Customer Reviews

Nature's Imagination: The Frontiers of Scientific Vision

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From the anthropomorphic title of this book, you might expect it to be a anti-reductionist tract - and in part you would be right. However it also represents the views of some scientists/mathematicians who are certainly reductionists.

Almost all of the essays are deep, and some are difficult. However with the exception of Edelman's first contribution which is pretty well incomprehensible I understood the gist of most of the contributions. Edelman's essay benefits from a translation into something more digestible by a piece by Oliver Sacks.

Many of these writings are very stimulating and presented very didactically. In particular I enjoyed Peter Atkins' robust defence of reductionism, perhaps because I recall his style from his quantum chemistry lectures 20 years ago. However Atkins' proselytization for his position is almost religious in its intensity, and his certainty also seems to have elements of faith about it.

At the end of the book I felt reasonably persuaded by the anti-reductionists' arguments. This represents a shift of view for me, so in that sense it was a powerful book.

It's worth reading.