43 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing exposed for what it is: Something!, July 24, 2001
This is a book about "nothing" inspired by recent discoveries in physics, similar to the one written by Brit physicist John D. Barrow, The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe (2000). While Barrow devoted several chapters to the history of the concept of zero and the idea of nothing, Cole, while covering much of the same territory, emphasizes recent discoveries about the vacuum and ideas from string and loop theory while her extensive use of quotations gives her book a more journalist feel. Otherwise the books are strikingly similar, even to the typographic use of subheads in capital letters followed by epigram-like quotes from various authors that break up the text. It's almost as if the same person did the layout for both books! Both authors sometimes even use the same examples, e.g., John Cage's "musical composition" entitled, 4' 33" (four minutes and 33 seconds of pure silence). Noteworthy in Cole's book is the interesting material on silence beginning on page 211 and then some examples from the psychology of perception on pages 214-231 with an excursion into the concept of nothing from Zen Buddhism.
Cole is a science journalist who writes for the Los Angeles Times and is the author of The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (1998) and First You Build a Cloud: And Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life (1999). I enjoyed both books and reviewed the latter favorably for Amazon.com readers, and so it was with pleasant anticipation the I began reading The Hole in the Universe, hoping that I would learn more about the bizarre properties of the vacuum than I was to glean from Barrow's excellent book. What I learned was just how difficult the subject really is, and how far removed it is from our common sense notions about the world.
I would rate this book higher but sometimes Cole's ready metaphors and analogies run into each other, further obscuring an already dusky subject matter, and there are some slips. She writes on page 251, "It's easy to imagine ten dimensions of space because you can just add one on top of the other." (Not for me, at any rate, it isn't.) And there's a bad take on the anthropic principle on page 242. Cole writes. "...in a sense, our very perception determines the kind of universe we populate." It's really the other way around: we are created from the stuff of the universe and that stuff determines our perception. It's not even clear that "We perceive the only universe we can perceive" (also from page 242), because the universe could be a little different and we could still perceive it. Finally, Cole, in discussing the Higgs field, uses the simile, "the Higgs field to our universe is like water to a fish--the same everywhere and therefore utterly imperceptible." We can imagine that the fish "perceives" the water when it touches the sand at the bottom and when it leaps above the surface.
These quibbles aside, this is an exciting and stimulating book. Let me share some impressions:
First, it is apparent that there is no such thing as nothing, or I should say, nothing is something!
Second, the idea that time and space began with the big bang and that there was nothing as a matter of definition beyond the big bang can be discarded. It now seems more likely that our universe is just one of a possible infinity of universes, popping probabilistically out of the vacuum that used to be nothing but is now a bubbling caldron of potential energy.
Third, my favorite question, Why is there something rather than nothing? has an easy answer: There is something rather than nothing because there is no such thing as nothing.
Fourth, the world of string theory with its eleven dimensions and it ultra tiny strings at the scale of 10 to the minus 33 centimeters, is entirely of the stuff we will never perceive or have any ability to comprehend beyond the report of the equations.
Fifth, the old bugaboo about the universe having no beginning or being created from nothing is no longer such a quandary because, One, nothing is something; and Two, nothing has always been here. In other words, the question is answered: the universe (or mega-universe or super-universe, or whatever) had no beginning and is eternal. (God, the creator, is not going to like this, but I'm sure something can be worked out.)
Sixth, perhaps, as Cole suggests in the final chapter, a good definition of "nothing" is perfect symmetry.
Finally, I came away from reading this book with the clear sense that the universe exists indefinitely in every direction from the macro to the micro, from the distant past to the distance future. In other words, we exist not as on a darkling plain as the poet Matthew Arnold had it, but in a bubble of space and time smack in the middle of a possible infinity of bubbles, our ability to see in any one "direction" limited by our senses and our instruments, but enhanced by our ability to reason and extrapolate from evidence, but ultimately stopped cold by our imaginations and the realization of how really tiny is our arena of discernment compared to the incredible vastness gaping away from us in any and all directions. If this realization doesn't make us humble and awestruck, I don't know what will.
