Book idea proposal

While up in Nova Scotia (where the people are as friendly as midwesterners) on vacation reading Feynman I got an idea for a book.  Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone has the breadth of knowledge of physics that Feynman did, so no single person can write it.

Remember that the Feynman lectures were delivered in 1963 – 4.  The authors of the Millennium edition noted that > 1,000 errors were corrected in the various editions (which is a good reason to buy it, if you’re studying it on your own).  But almost none of them were conceptual.

So the lectures are  true as of 1964 and brilliant to boot.  As Kip Thorne notes in “Modern Classical Physics”  — “The three-volume Feynman Lectures on Physics had a big influence on several generations of physicists and even more so on their teachers.Both of us (Blandford and Thorne) are immensely indebted to Richard Feynman for shaping our own approaches to physics”.

The idea for the book came as early as p. 2-7 in Volume I, where Feynman says “no phenomenon directly involving a frequency has yet been detected above approximately 10^12 cycles per second”.  Well we’re up to 10^18 presently and shooting higher.

p 3-5 “all enzymes are proteins.”  Not so and a Nobel was won for the first RNA enzyme to be discovered.

p. 7 – 7  What is holding galaxies together — a mention of dark matter would be interesting.

p. 9 – 9 “A very good computing machine may take 1 microsecond to do an addition”  — we’re up to 10^18 exaFlops (of floating point calculations) not addition.

Well you get the idea.  I have no idea what the size of the market would be, but I’d love to see something like this.

Something similar was actually done with the Origin of Species.  Darwin’s Ghost by Steve Jones (published in 1999) updates Darwin’s book, the Origin of Species (published 1999)  to contemporary thinking (and knowledge) chapter by chapter.   It is fascinating to go through both together.

The book would be one of the few things better done by a committee

Feynman and Darwin

What do Richard Feynman and Charles Darwin have in common?  Both have written books which show a brilliant mind at work.  I’ve started reading the New Millennium Edition of Feynman’s Lectures on Physics (which is the edition you should get as all 1165 errata found over the years have been corrected), and like Darwin his thought processes and their power are laid out for all to see.  Feynman’s books are far from F = ma.  They are basically polished versions of lectures, so it reads as if Feynman is directly talking to you.  Example: “We have already discussed the difference between knowing the rules of the game of chess and being able to play.”  Another: talking about Zeno  “The Greeks were somewhat confused by such problems, being helped, of course, by some very confusing Greeks.”

He’s always thinking about the larger implications of what we know.  Example: “Newton’s law has the peculiar property that if it is right on a certain small scale, then it will be right on a larger scale”

He then takes this idea and runs with it.  “Newton’s laws are the ‘tail end’ of the atomic laws extrapolated to a very large size”  The fact that they are extrapolatable and the fact that way down below are the atoms producing them means, that extrapolatable laws are the only type of physical law which could be discovered by us (until we could get down to the atomic level).  Marvelous.  Then he notes that the fundamental atomic laws (e.g. quantum mechanics) are NOTHING like what we see in the large scale environment in which we live.

If you like this sort of thing, you’ll love the books.  I don’t think they would be a good way to learn physics for the first time however.  No problems, etc. etc.  But once you’ve had exposure to some physics “it is good to sit at the feet of the master” — Bill Gates.

Most of the readership is probably fully engaged with work, family career and doesn’t have time to actually read “The Origin of Species”. In retirement, I did,and the power of Darwin’s mind is simply staggering. He did so much with what little information he had. There was no clear idea of how heredity worked and at several points he’s a Lamarckian — inheritance of acquired characteristics. If you do have the time I suggest that you read the 1859 book chapter by chapter along with a very interesting book — Darwin’s Ghost by Steve Jones (published in 1999) which update’s Darwin’s book to contemporary thinking chapter by chapter.  Despite the advances in knowledge in 140 years, Darwin’s thinking beats Jones hands down chapter by chapter.

