of the universe" by S. Hawking; "Chaos" by I. Stewart; "Comets and the world's end" by S. Schaffer; "Predicting the economy" by F. Hahn; "The medical frontier" by I. Kennedy; "Divine providence in late antiquity" by A. Cameron; "Buddhist prediction: How open is the future?" by R. Gombrich; "The last judge-ment" by D. Cupitt. These essays were delivered at the sixth annual series of Darwin College lectures in Cambridge in 1991.
Title IF I WERE A RICH MAN COULD I BUY A PANCREAS? AND OTHER ESSAYS ON THE ETHICS OF HEALTH CARE. Author A.L. Caplan. Publisher Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992, pp. xvii + 348, £25.00. The essays by A.L. Caplan are divided into six parts: 1. The nature of applied ethics, 2. Ethical is-sues in animal and human experimentation, 3. Advances in reproduction and genetics, 4. Transplants and other unnatural acts, 5. Aging, chronic illness, and rehabilitation, 6. Money, medicine, and morality. Among many themes, Caplan argues that more humane treatment should be given to animals when they are used in scientific research. He discusses also the challenges to health care systems as the population grows older, and the public policy issues of cost containment and rationing.
Title AIDS AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORY. Author V. Berridge and P. Strong (Eds.). Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. x + 284, ,35.00/US$54.95. The advent of AIDS has led to a revival of interest in the historical relationship of disease to society. The volume is divided into two parts: 1. The pre-history of AIDS, 2. AIDS as history.
Title FREE RADICALS AND AGING. Author I. Emerit and B. Chance(Eds.). Publisher Basel: Birkhäuser, 1992, pp. ix + 437, Sw.fr.218.00. Among the various theories proposed to account for the process of aging, the free radical theory is of interest since it includes the possibility of retarding the process. Part III of the book includes epidemiologic studies from several European countries.
Title DIRT AND DISEASE. POLIO BEFORE FDR. Author N. Rogers. Publisher New Brunswick, w Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992, pp. x + 258.
This volume presents a social, cultural and medical history of the polio epidemic in the United States of America. Polio struck wealthy and middle class children as well as those of the poor. Polio was blamed on a filthy urban environment, bad hygiene and poverty and particularly on the fly. President Roosevelt helped to recast the image of polio and to remove the stigma. By the 1950's, the public were looking to science for prevention and therapy. The author reminds the reader that in spite of the history of successful vaccines, there were competing therapies, research tangents and many who died from early vaccine trials.
Title DIET, DISEASE AND DEVELOPMENT. Author W.C. Edmundson, P.V. Sukhatme and S.A. Edmundson. Publisher New Delhi: Macmillan India, 1992, pp. viii + 324, Rs.145.00. This volume explains the priorities of human health in terms of distribution, incidence and significance of disease. It combines an introduction to the medical management of priority problems with new in-
sights into the practical education of the individual within the community.
Title THE DIARY OF WILLIAM HARVEY. THE IMAGINARY JOURNAL OF THE PHYSICIAN WHO REVOLUTIONIZED MEDICINE Author J. Hamburger. Translated by B. Wright. Publisher New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992, pp. xii + 255, US$14.95. John Kenneth Galbraith has described this book as a "superb adventure in history, science and imagination". Le Figaro said, "Scrupulously based on historical documents, the book is brilliant in the easy flow of its composition and the elegance of its writing".
Title TEACHERS AND SCHOLARS. A Memoir of Berkeley in Depression and War. Author R. Nisbet. Publisher New Brunswick: Transaction, 1992, pp. viii + 216, US$29.95/,21.95. From the book cover: "The University of California at Berkeley is today best known as a great research center and most popularly remembered as a major locus of campus unrest in the 1960s... . Between the Great Depression and entry into World War II, Berkeley was a unique window on a Western world in turmoil. All of the ideologies of the time - liberalism, socialism, populism, and fascism - impinged on the life of the campus. These ten years were critical in the history of the University itself. In Nisbet's view, the thirties was the last decade of "the old Berkeley", a school that conceived its primary mission as that of teaching. Although research was expected of every faculty member, its chief importance was widely held to be in its elevating effect on undergraduate instruction. This did not militate against the appearance of such giants in research as Andrew Lawson, Ernest Lawrence, and Herbert Evans.
