Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?: Discourses on Godel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics [Hardcover]

Martin Gardner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2003

Martin Gardner, debunker of scientific fraud and chicanery, explores in this title startling scientific concepts, such as the possibility of multiple universes and the theory that time can go backwards. Armed with his expert, sceptical eye, he examines the bizarre tangents produced by Freudians and deconstructionists in their critiques of "Little Red Riding Hood" and reveals the fallacies of pseudoscientific cures, from Doctor Bruno Bettelheim's erroneous theory of autism to the cruel farces of Facilitated Communication and Primal Scream Therapy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Gardner is a revered figure among science buffs for his long tenure at Scientific American, The Annotated Alice and his many other publications. This latest collection brings together recent columns and introductions to new editions of neglected gems like Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. The first two sections cover familiar Gardner topics: science and games. In the third section, Gardner (who bills himself a philosophical theist) muses on religion and religious figures and ties in with the last section on Freudians and psychics. This is not one of Gardner's stronger collections. Too often he seems petulant in an Andy Rooney sort of way, but without Rooney's underlying sense of fairness. He brands Gary Wills a near-heretic for Wills's criticisms of the Catholic Church; Gardner concludes his critique with a six-point catechism demanding to know what Wills himself believes. Wills's Why I Am a Catholic has been in print for almost a year, ample time for Gardner to have added an afterword, as he has for a few of his other essays. Gardner's distaste for Freudian and feminist interpretations of the Little Red Riding Hood story seems to stem mainly from their sexual content. His own interpretation is a simplistic, albeit plausible, tale of good and evil. Gardner's best essays cover old stomping grounds: literature like the Oz stories or Edgar Wallace's The Green Archer, and the tricks used by psychics and various New Age tricksters. Still, die-hard Gardner fans may find worthwhile reading here. 30 illus.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Even as Gardner exposes the foolishness and cruelties of phony science, he praises with awe and wonder the work of true science in revealing ... the natural world."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (July 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393057429
• ISBN-13: 978-0393057423
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #518,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For 25 of his 95 years, Martin Gardner wrote 'Mathematical Games and Recreations', a monthly column for Scientific American magazine. These columns have inspired hundreds of thousands of readers to delve more deeply into the large world of mathematics. He has also made significant contributions to magic, philosophy, debunking pseudoscience, and children's literature. He has produced more than 60 books, including many best sellers, most of which are still in print. His Annotated Alice has sold more than a million copies. He continues to write a regular column for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A delectable collection, November 4, 2003

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?: Discourses on Godel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics (Hardcover)

This is the fifth collection of Martin Gardner's essays that I have read, and as usual I found them a pleasure to read. Once again the venerable champion of common sense assumes his role as the sorcerer's apprentice trying to sweep back the tide of pseudoscience. And once again he provides insight into just how overwhelming that task really is.

The thirty-one essays, many of which appeared in The Skeptical Inquirer, are sorted into five parts: Science, Mathematics, Religion, Literature, and Moonshine. As a special treat (!?) some clerihews and other poetic bits by Gardner's "friend" Armand T. Ringer are sprinkled throughout, especially at the beginning of chapters. One notes in passing that "Armand T. Ringer" is an anagram of "Martin Gardner." Also included is a short story by Gardner from The College Mathematics Journal entitled "Against the Odds" (Chapter 6), a pleasant tale about a gifted black boy and a prejudiced schoolmarm notable for a happy ending and a thoroughgoing sense of the politically correct.

The first essay, "Multiverses and Blackberries" is a discussion of the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I was surprised to learn that this mind-boggling take on QM has been "defended by such eminent physicists as Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg." (p. 3) I think they may have defended it at one time or another, but I doubt that they embraced it wholeheartedly! A physicist who has of course is Oxford University's David Deutsch. What Gardner reveals in this interesting piece is that there are two versions of the MWI of QM, one in which the many worlds are "abstractions such as numbers and triangles," and the other in which the many worlds are real. (p. 5)

The second and third essays are on the philosophy of science, a favorite Gardner topic, and a topic that he actually makes readable and interesting, one deflating Karl Popper and the other partly a personal remembrance and appreciation of Rudolf Carnap. And then we have "Some Thoughts About Induction" in which Gardner aligns himself with David Hume, Bertrand Russell and others on the possibility that we can really prove anything by induction. This essay includes this glancing blow at those who would imagine that we might discover the ultimate nature of things: "[Electrons] may be made of superstrings. If so, what are superstrings made of?"

Other essays include "The Strange Case of Garry Wills," and "The Vagueness of Krishnamurti" from Part III on Religion in which Gardner reveals his consummate interest in the intimate details of the lives of the famous, especially the non-flattering details. I was surprised to learn of Krishnamurti's various episodes of hanky-panky. Like Gardner I had always found him unreadable, but herein I learned that the probable sufficient secret of his success was his charismatic personality.

