The Crime of Reason: And the Closing of the Scientific Mind by Robert B Laughlin, Basic Books. Hardback ISBN 9780465005079, £15.99 ($25.95).
Robert Laughlin, Nobel laureate in physics, presents a gloomy, doomsday outlook in his latest literary offering, The Crime of Reason. The title is defined by the author as "the unsocial nature or outright illegality of understanding certain things". He suggests that "Information Age" is a misnomer for the current era, which should be re-named the "Age of Amnesia", owing to the inaccessibility of valuable knowledge that could be used for monetary gain or considered life-threatening. Such knowledge is not truly free to access and in some cases considered private property and secret. Those who find out such things could find themselves sued or in prison.
Knowledge is dangerous, Laughlin admits, beginning to sound paranoid when he suggests that such things as knitting needles, lace curtains or pruning shears could be lethal. When he turns to the threats of nuclear weapons plans or biological cloning, however, his concern seems valid.
In discussing the scientific community he notes that university professors whose research findings do not correspond to – or even go against – their big company or government donors could find themselves having difficulties in procuring additional funding for further research proposals and problems with promotions. However, Laughlin does not provide concrete examples about how these researchers have been "silenced". He also points out that gene sequences, certain physical principles pertaining to nuclear energy, and software codes are now patented or classified by governments.
The book is a quick read of just 149 pages but the author falls short of successfully making all of his points. He provides many intriguing arguments, such as the notion that the worldwide web has created a sense that the world is at our fingertips, but in reality inundates us with useless information while not disseminating any real knowledge. This is not fully explored, however. For those working at CERN, where there is a sense of openness in publishing physics results and sharing ideas with colleagues, Laughlin's suggestion that important details may be purposely left out of technical documents to keep a monopoly on knowledge and therefore generate money, may seem wide of the mark.
Finally, it seems strange to have a book that discusses such weighty subjects as the deliberate hiding of valuable information from the general public, to end on a daydream of living on the Moon and wishing that they would "send up more girls" from Earth. Remarks like this, and the lack of concrete examples, in the end detract from what is potentially an important subject for debate.
Carolyn Lee, CERN.
Energia per l'astronave Terra by Nicola Armaroli and Vincenzo Balzani, Zanichelli. Paperback ISBN 9788808063915, €11.50.
"A politician cares about the next election, a statesman cares about the next generation." This quote by Alcide de Gasperi, chosen by the authors to introduce the last chapter of this book, illustrates the spirit of the work. Throughout the book, Nicola Armaroli and Vincenzo Balzani emphasize the fact that the energy problem can only be understood (and solved) if each one of us accepts the responsibility to do something about it.
The authors are experts of energy-related problems at Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and the University of Bologna, respectively. In this book they address the problem of energy management on our planet and emphasize its importance by showing the countless links with human activities, which may jeopardize the survival of the environment. Thanks to this book, the reader realizes that this is "the" problem of the planet and that, technically speaking, "the" solution doesn't exist yet.
Unlike other publications on the subject written for the general public, this book is enriched with scientific facts, which make it attractive to a more specialized audience. However, thanks to the effort that the authors have made to integrate and explain the mathematical statistics, any reader will understand the figures and the conclusions that they lead to.
I found the book interesting overall, although in some places a little superficial, with logical shortcuts that lead to too general conclusions. However, I really appreciated the capacity of the authors to focus the attention of the reader on the two basic facts that actually "make" the energy problem: first, the planet's resources (whatever they are) are limited and, second, only a better redistribution of them among the Earth's population can lead to real and durable progress. Regarding this second point, a striking fact mentioned in the book is the observation that, if you take the global stock of primary energy (the energy that is globally available) and divide it by the number of inhabitants, you obtain about 60 GJ – that is the energy consumption of a citizen of a Balkan country. In Western Europe today, we consume three times as much.
In May the book received a prestigious award in Italy (the Premio Letterario Galileo) for the best science popularization publication. The jury was composed of 2500 young students from more than 100 high schools.
Antonella Del Rosso, CERN.
Books received
Nobel Faces: A Gallery of Nobel Prize Winners by Peter Badge, Wiley-VCH. Hardback ISBN 9783527406784, €72.90.
Peter Badge's striking black-and-white portraits, accompanied by short biographies, result in a fascinating word-and-image tableau of all of the Nobel Laureates alive at the time of writing (2007).
The book consists of more than 270 photographs of Nobel Prize winners including Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, author J M Coetzee, physicist Roy J Glauber, molecular biologist James Watson and former US president Jimmy Carter. Each portrait is accompanied by a brief description celebrating the laureate's outstanding contribution to science, literature or world peace, written by journalist Chris Richmond with scientific advice from Jürgen and Leonore Uhlenbusch. There is also an "afterword" by the well known German filmmaker, playwright, photographer and producer, Wim Wenders.