In the shift from teaching to research, some have argued that Berkeley has lost something in community and consensus while others claim that the university has only diversified and enriched itself. Nisbet finds much to respect and criticize in both views. His great vision permits him to compare and contrast the Berkeley experience with other schools such as Harvard, Chicago, and Stanford. Rich in intellectual and social history, Teachers and Scholars is vitally pertinent to the educational questions and controversies of our own time. It answers these questions from the human ground up."
Title BRITISH SCIENTISTS AND THE MANHATTAN PROJECT. The Los Alamos Years. Author F.M. Szasz. Publisher New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992, pp. xx + 167, US$45.00. This book tells the story of the British scientists who went to Los Alamos, New Mexico to help develop the world's first nuclear weapons. These scientists were also to have a profound effect on the post-war world.
Title LORD KELVIN. His Influence on Electrical Measurements and Units. Author P. Tunbridge. Publisher London: Peregrinus, 1992, pp. ix + 107, £19.00. Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), who began life as William Thompson, was Britain's most outstanding scientist after Newton. His name has been assigned by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures to the unit of thermodynamic temperature as one of the basic inter-national standard units. Kelvin was the first to recognize that it was necessary to have a solid foundation of electrical units and standards. He paved the way for the establishment and international adoption of these units. He insisted on the metric system.
Title THE RECOLLECTIONS OF EUGENE P. WIGNER. (as told to Andrew Szanton). Author A. Szanton. Publisher New York: Plenum, 1992, pp. xxiv + 335, US$24.50. Eugene Wigner (1902 - ) is one of the foremost scientists of our time. This is the first major work about the author. The book also gives a history of the Manhattan Project and the history of nuclear physics.
Title FACING TOWARD GOVERNMENTS, NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL ADVICE. Author A Report of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government. Publisher New York: Carnegie Corporation, 1993, pp. 113. One feature of democracy in the United States of America is the very large number of independent non-governmental organizations that provide checks and balances to governments. This volume published by the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government is the first evaluation of these non-governmental organizations that are active in the area of science and technology. It is shown that these organizations are essential.
Title WORKING WITH CONGRESS. A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS. Author W.G. Wells, Jr. Publisher Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, 1992, pp. xiii + 153, US$12.95. This volume shows scientists and engineers how to understand, work with and communicate more effectively with the U.S. Congress.
Title THE APPRENTICESHIP OF A MATHEMATICIAN. Author A. Weil. Translated from the French by J. Gage. Publisher Basel: Birkhäuser, 1992, pp. 197, Sw.fr.58.00. This is the autobiography of the famous mathematician, André Weil (1906 - ).
Title C.P. SNOW AND THE STRUGGLE OF MODERNITY. Author J. De La Mothe. Publisher Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press/Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992, pp. xi + 243. The condition of modernity springs from the tension between science and the humanities. C.P. Snow (1905-1980) was a scientist, novelist and civil servant. He attempted to bridge the world of science and the humanities. The author argues that Snow's life and writings reflect a persistent struggle with the nature of modernity. Snow believed that science and technology were at the centre of modern life.
Title THEY ALL LAUGHED ... . Author I. Flatlow. Publisher New York: Harper Collins, 1992, pp. xv + 238, US$20.00. The volume explores the often crazy and accidental way scientific discoveries have led to many of the world's greatest inventions.
Title ON THE HOME FRONT. The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site. Author M.S. Gerber. Publisher Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992, pp. 312, US$35.00. From the book jacket: "The Hanford Site in southeastern Washington state was built by the Army Corps of Engineers and the DuPont Corporation during World War II to produce plutonium for America's first atomic weapons. The gigantic facility was immediately successful, producing and delivering in less then two years the plutonium for the world's initial atomic explosion and for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki that effectively ended World War II.
