Another post from the History Book Club. It seemed particularly appropriate for today (January 20th, Inauguration Day).
Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison,
by I. Bernard Cohen, W.W. Norton & Company, 1995.
Filed under History Book Club, Reviews
Filed under History Book Club, Reviews
Filed under History Book Club, Reviews
The Death of Socrates, Jacques Louis David.
(From Wikimedia Commons)
Another post from the History Book Club. Continue reading
Filed under History Book Club, Reviews
Filed under History Book Club, Reviews
Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People
Another post from the History Book Club. Continue reading
Filed under History Book Club, Reviews
Another post from the History Book Club.
(Why ‘atomic bomb’ rather than ‘nuclear bomb’? See this post.)
Filed under History Book Club, Physics, Reviews
For a few years, I belonged to a history book club. Unlike many book clubs, we didn’t all read the same book. Instead, we’d pick a topic for the next meeting, at which the participants would each give short presentations on books of their choosing.
Recently I ran across my write-ups. As the internet has yet to run out of space, I thought I’d post them. I begin with two on the atomic bomb.
(Why ‘atomic bomb’, rather than ‘nuclear bomb’? See this post.)
Filed under History Book Club, Physics, Reviews
[This post is available in pdf format, sized for small and medium screens.]
Lewis Carroll Epstein wrote a book Relativity Visualized. It’s been called “the gold nugget of relativity books”. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but Epstein has devised a completely new way to explain relativity. The key concept: the Epstein diagram. (I should mention that Relativity Visualized is a pop-sci treatment.)
The first sentence of Pollard’s review sums up my feelings perfectly: “This rewarding, exasperating book…” On balance, I found it more exasperating than rewarding. But it does have its charms.
I participated in a meetup group that went through the first two parts of S&F. My fellow participants possessed considerable mathematical knowledge and sophistication, but had only slight prior acquaintance with mathematical logic and none with axiomatic set theory. (The opinions here are strictly my own, but they reflect my experience in the meetup.) If I had just skimmed the book, glancing at familiar material, I would probably have a more positive impression.
I wrote an extensive set of notes for the meetup. This post is basically the last section of those notes.
I will begin with the book’s minuses, so as to end on a positive note.
Diagonal Argument 