38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clever title; terrific book, May 8, 2005
This review is from: Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown (Hardcover)
This may be a bit esoteric for the general reader, but for those with more than a passing interest in science and its struggles with both the true believers from without and the heretics from within, this is a first class read. Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer addresses the friction within science in 14 well polished essays ranging in subject matter from playing psychic for a day to what to call rational skeptics to an in-depth look at the work of the late Stephan Jay Gould. Ten of the essays previously appeared in Skeptic or other magazines or journals.
Shermer's style reminds me somewhat of Gould himself since both men write readable prose that sometimes tends toward the ornate, replete with allusions and asides as well as a tendency toward a fine examination of relevant minutia. I was in particular somewhat surprised and amused at Shermer's lengthy, but fascinating treatment of the controversy over skeptics calling themselves "Brights" (Chapter 2, "The Big 'Bright' Brouhaha"). It seems that while fussing over whether the cause of rational skepticism is being held back by the lack of an agreeable label to pin on practitioners, somebody came up with the tag "Brights." Oh boy. Shermer and others embraced the term enthusiastically. However, one doesn't need a PhD in human psychology to realize that some people ("dims"?) might find the label arrogant and delusive. Turns out that most rational skeptics themselves rejected the term, and I presume it is now as dead as the dodo--however not before Shermer and others gave it more than the good old college try. It would appear that as objective as one can be about the self-serving delusions of others, when it comes to ourselves, we sometimes can't find a mirror anywhere in the house.
My suggestion is to live with the term "skeptic" or "rationalist" and realize that as such we will forever remain a minority within the human community--although I did kind of like the suggested term "eclectic" and think it appropriate and agreeable to wear although its meaning is not precisely descriptive of what a rational skeptic is or should be.
One idea that appears in depth in this book is what Shermer, whose doctorate is in the history of science, sometimes calls "contingent-necessity." One recalls that Gould often spoke of contingence in evolution and famously remarked that if the earth's history were played out again, chances are we wouldn't be here. Certainly the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs is an example of the kind of contingency he had in mind. But Shermer takes the reader further and explains that "History is a product of contingencies (what might have been) and necessities (what had to be)." (p. 155) He gives a number of examples to explain what he means. The QWERTY typewriter keyboard arrangement can be seen as an example of a contingency that we got stuck with (pp. 138-140), while the keyboard itself was more or less a necessity.
Shermer goes on to explore the phenomenon of "self-organized criticality" (from chaos theory). I found it especially interesting that he identified various mass hysterias as chaotic phenomena with their own self-organizing and feedback mechanisms. On pages 142-147 he recalls the witchcraft hysteria in Europe and the colonies from 1560-1620 and then demonstrates a striking parallel with the Satanic cult/false memory mass delusions from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. One is reminded of flying saucer sighting and alien abduction phenomena that followed similar patterns, and in fact Shermer mentions these as well.
One the best chapters in the book is "The New New Creationism: Intelligent Design Theory and Its Discontents" in which Shermer demolishes the new new argument from design and reveals the intellectual vacuousness of intelligent design in a most delightful manner. This chapter alone with worth the price of the book. Quite simply, Shermer exposes the naked True Believer once again hiding behind a curtain of pseudoscience.
Now it could be said that Shermer is something of a true believer himself--a true believer in science. In thinking about this recursive irony I am reminded of the admonition towards moderation in all things including moderation. (Properly speaking this is a paradox, a paradox of self-reference, as pointed out long ago by Bertrand Russell.)
But can science be taken in moderation? Is it possible to say that, well, we need to be scientific about most things, but then there are (shall we say) "affairs of the heart" to which science has properly speaking nothing to say--or indeed, should it not be the case that science and religion must forever be on separate planes? Personally, like Shermer, I am a rational skeptic and believe that science is a tool that can be applied to all of our affairs, in business and politics, history and religion, and even in choosing a mate, while recognizing that, left to our own devices, we tend to follow the scientific method willy-nilly, by starts and fits, by happenstance and sometimes only when it is thrust upon us by dire necessity.
Yes, in religion as well. Which is why Shermer is an agnostic (the only rational conclusion, based on the evidence) while I personally believe in a God without attributes (which raises the ironic question, does a God without attributes really exist?).