This first complete history of Hanford was made possible by the recent declassification of tens of thousands of formerly secret government documents relating to the construction, operation, and maintenance of the site. It describes the releases (planned and accidental) of radioactive and chemical contaminants; their pathways through the environment; attempts to correct problems under conditions of rapid, nearly chaotic change; and the secrecy of government opera-tions that made scientific review of Hanford processes virtually impossible."
Title COMPLEXITY: LIFE AT THE EDGE OF CHAOS. Author R. Lewin. Publisher New York: Macmillan, 1992, pp. x + 208, US$22.00. Complexity theory states that at the root of all complex systems, from the behaviour of molecules to the actions of nations to the balance of nature, lies a set of rules that when identified will lead to the unification of the life sciences. This volume is about the search for those rules.
Title SYMMETRY IN CHAOS. A Search for Pattern in Mathematics, Art and Nature. Author M. Field and M. Golubitsky. Publisher Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. xii + 218, ,19.95. The authors show how a chaotic process can lead eventually to symmetric patterns. The book includes many beautiful computer images linking symmetry and chaos. The mathematics required is also given.
Title CHALK UP ANOTHER ONE: THE BEST OF SIDNEY HARRIS. Author Foreword by L.M. Lederman. Publisher Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1992, pp. 146, US$10.95. L.M. Lederman writes in the Foreword: "There is an honorable tradition that relates humour and science... . In a sense, each cartoon is a scientific statement. Like all our publications, some are more significant than others. In each, a facet of our lives as scientists stands revealed - absurd, ludicrous, but each with its atom of truth. For scientists between classes or during a quiet night shift on the accelerator, there is nothing better to give you proper perspective on your science and your fellow scientists. For observers of the scientific scene ... the key to our conquest of matter, energy, space and time is provided by this profoundly hysterical collection of cartoons."
Title DICTIONARY OF STATISTICS AND METHODOLOGY. Author W.P. Vogt. Publisher Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1993, pp. xiv + 253, £14.95. From the Introduction: "This dictionary gives nontechnical definitions of statistical methodological terms used in the social and behavioral sciences. Special attention is paid to terms that most often prevent educated general readers from understanding journal articles and books in sociology, psychology, and political science - and in applied fields that build on those disciplines, such as education, policy studies, and administrative science. The dictionary provides definitions that will enable readers to get through a difficult article or passage."
Title HANDBOOK OF WRITING FOR THE MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES. Author N.J. Higham. Publisher Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1993, pp. xii + 241, US$21.50. This small volume discusses all the problems faced by authors when writing technical papers or giving papers. Although the emphasis is on mathematical writing, the points and issues discussed are relevant to all types of scientific writing. Each chapter begins with amusing and sound quotations. Two quotes given at the beginning of Chapter 4 are:
"There is almost no more beautiful sight than the simple declarative sentence" W. Zensier and "Quite aside from format and style, mathematical writing is supposed to say something. Put another way: the number
of ideas divided by the number of pages is supposed to be positive." J.L. Kelley.
Title TESTING TESTING. Author F.A. Hanson. Publisher Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1993, pp. ix + 378. From the introduction: "This book is about how our addiction to testing influences both society and ourselves as socially defined persons. The analysis focuses on tests of people, particularly tests in schools, intelligence tests, vocational interest tests, lie detection, integrity tests, and drug tests. A good deal of the descriptive material will be familiar to readers from their personal experience as takers and/or givers of tests. But testing, as with much of ordinary life, has implications that we seldom pause to ponder and often do not even notice. My aim is to uncover in the everyday operation of testing a series of well-concealed and mostly unintended consequences that exercise far deeper and more pervasive influence in social life than is commonly recognized."
Title AMERICAN LIVES. Looking Back at the Children of the Great Depression. Author J.A. Clausen. With a Foreword by G.H. Elder, Jr. Publisher New York: The Free Press, 1993, pp. xix + 592, ,26.95/US$35.00. The author has been associated with the well-known Berkeley Longitudinal Studies for years. Over three hundred men and women born in the 1920's in the California Bay area were studied intensively through their school years and periodically afterwards. The stories of six relatively happy and successful members of the cohort are given in detail as well as those of a few less fortunate members.
