Customer Reviews

A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is subtitled 'What temperature reveals about the past and future of our species, planet, and universe' and when I picked it up I imagined it was going to be about global warming and all that terrible stuff. Fortunately, while he does mention that dire subject, it's far from the only thing Mr Segrè has to offer. Instead his book is a consideration of the effect of temperature in all sorts of things, from the human body--warm-bloodedness and fever--to quantum mechanics. In between it takes in black smoker ecosystems, the birth and death of stars and the big bang. Segrè divides his efforts between explaining the science itself and giving us the history behind its original discoveries and does both rather well, showing a brisk pace and an engaging sense of humor the whole time.

Obviously, given the amount of material covered, some things are described in rather less detail than one might wish, and the transitions sometimes left me wondering if the author was going to come back and say more about a subject; but all that does is encourage the reader to pursue one bit or other further in other books, which is a reasonable thing for a general-audience book like this is. There were also sections--most notably the bits about extra dimensions, conditions at the time of the big bang, and multiple universes interacting like sheets (something like that..)--that lost me pretty completely. But Segrè is a good enough writer that instead of giving up I plowed ahead, and soon enough I was back on firm ground. And the end of the book, about the effects of very low temperatures on the behavior of molecules, was one of the clearest explanations of quantum mechanics I've ever read.

An entertaining read about the discovery and history of temperature. Along with the usual suspects like Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and others, you are also introduced to many other somewhat less heralded scientific figures that have made great contributions to science. Some of the more interesting sections in this fascinating book were, the origin and discovery of aspirin, the invention of the thermometer, what hydrothermal vents tell us, to temperature shift extinctions. Overall, a very quick read with lasting anecdotal impressions.

Why read this book?

To quote Steven Weinberg "The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." This book opens both new insights into and of the world we live in.

This is a real contribution...not just to the field of temperature but to scientific literature. The facts are fast and furious but held together in a cohesive and compelling narrative. Also peppered with Segre's sense of humor and robust grasp of the bigger picture. As the Kirkus review put it best, to paraphrase, Segre is to temperature what Elvis is to rock and roll! Rock on ....

As someone who barely made it through thermodynamics at the U getting a title of mechanical engineer, I'm glad of reading this wonderful book. It puts you in a special perspective about how this property relates to our earth and our living world.

be prepared to take a grand tour. Temperature is a property of mater and as suchm reveals what is happing to an active systems such as the earth. Science is all about connections; at least to me, thats where the beauty comes in. To be able to connect atmospheric events, form geology, to living systems, wisdom resides on how you can weave the threads that are loose

This is a wonderful account relating the role temperature plays in widely varying disciplines, ranging from physiology to cosmology. Though Segre is a physicist and quips that physics is pretty much the family business, his understanding and enthusiasm for a broad range of problems under the blanket of science is truly astonishing. The majority of non-fiction works in this genre tend to focus on a relatively narrow area which often happens to be the author's domain of expertise. The more general approach this book takes without watering things down is truly refreshing.
The tone reflects the excitement of the non-specialist, surely. Also, in describing the events and often surprising turns a field has taken, Segre's sketches of the personalities involved are colorful without relying too much on what often turns out to be insider perspectives. While there is a place for that, and several writers, particularly David Lindley, has used it to sharp advantage, Segre's account skims over the trees for the forest.
What I found very noticable was the even balance between weighing the current state of knowledge with the absence of any overarching statement about where things are headed. This caution, for example, was not something that was expressed in James Gleick's 'chaos,' for example. For all its novelty of expression, the basic science was at times suspect, as practitioners like David Ruelle has pointed out in his 'chance and chaos.'
While the narrative for the subjects like geothermal vents and global warming were quite seamless, I thought Segre's treatment of low-temperature physics was a little stilted and disjointed. This was a bit of a dissapointment because one would expect a somewhat more cohesive picture from a well-known neutrino physicist. The dialogue between Einstein and Bohr could have been richer and more contextual, and the time-span of interesting events could have stretched somewhat longer.
A missed opportunity, however, is only one side of the coin, and a book can only be so long. One hopes that some equally competent author pieces together the somewhat difficult if specialized story of laser cooling of atoms, or delve into why low temperatures are so interesting in revealing the quantum nature of materials.
I actually bought this copy after borrowing it from the library for following up on the excellent bibliography and references. I also appeared animated enough about it for my wife to whisk my copy away for her commute...

For me this was an excellent book and recommend it to everyone interested in always learning new things. Segre's easy way of explaining tough matters is admirable. In this book you learn lots of stuff, like the average internal temperature of humans, earth temperature, what is absolute zero and quantum dynamics, all of them sauced with lots of history.

A few degrees temperature difference can make or break species, change environments completely, and affects both life and inert matter. A Matter Of Degrees explores how temperatures operate both physiologically and on a global level. From thermal ocean vents to the measurement of temperature changes over eons, this blends plenty of history and science in an intriguing survey.

I was interested in both the topic and the author. The book is excellent, both an entertaining reading for people interested in the relationahip of ScieNce and history and also for teaching purposes.

It is hard to say which is more compelling: A Matter of Degrees' strength as a book of science history or its strength as a work of literature. Segre writes with such elegance, clarity and charm that it is easy to forget that this is a work we read for self-improvement rather than self-indulgence.

In a step-by-logical-step fashion, Segre leads the reader first to appreciate the importance of temperature and its regulation in living things into an understanding of thermo dynamics generally. We see things from the standpoint of giants like Newton, Davey, Rumford, Carnot and Kelvin, through moderns like Einstein, Bohr, Heizenberg, et al.--all the way up to discoveries circa 2001. We also see how even the great ones have stumbled and struggled with their misapprehensions, and will doubtless continue to do so.

From the warmth of mammalian bodies to the warmth of the greehouse effect, from the shriek of the first steam engines to the flickering near-nothingness of the neutrino, Segre ties the first to the last to show how an understanding of temperature leads to an understanding of origin. And by that I do not mean the origin of life--I mean the origin of everything.

This book is for people who--
A) Did not take any science courses in college but wish they had;
B) Did take science courses in college but wish they hadn't;
C) Want to see how a master teacher teaches his area of mastery; or
D)Are even passingly curious about How It All Began and How It All Might End.

The book starts off promising with a chapter on temperature and the human body, and I have to admit I learned one thing from the book (why you feel cold when you have a fever). The rest is an utter disappointment.
The book strays away from the subject and tries to be a history of science of some sort and focuses on a few less eminent figures and omits a few more famous ones of those who brought science forward. But that is, of course, author's discretion. (Other reviewers called it political bias). At any rate, Bill Bryson, even though less "scientific", does a much better job in his "Short history of nearly everything" A Short History of Nearly Everything
But the book does not deliver on its promise. What could have been an interesting journey into temperature, how it is being measured at the extreme lows for instance, how one measures the tiniest fractions of a degree the author does not tell us.
What is truly annoying for a book of science, is the use of imperial measuring units (and then alternating into the international units sporadically), in my view discredits this author as a science writer.