In Part V on Moonshine Gardner has some fun with the idea that Little Red Riding Hood is a symbolic story of emerging womanhood complete with the red hood symbolizing menstrual blood and the wolf's appetite being not entirely gastronomic. I think here revealed is Gardner's limited appreciation of the nature of certain kinds of literature, of which fairy tales and religious works are examples. Such works are necessarily symbolic since what they are about cannot be expressed in a strictly denotative way because to do so would offend or be in conflict with some particulars of whatever the current wisdom might be. Such "evolved" literatures must be accessible regardless of the taboos of the present society. Better than any of the commentary from Gardner or those he quotes on the tale is the amazing print on page 180 by Gustave Doré of Little Read Riding Hood in bed with the wolf. The primeval nature of the tale is exemplified by Little Red Riding Hood's appearance simultaneously as a little girl and as a small woman, and the wolf's large mouth and ready claws. Doré knew that this was one scary tale that penetrated the listener's subconscious.

Perhaps the most valuable essays in the book are "The Brutality of Dr. Bettelheim" and "Facilitated Communication: A Cruel Farce" (chapters 23 and 24). In the first, Gardner reminds us how Dr. Bruno Bettelheim in particular, and psychoanalytic theory in general, mistreated a generation (or two or three) of autistic children and especially their so-called "refrigerator mothers" through a gross misunderstanding of autism and how to treat it. Some of the material comes from Edward Dolnick's Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (1998), a book I reviewed favorably and recommend highly. In the second, Gardner reminds us of the fraudulent Quija board technique employed by some health workers using autistic children that had its heyday in the late eighties and early nineties before being exposed on Frontline and 60 Minutes. The disturbing thing about Gardner's report is that one of the true believers, Professor of Education Douglas Biklen, is still at Syracuse University and is still plying his trade.

One of the best reasons for reading Gardner is to appreciate how clear his expression is, and how readable he makes just about any subject. He has a gift for making the abstract concrete and the obtuse transparent.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gardner strikes again, October 19, 2003

By 

David N. Reiss (Haymarket, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?: Discourses on Godel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics (Hardcover)

Martin Gardner continues to publish many good skeptical books very late into his long life. If you like to read books by Stephen Jay Gould, James Randi, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, or Carl Sagan, then the writings of Gardner will be something you very much want to be informed about.

Gardner writes about many varied topics in science, mathematics, pseudoscience, religion, psychics and the so-called paranormal, and other delusions -- always from a skeptical viewpoint. If Gardner thinks somebody is wrong, crazy or foolish he points it out without hesitation. He doesn't care if they are thought to be great people. He calls them like he sees them. Gardner pulls no punches.

Many of the essays in this book are from his column "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" that regularly appear in the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

He has a curiously dry sense of humor that goes unnoticed by many who read him, especially if they disagree with the position Gardner is taking. This makes for some rather colorful angry letters to the Skeptical Inquirer and other publications that Gardner's writings have appear in. Many other of Gardner's books have included them in the past; we don't appear to get many of these exchanges in the addendums to some of the columns this time. That is my only disappointment with this book. It would have liked to see more of those. You can't always get everything you want. Which is a point that Gardner has continually been making for several years now.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Uneven Collection of Essays by an Old Master, March 6, 2010

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L. King "eclectic reader" (Toronto) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries?: Discourses on Godel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics (Paperback)

As a science/math/blackberry buff I was attracted by the title. Some of the essays are extremely good but a large number are average. The essays are grouped into 5 sections of which I found 3 (Science, Math, Literature) of interest.

The Science section looks mostly at some of the philosophy of science. The title piece explores the "many worlds" interpretation of Quantum mechanics and divides physicists into two groups - those who believe the MWI is real and those who think that it is merely mathematics. He then takes a few potshots at Karl Popper (which I disagreed with), engages in some personal reminiscences on Rudolf Carnap and writes very well about Induction. I believe I've read the essay on time travel before and it includes Wheeler's whimsical conjecture that the universe is made up of a single electron traveling back and forth in time - great fun.

The highlights (for me) in the Math section include the essay on Magic Hexagrams and the short story "Against the Odds" about a young student who succeeds in spite of an early math teacher. I'm also currently rereading Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So with my youngest - its a great book but Gardner's review is only surface level - pun intended.

As to the Literature section - as a child I read as much of the Wizard of Oz series that I could find; the essay on the "Tin Woodman of Oz" and the origin of the character names was both humorous and fascinating. The Gardner's negative take on Hemingway looks at his relationships with women - not bad but if you've been into Hemingway this stuff is well known. Having never heard of Edgar Wallace nor his book "The Green Archer" Gardner's coverage was less than compelling.

The section on Religion and the final section on Psychology and Psychics , except for the for the first article on interpretations of Red Riding Hood, were dated and boring. Aside from a reasonable dissing of Freud and a passable expose of Bruno Bettelheim for his highly damaging influence on the treatment of autistic children he debunks several scam artists but here again the writing did not hold my interest.

Overall a mixed bag. A few bright spots but not really worth purchasing especially if you are short on shelf space but OK for a library read.