The data confirm that despite potentially disruptive social pressures, adolescent competence is a strong predictor of achievement and satisfaction in adult life.
Title SCIENCE AT THE FRONTIER. Volume I. Author A Greenwood, M.F. Bartusiak, B.A. Burke and E. Edelson. With a Foreword by F. Press. Publisher Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1992, pp. vi + 277, £18.95. This volume contains articles by younger scientists who report on research at the cutting edge. The branches included are: geology, photosynthesis, dynamical systems, astrophysics, gene regulation, magnetic resonance imaging, computation, atmospheric science, neural networks and physics.
Title ACID RAIN. Its Causes and its Effects on Inland Waters. Author B.J. Mason. Publisher Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. ix + 126, £15.95. This is an account of recent research on the acidification of lakes and streams and its effects on aquatic life. The work is in the main based on the experimental and modelling studies of the recent five-year Anglo-Scandinavian Surface Waters Acidification Programme.
Title THE CREATIVE MOMENT. How Science Made Itself Alien to Modern Culture. Author J. Schwartz. Publisher London: Cape, 1992, pp. xix + 252, ,16.99. From the preface: "Taken in historical sequence, the creative moments of Western science tell a story of the rise and present stagnation of the West. The industrial revolution has failed to materialize the hopes of universal emancipation raised by the promise of material abundance. Instead of global plenty and of the creative engagement of the human being with all aspects of culture that was envisaged by the scientific romantics of the nineteenth century, the human race is trapped in a web of exploitative relationships, with nature and with each other, which produces a dazzling culture of consumption for a minority in the North and a culture of acute poverty for the majority in the South. But at the same time our science, more than any other single human activity, shows clearly that we as a species have the capacity to create our world. The promise is still there.
Science is not a royal road to truth. It is not particularly objective. It does not necessarily bring out the best in people. Science is a human construction. It is what happens when human beings together try to make sense of their experience of nature. Works of science are ways of understanding created through human effort which, like works of art, can be interrogated for what they say about ourselves and our development. By finding out about our science we find out about ourselves."
Title LAWS OF THE GAME. How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance. Author M. Eigen and R. Winkler. Translated by R. Kimber and R. Kimber. First Published in 1965. Publisher Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. xiv + 347. The authors show how the elements of chance and rules underlie all that happens in the universe.
Title THE GOD PARTICLE. IF THE UNIVERSE IS THE ANSWER, WHAT IS THE QUESTION? Author L. Lederman with D. Teresi. Publisher Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993, pp. x + 434, US$24.95. "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." Democritus of Abdera.
With this quotation L. Lederman begins his story of the 2,500-year search for the answer to the question: what is the world made of?
From the book jacket: "Using humor, metaphor, and vivid storytelling, Leon Lederman takes us on an adventure into an invisible world." Lederman explains the need for a huge machine that will find the ultimate particle. He believes that its discovery will reduce the laws of physics to a very simple equation.
Title SCIENCE AFTER'40. OSIRIS. A RESEARCH JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ITS CULTURAL INFLUENCES. Second Series. Volume 7. Author A. Thackeray (Ed.). Publisher Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. ix + 307, US$39.00. Articles in this volume include those on big science, inventing the maser, cold fusion and hot history, recent sciences progress.
Title MATHEMATICS - THE MUSIC OF REASON. Author J. Dieudonné. Translated by H.G. Dales and J.C. Dales. Publisher Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992, pp. x + 287, DM.71.00. Jean Dieudonné is one of the best-known French mathematicians of the 20th century. He was one of the founding members of a small group of mathematicians who adopted the pen-name of Nicolas Bourbaki to write the treatise "The Elements of Mathematics". Dieudonné has written many books under his own name. This one is about who professional mathematicians are, what they really do, what questions they ask, how they go about trying to answer them, how they push forward the frontiers of knowledge bit by bit.