Book Review — The Kingdom of Speech — Part I

If you’re interested in evolution, its history, English social and intellectual history, language, Chomsky and the origins of the journal Nature then Tom Wolfe’s “The Kingdom of Language” is the book for you. Fellow blogistas will be awed by the clarity and elegance of his writing, and how he easily carries the reader easily along. It’s very funny and sardonic as well. The review will be split into several parts because there’s so much in the book.

One caveat: I’ve made no attempt to check any of the historical statements in the book. Hopefully they are all true. If you think any of it is incorrect, please post a comment.

Although the book has a lot to say about language, it doesn’t get into this until nearly 1/3 of the way through. It starts with Alfred Russell Wallace in 1858 lying in a sickbed with Malaria in the Malay peninsula coming up with the idea of natural selection, survival of the fittest (his term) and the origin of species. He writes an essay of 20+ pages and sends it off to Darwin, in the hopes that Darwin will pass it to Sir Charles Lyell (who Wallace didn’t know) who might find it worthy enough to publish.

Darwin gets it in June and is floored. The ideas that he’s been working on since 1838 (in silence for fear of what the religious establishment will say) are all laid out by what was called a ‘flycatcher’, someone making their living by going off to the colonies and sending back exotica for British Gentleman back home.

Tom Wolfe has always been fascinated by social class and distinctions between them (about this much more in part II).

British Gentlemen were landed gentry, who inherited land and wealth (if not noble titles). Darwin’s history went back to Erasmus Earle who was an attorney for Cromwell in the mid 1600’s. He made so much money, that no one in the succeeding EIGHT generations had to work. Robert Darwin, Charles’s father) nonetheless did — he was an M. D. but was more a businessman. He also attained even more money by marrying Wedgewood’s daughter.

Fortunately Robert had lots of money, as Charles was something of a slacker. He started by studying medicine at Edinburgh, but dropped out. He then went to Christ’s College Cambridge to become a clergyman — he dropped this as well, graduating eventually from Cambridge without an honor to his man. So Robert paid to have Charles to on a 5 year voyage of exploration on the Beagle. On return, Robert bought Charles a amLL pied a terre in the country (Down House) with 8 – 9 servants. (Did you know any of this).

The idea of species change was not new. Erasmus Darwin (Darwin’s grandfather) in 1794 and Lamarck in 1800 thought present day species had evolved from earlier ones.

Lamarck’s rather blasphemous thinking was saved by his heroics in battle at age 17 (as a private). His unit was decimated, all officers killed, Lamarck took command somehow and held their position until reinforcements arrived.

There’s a lot in the book about how Darwin Lyell and Hooker screwed out of the priority of thinking of evolution and natural selection first. Here Wolfe gets things seriously wrong, while Wallace was first into print, his thinking lagged Darwin’s by 20 years. However, Darwin, not wishing to be attacked by the clergy kept things to himself, only telling Lyell about is in 1856.

Most of the readership is probably fully engaged with work, family career and doesn’t have time to actually read “The Origin of Species”. In retirement, I did,and the power of Darwin’s mind is simply staggering. He did so much with what little information he had. There was no clear idea of how heredity worked and at several points he’s a Lamarckian — inheritance of acquired characteristics. If you do have the time I suggest that you read the 1859 book chapter by chapter along with a very interesting book — Darwin’s Ghost by Steve Jones (published in 1999) which update’s Darwin’s book to contemporary thinking chapter by chapter.

Wolfe also gets evolution wrong, saying there is no evidence for it. E.g. no one has seen a species change, etc. etc.  Perhaps, but the biochemical evidence is incontrovertible for descent with modification, otherwise you couldn’t replace a vital yeast protein gene with the human homolog and have it work.

Do you know what the X club is? It was a group of 9 naturalists (including Thomas Huxley and Hooker) who met monthly to defend Darwin’s ideas. They also created the journal we know today as Nature.

This actually explains a lot of stuff there that I’ve read over the years — the correct interpretation of evolutionary doctrine receives a great deal of space — punctuated evolution, group selection, kin selection, what is the proper unit of selection etc. etc.

The attacks that bothered Darwin the most, were those about language. That’s the subject of the next part of the review.