Incidentally, both Cole and Barrow, while carousing merrily about all sorts of whimsical notions of nothing, failed to acknowledge the "god of nothing," that is, the ineffable god of the Vedas about whom nothing can be said: "Neti, neti, neti"--not this, not this, and not this!
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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A smirk and a wink do not a good science book make, November 28, 2001
I read Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe before The Hole in the Universe. No doubt, the scientific depth of Greene's near-masterpiece bolstered my negative reaction to Cole's rather light-weight book. A serious science reader should avoid "Hole": it is superficial, contains a bizarre digression, and is too clever for its own good. One could argue that Hole's relatively short length is a benefit. Undoubtedly, some short science books are very good. (Short works by Martin Rees, John Barrow, and Paul Davies demonstrate this point.) Hole's short length, however, is not evidence of the author having synthesized mind-bending and mathematically challenging material into clear, tight prose. Hole is so short because it's so superficial. In fact, I would argue that the book is too long. The bizarre digression I mentioned above occurs at the end of the book where Cole discusses how the human brain perceives (or misperceives) the world. The connection to her main subject -- "nothing" -- is tenuous, at best. The only plausible explanation I can come up with for Cole's wierd digression is that it allowed her to briefly discuss two books she likes (one of which -- Phantoms in the Brain -- I have read and was shocked to find mentioned in Hole). Finally, I was extremely annoyed by the clever word play and frequent interruptions in Hole. The word play got old very quickly. Nothing, something, and anything -- yes, these words can create cute sentences when the subject is nothing, but not past the first chapter. Thankfully, the word play decreased after the third or fourth chapter, but my irritation with the author never left me. As for the interruptions, I dislike headers and quotes every 2.5 pages of a book. It gave Hole the feel of a very long Newsweek article. If I could, I would put a sticker on the jacket advertising Hole as a MTV Book Club selection, "catering to short attention spans." Hole isn't useless, but I didn't find it particularly enlightening. Several contemporary physicists have written popular science books that cover the topic of nothing more deeply and more satisfyingly.
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35 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
accessible but thin, January 18, 2001
By A Customer
I may not be the right person to review a book like this because I am already familiar with most of the subjects that are addressed here through better popularizations by Greene, Guth, Ganz, Thorne and others. This book is "accessible" as the book jacket promises, but in order to make it easy on its targeted audience the information is so diluted that at the end I was not sure that there was anything new that had not been said elsewhere, nor is it expressed in a way that is particularly original or imaginative. It reads like a long newspaper article - lots of adjectives, lots of enthusiasm, lots of questions, but very little to say. If you are looking for information about string theory, the big bang, the importance of the vacumn, dark matter and energy, etc. this is not the place to start, nor is it a place to pick up any new analogies or metaphors that will help you on your way. This is unfortunate because I believe the author has bravely chosen a subject that desperately needs good interpreters. The problem is that nearly every subject she tackles is very, very difficult. There may be no simple way to explain any of it because so many of these ideas are in rapid development. So little is understood, much less agreed upon, by the very people that originated the ideas discussed in this book. The author must depend on other popularizations for her own understanding. So while the book is sincere and enthusiastic, this reader had no confidence that the author knew what she was talking about.
I was left with one strong impression. Science journalists should not try to explain or simplify the ideas. Leave that to scientists in the field and their editors. (There are notorious counter examples to disprove that rule !) Journalists who are non- scientists often more successful when commenting on the personalities and the social conditions in which the ideas are generated. Many years will pass before we get a good book that might begin to "explain" string theory to the layman, and my guess is that this will be done by an active researcher. But I would bet there are a fascinating stories now in plain view as to the political environment which decides at any moment what the "correct" interpretations of any theory are at any time. This is also useful work.
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