Title EXPLORING CHAOS. A GUIDE TO THE NEW SCIENCE OF DISORDER. Author N. Hall. Publisher New York: Norton, 1991, pp. 223, US$25.00. From the book jacket: "Chaos theory, it turns out, has a deeper meaning for our understanding of nature. All sorts of phenomena--from dripping faucets to swinging pendulums, from the unpredictability of the weather to the majestic parade of the planets, from heart rhythms to gold futures--are best perceived through the mathematical prism of chaos theory.
In this collection of incisive, front-line reports ably edited by Nina Hall for New Scientist magazine, internationally recognized experts such as Ian Stewart, Robert May, and Benoît Meandelbrot draw on the latest research to explain the roots of chaos in modern science and mathematics."
Title ALEXANDER A FRIEDMANN: THE MAN WHO MADE THE UNIVERSE EXPAND. Author E.A. Tropp, V.Y. Frenkel and A.D. Chernin. Translated by A. Dron and M. Burov. Publisher Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. x + 267, ,30.00/US$49.95. This biography of Alexander A. Friedmann was originally published in 1988. This is the first de-tailed biography of a scientist who made enormous contributions to the fields of hydrodynamics, meteorology and relativistic cosmology.
Title AMERICA CALLING. A Social History of the Telephone to1940. Author C.S. Fischer. Publisher Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1992, pp. xv + 424. This volume explores the social history of the telephone in North America up to World War II. From the preface: "The story of the telephone, as told here, has at its center, not a technology or a machine, but ordinary Americans encountering, mastering, and making commonplace one of the radically new technologies of the past few generations."
Title THE GLIM SYSTEM. Release 4 Manual. Author B. Francis, M. Green and C. Payne (Eds.). Publisher Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. xiv + 821, £55.00. From the preface: "GLIM4 is an extended version of the GLIM 3.77 system, a general-purpose program for fitting Generalized Linear Models together with associated facilities for managing, manipulating and displaying data. It is the result of a project sponsored by the GLIM Working Party of the Royal Statistical Society which has developed and supported all versions of the GLIM system. The contributors are all members of the GLIM Working Party. The new version, GLIM4, was developed at the Centre for Applied Statistics, University of Lancaster, U.K. under the direction of Brian Francis and Mick Green. It is distributed by the Numerical Algorithms Group."
Title MULTIMEDIA COMPUTING. Case Studies from MIT Project Athena. Author M.E. Hodges and R.M. Sasnett, with members and associates of the Visual Computing Group at MIT Project Athena. Publisher Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1993, pp. xvi + 302, ,27.95. This book provides a concise introduction to multimedia computing, i.e. the combination of audio, video, text and graphics, what it is and how it can be used.
Title MATHEMATICAL RESEARCH TODAY AND TOMORROW. Viewpoints of Seven Fields Medalists. Lectures given at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, Barcelona, Spain, June 1991. Author C. Casacuberta and M. Castellet (Eds.). Publisher Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992, pp. 112, DM.42.00. This volume contains the text of seven invited lectures by Fields Medalists plus a round table discussion. The medalists are: R. Thom, S. Novikov, S.-T. Yau, A. Connes, S. Smale, V.F.R. Jones and G. Faltings.
Title EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS. Author D.D. Davis and C.A. Holt. Publisher Princeton University Press, 1993, pp. viii + 572. This volume is the first book concerned with the use of laboratory experiments to evaluate economic propositions under controlled conditions. Although it is acknowledged that such experiments cannot be used in every situation, it is argued that in certain situations these are very effective.
Title LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY IN SPACE AND TIME. Author J. Nichols. Publisher Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. xv + 358, US$39.95. From the book jacket: "Using a data base of 174 languages representing the world's linguistic families and surveying a number of structural features and grammatical categories as well as geographical distribution, Nichols establishes the relative frequencies and markedness of grammatical properties, their interaction with each other, their relative diachronic stability and their correlations with geographic location and type of linguistic areas."
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