Customer Reviews

Instability Rules: The Ten Most Amazing Ideas of Modern Science

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

No one since Isidore of Seville has tried to summarize all the scientific knowledge of his epoch as valiantly as Charles Flowers. The most fun is to be had from watching him try, especially if you've previously read much longer and denser books on one or all of the ten topics Flowers has chosen to elucidate. Instability rules is a bargain, both in money and in precious reading time; ten tomes in one. The writing is graceful, precise, witty, and merciful to the non-scientist. Particularly for the reader who hasn't kept up his/her humanistic education in the sciences, Instabilty Rules will provide a comprehensible introduction to ten of the most profound ideas of the past century.

The Big Ideas in science are always the most fun for the layman to think about, and this book gives us overviews of 10 of those ideas -- from the Big Bang to the human genome -- in 10 engaging essays. The material has been covered before, but what sets the book apart is Flowers is a writer first, a science writer second. The writing is a pleasure to read -- warm, lucid, enthusiastic ... interesting while not talking down to the reader. The only criticism is the photos, which are uninteresting head shots of scientists. There are certainly many more interesting visuals the publisher could have selected to illustrate Flowers's fascinating essays.

"Like our hominid predecessors, if we die out, we're toast. Extinction is a one-time thing."
Heck. Why would anyone waste time writing that? Yet every page of this book contains at least one such pointless observation.
I wish it had not been that way. I started reading this book with real enthusiasm. The chapter subjects are well chosen and the chapters themselves are just the right length to be an inviting read. Overall the book is a great idea. But as much as I tried to like this book, it kept on letting me down.
Here's passage taken at random that shows why this book is so hard to stick to:
"Our view now has to be more complex, and perhaps more troubling, even if our fates are ultimately the same: some of those trillions of cells incessantly dividing, making uncountable manufacturing decisions according to instructions set up in a kind of game of chance, may even now be unpredictably going off-message, spreading out of control as cancer, or producing protein molecules that, directly on message, will somehow bring on early-onset Alzheimer's disease, so that proud but unlucky Achilles will not only forget why he slaughtered Hector but even what a Hector might be."
Most of the book's faults are present in that passage: windiness, cliche ("game of chance"), sudden use of flip phrases or slang ("going off-message"), pompous allusion (Achilles and Hector), and an unfunny half-joke, all in one tortured, endless sentence.
As both the above excerpts indicate, there's a lot of "We-ing" and "Us-ing", that is, pronouncements affecting to be on behalf of a We or Us who's never identified. It's very annoying, solemn yet glib, like an obit written by a sports columnist.
Read this book if you want a newspaper-style precis of a precis of some scientific breakthroughs, and can overlook the lumpy style.

The Big Ideas in science are always the most fun for the layman to think about, and this book gives us overviews of 10 of those ideas -- from the Big Bang to the human genome -- in 10 engaging essays. The material has been covered before, but what sets the book apart is Flowers is a writer first, a science writer second. The writing is a pleasure to read -- warm, lucid, enthusiastic ... interesting while not talking down to the reader. The only criticism is the photos, which are uninteresting head shots of scientists. There are certainly many more interesting visuals the publisher could have selected to illustrate Flowers's fascinating essays.

I have never had much hope of enjoying a read about quantum mechanics, Einstein's relativity theory or an explanation of the Planck instant, but I was in for a very pleasant surprise. Charles Flowers has accomplished just that with Instability Rules.

He has cut through the mind-numbing aspects of these subjects in a way that is not typical of a science book, using prose that is personal and accessible and a very clever sense of humor. This book is beautifully written, wonderfully entertaining, and, along the way, manages to explain the almost inconceivable with elegant simplicity. An excellent read!