Philip Ball

This is, I think, the book on quantum mechanics I've been wanting to read for 15 years—though my ability to embrace it may be due to my experience with the less-comprehensive titles I've read in the meantime. Superb, even if I did get snarled once or twice in Ball's explanations of experiments.

Interesting, though, how many shades of Kant and Wittgenstein I kept encountering. I'm not sure if that's because they've greatly influenced quantum physicists, Ball, or if I just saw them because I show more love them so much (in true what-I-measure-affects-what-I-see quantum style).

I also had the thought whilst reading that instead of us measuring the universe, perhaps the universe is measuring us...and trying all the time to tell us what it sees in ways we can comprehend. show less

This book aims to look at stories that the author feels have taken on the same function as myths in the ancient world, covering seven stories ranging from Robinson Crusoe to Batman, via Frankenstein, Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, War of the Worlds and Sherlock Holmes.

I really enjoyed the book throughout, and the analysis of these stories and how they’ve permeated culture throughout the years was always interesting. The idea of them being modern myths comes from the fact that these stories have show more been told and retold repeatedly in different forms, with the originals, intentionally or not, not having a straight forward moral message and leaving things open for endless reinterpretations. I did find that central concept a bit vague in general though, often having to explain away aspects when a new work he’s covering doesn’t quite fit the criteria he set down for modern myths previously. It often felt just like reading general analysis of these works and their impact. I didn’t mind that though, since they’re all interesting subjects in their own right.

To be a little pedantic, there were a couple of slips that made me wary about the level of research put into the book. It was certainly worthwhile to draw comparisons between Sherlock Holmes and Mr Spock in Star Trek, but when he said that Leonard Nimoy had also “portrayed Holmes in the 1975 movie The Interior Motive”, it sent me trying to hunt down this film that I’d somehow managed to miss, only to eventually be disappointed to discover that it was actually just a 20 minute episode of a children’s educational show made for schools in Kentucky. Later on in the book, it’s mentioned that Superman had the power of flight when introduced in 1938 when actually he only gained that power several years later. It’s just nitpicking and they’re both just background details without any impact on the points the author is making, but once I’ve noticed things like that I start to wonder where else mistakes might be creeping in.

Fortunately, I didn’t notice any problems like that with any of the important facts in the book, and I still very much enjoyed reading it from beginning to end, and any times I thought the theme of the book was unclear where more than made up for by the interesting thoughts and connections that were being brought up. I love reading this sort of thing and would have happily kept on reading for many more chapters. show less

Quantum theory, which deals with the world at its smallest-known scale, always gives me the feeling that someone somewhere is cheating, sort of moving the goalposts about to suit themselves. First it means one thing, then it means something else (except when it doesn’t of course), and so on. But I also know that that’s because I haven’t understood it. Beyond Weird is an attempt at setting straight all the misconceptions there are about this subject, and in particular the greatest one show more of all, namely, that things down at the sub-atomic level are “weird”. That’s what “Beyond Weird” means: not “even stranger than weird”, but rather, getting past the idea that it’s weird at all and seeing that, in fact, it’s anything but.
    For a start, the writing here is exceptional, so clear and comprehensible it’s almost as if the guy is sitting in a chair opposite you explaining it in person—one of the best pieces of science-writing I’ve come across. It’s non-mathematical, yet goes into real depth (and is up to date too, or 2019 at least). Also, unlike so many other books on the subject, this is not so much an exhaustive round-up of the details, but more about their interpretation overall, how on earth we make some kind of sense of them. Such as: that quantum objects can be both waves and particles; can simultaneously be both here and there; can affect one another instantly across vast distances; and that you can’t observe them without changing them. “Quantum mechanics might seem ‘weird’, but it is not illogical. It’s just that it employs a new and unfamiliar logic. If you can grasp it…then the quantum world may stop seeming weird and become just another place, with different customs and traditions and with its own beautiful internal consistency…”
    And above all: “Such ‘paradoxes’ apparently permit the answers Yes and No simultaneously. Whatever we are to make of that, we must surely aspire to do better than shrug and call it ‘weird’.” show less

An expansive, enjoyable criticism of conceptual problems in biology. Ball starts with some popular metaphors and models – DNA as blueprint, cell as factory, living systems as machines – and shows how these are all seriously misleading, and why it matters.
There are strange gaps: symbiosis is hardly mentioned, for instance. But the book does a good job of explaining clearly, in nuts and bolts fashion, where and how agency might arise in living systems, without recourse to the taboo spectre show more of teleology.
It gets technical – I might have struggled without a background in microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry – but that complexity is partly the point. Lay readers generally don't have a solid sense of how absurdly complicated cell biology is, and the way Ball's book breaks it down will surely deepen appreciation for just how astonishing even the simplest living creatures are. show less