How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2023; Picador, 2025; 541 pages) There is no Blueprint There is a certain frisson when reading something that overthrows long-held assumptions. And one persistent and still widely taught idea is that our DNA holds the blueprint for everything… Continue reading Life Isn’t Easy
Tag: History of Science
Firestarters
The Prometheans: John Martin and the Generation that Stole the Future by Max Adams Published by Quercus, 2009, 300 pp. There are young radicals calling for the overthrow of the system; here is art and literature stirring up popular unrest, and incurring a culture war backlash; and bewildering advances in science and technology giving people… Continue reading Firestarters
Galactic Archaeology
A review of “The Ins and Outs of the Milky Way” The Vectis Astronomical Society public talk for May 2023 by Professor Sean Ryan Seeing the Milky Way Do we ever look up at the night sky and think how the view is never-changing, except for the wandering planets against a timeless backdrop of the… Continue reading Galactic Archaeology
Our Past is in the Stars
Beneath the Night: How the stars have shaped the history of humankind By Stuart Clark (2020, Guardian Faber), 290 pp. Starry night Why do we look at the stars? We are interested in the nature of the Universe, a drive to understand and interpret what we see. Equally valid is an appreciation of the beauty… Continue reading Our Past is in the Stars
Reaching for the sky
The Comet Sweeper: Caroline Hershel’s Astronomical Ambition by Claire Brock (Icon Books, 2007) Caroline Hershel’s reputation has long been in the shadow of her brother William, who was the discoverer of Uranus and first president of The Astronomical Society of London (which later became the Royal Astronomical Society). She is rightly portrayed as the utterly… Continue reading Reaching for the sky
Icons of Ideas
“… not caring about understanding the Second Law of Thermodynamics is equivalent to someone boasting that they have never read anything by Shakespeare.”
Am I a robot?
12 Bytes: How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love by Jeanette Winterson (Vintage, 2021/2022) This was Love(lace) at first byte. The book begins with a lively survey of the history of AI. This is no dry chronology but a tale bursting with brilliant personalities, none greater than Ada Lovelace, the Countess… Continue reading Am I a robot?
Fred amongst the Stars
The Nature of the Universe: A Series of Broadcast Lectures by Fred Hoyle (Basil Blackwell, 1950) I think that within 100 years it may indeed be possible to leave the Earth, or at any rate for rockets containing radio-operated cameras to do so. Fred Hoyle (1950) 1950. Seventy-two years ago. That is just within living… Continue reading Fred amongst the Stars
At the Cutting Edge
This is the history of an idea that was once revolutionary and that continues to shape the modern world.
So what do you know?
Or rather, what can we know? Donald Rumsfeld is wrongly mocked for a “misunderstimated” quote when he served under President George Dubbya Bush. There may have been many things in his political career for which he deserved ridicule, but not for this: as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we… Continue reading So what do you know?