Here is a final word from Shermer, typical of his clear thinking and expressive prose: "...truth in science is not determined vox populi...a scientific theory stands or falls on evidence, and there are few theories in science that are more robust than the theory of evolution. The preponderance of evidence from numerous converging lines of inquiry (geology, paleontology, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, population genetics, biogeography, etc.) all independently converge to the same conclusion--evolution happened." He calls this a "convergence of evidence" and adds that "By whatever name, this is how historical events are proven." (p. 174)
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35 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A disappointment, June 21, 2005
This review is from: Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown (Hardcover)
These are, for the most part, slight pieces, a somewhat haphazard collection mostly lacking thematic unity. By slight, I mean that Shermer did not provide me with much new information or many new insights into old information.
There's an account of his experience impersonating a variety of psychics; an attempt at a Darwinian interpretation of the mutiny on the "Bounty" which adds nothing, really, to what's been known for years; a thirteen-page essay called "Exorcising Laplace's Demon" in which Laplace appears only in the final paragraph; a series of top-whatever lists gathered from here and there for no very clear reason. And so on.
I would have saved myself a good deal of time if I had gone straight to page 173 ("The New New Creationism") and left it at that. This piece provides a ten-point rebuttal of the Intelligent Design argument that is useful for those of us who don't know much about this latest metamorphosis of creationism.
But by then Shermer's credibility was so damaged that even this piece I approach warily. Shermer the skeptic is so error-prone that his unintended effect is to make me skeptical of everything he says. His introduction indicates that many of these pieces have been previously published. This I find astonishing. The first chapter alone contains so many serious grammar errors that had Shermer submitted it when he was a high-school senior, at least where I grew up at about the same time period, he would have forfeited his diploma.
I'm not a scientist, and so when I find a science writer telling me that malaria is transmitted by "a virus-infested mosquito" (try "parasite" and "infected"); that helicobacter pylori is also a virus; that "flagella" is singular, I have to wonder what other nonsense is getting past me. Evidently fact checkers and proof readers have gone extinct.
In general, Shermer's essays lack structure, focus, and creative insight. To be an essayist is to be a type of poet. An accomplished essayist - Oliver Sacks, for example - takes an idea, a fact, an observation perhaps, and in elegant, graceful language explores it, expands it, teases it out until we are astonished and delighted by the insights, the connections, and by a new way of seeing our world. This is an art, and Michael Shermer, sadly, is only a fledging artist.
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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fact or Friction?, December 2, 2005
This review is from: Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown (Hardcover)
I like science writers because of their obvious intelligence and (usually) great writing skills. Shermer is more that a great writer. He is a skeptic, a rationalist and humanist; he is also what one might call a member of the NPR crowd - white, educated, well-to-do, secular and left of center. He has faults and prejudices as do we all but in the end he has penned a fascinating collection of "fireside chats".
While the style and tone remain static the subject matter is joyfully varied - ranging from reviews to biography to lists to revelation. It is hard to choose a "best" when so many are fine. The article on Stephen Jay Gould has aroused about as much controversy as Gould himself. His (Gould not Shermer) real crime was suggesting that Darwin's explanation was not the last word on the matter and there might even be an error or two in his findings. The deification of Darwin, replete with quotes biographical allusions and even the old "What did Darwin say?" is solidifying into a new quasi- religion.
What drives Shermer is not science per se but the history and philosophy of science. The article on "lists" of people and events was entertaining. Perhaps the best was the story of clashes in anthropology and how revisionism and ideology affect our judgement. The author is clearly in the "progressive" camp and makes the common mistake of overstating the danger in ID and fundamentalism (the vast majority of people on Earth reject evolution and we're doing just fine. After all, we have the right to be wrong in America.)
Several personal tales are here - from his days as a student and evangelical Christian to his growing interest in science and skepticism. They range from the sublime,the death of his mother by cancer, to the absurd, the hilarious episode when
certain intellectuals renamed themselves "Brights" with all the resulting bad publicity that anyone with an atom of sense could have predicted. The breakdown of the book makes it a perfect candidate for "bathroom reading". Get it
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