13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

Abstract

13 Things that Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time Michael Brooks Vintage Books, 2009 This is a fascinating book of popular science. Brooks has devoted separate chapters to of today's scientific anomalies [that]... all cry out for explanations and further study. The thirteen include such subjects as and energy, space-craft deviations from trajectories that would predicted from 400-year-old law of gravity, stillunsettled possibility of cold fusion, study of difference between living and non-living things, search for intelligent signals from outer space, evolutionary origins of sex, whether free exists, and what is known about why placebos actually do work. Each of these and other subjects can taken alone, or they can considered together support of broader points Brooks makes about science. One of his broader themes is that in science, being completely and utterly can a thing, since often means a revolution is coming. He quotes Isaac Asimov, who said the most exciting phrase to hear science, one that heralds most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!,' but 'That's funny....' It is anomalies - unexpected - that lead to revision of existing theories, and sometimes to entirely new paradigms. His mysteries all point to one way or another which contemporary science is confronted by anomalies and seems stuck, not yet seeming able to explain them. His message is hopeful - that science isn't really stuck at all, but simply challenged to proceed further. A second theme will surprise a reader who may otherwise assess this as a feel good book about science, however intriguing. It is that science is an endeavor by human beings, and therefore is subject to various foibles and sometimes even venalities that touch other human enterprises. Brooks put it is quite this way, but we may say that science must, at least one of its dimensions, understood sociologically. Sometimes, he says, when evidence doesn't fit, that evidence will at first be ignored or sabotaged. An example is that dark matter was first spotted 1930s, but was ignored for nearly forty years as a demonstration of just how resistant science is to change. Another is that took decades for astronomers to spot an error that had been made early twentieth century. …