By Len Fisher
Basic Books
Hardback: £13.99 $23.99
When I received the book, I was eager to start reading it, particularly because of its subtitle: How We Can Use Science to Read the Early-Warning Signs. How can we? In fact, after reading the book, the conclusion is that we cannot.
Although realizing it caused some disappointment, I can confirm that, even without the million-dollar answer, the book is an interesting read. Len Fisher is an experienced writer, capable of explaining difficult concepts with simplified – but never simplistic – language. The book talks about equilibrium states, physical and mathematical models, negative feedback etc. When you study such topics in textbooks, you can quickly become bored that everything seems so obvious. However, the mathematics that formalizes all of this is far from being obvious; and the million-dollar question has no answer precisely because of this.
Fisher’s writing is engaging because it moves the hard concepts into everyday life, giving them a framework that makes the reader forget about the complex physics and mathematics behind them. Thus, the equilibrium states that remain theoretical in textbooks, are here explained in real and contextual situations, so that the reader learns about the evolution of biological species, the main facts that determine the solidity of a newly constructed bridge (but it could be your house) and even the factors that lead the dynamics between two people who become a couple.
I found this enjoyable reading and the disappointment of the missing conclusion was partly compensated for by the genuine attention that the author pays to the reader’s entertainment. I recommend the book to a non-scientific readership, which, I believe, will greatly profit from Fisher’s explanation of how and why things work, or, conversely, why they don’t work and can break down.
