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A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals about the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe (Paperback)

by Gino Segre (Author)
Key Phrases: caloric fluid, solute zero, humoral medicine, United States, Nobel Prize, Royal Society (more...)

4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Length and mass are measurements we understand intuitively, but temperature is fleeting and elusive. Why is it so hard to measure compared with other fundamentals? Why do living things require such a narrow range of temperatures to go about their business? How cold is deep space, anyway? Physicist Gino Segre knows how to keep interest flowing along; even when he's explaining the intricacies of small-scale physics, he takes time to ground it in real life. His scope is wide--from the beginning (and ending) of the universe to the history of life on Earth, little falls outside his purview. Yet the book touches on so many subjects of immediate interest to 21st-century humans (high fevers, sports medicine, and the next scheduled Ice Age, to name a few) that it's compelling even to those who don't care about the Big Questions. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Segre, a theoretical physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, begins this far-ranging survey of the history of science by explaining how living organisms maintain stable temperatures and showing how adaptations to hot or cold habitats influenced animal evolution. Subsequent chapters cover a wide range of topics such as the development of heat-measuring technologies; influences of temperature on earth's climate, including speculations on "snowball" and "slushball" earth scenarios and the greenhouse effect; survival mechanisms of thermophiles and psychrophiles (bacteria that tolerate extremely high and extremely low temperatures, respectively); and the role of neutrinos, tiny particles produced in the core of the sun, in explaining solar dynamics. Segre observes that the history of human civilization can be read as a story of the "ever-hotter fires humans made as they moved from hunter-gatherers to villagers to toolmakers," while the formation of the universe can be seen as a vast cooling, from one hundred billion degrees at one hundredth of a second after the big bang to the cooler temperatures at which neutrons and protons could bind together (one billion degrees) and some 300,000 years later hydrogen and helium atoms could form (3,000 degrees). While some of Segre's material will be a challenge to readers without knowledge of college-level physics, he brings humor and passion to his subject and excels in showing its relevance to both current policy and future research.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 014200278X
ISBN-13: 978-0142002780
Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #162,642 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories: (What's this?)
#41 in Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Materials Science > Thermodynamics
#64 in Books > Science > Physics > Dynamics > Thermodynamics

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Inside This Book (learn more)

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
caloric fluid, solute zero, humoral medicine, new quantum mechanics, hydrothermal vents

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Nobel Prize, Royal Society, Big Bang, First Law, South America, Lake Vostok, Lord Kelvin, Count Rumford, Kyoto Protocol, Wien's Law, World War, Bronze Age, George Gamow, Gulf Stream, Industrial Revolution, Isaac Newton, New Hampshire, New Zealand, North America, South Pole, Special Theory of Relativity, Tycho Brahe, Woods Hole, Younger Dryas

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 81 books:

The Theory of Relativity: & Other Essays by Albert Einstein on 6 pages
The First Three Minutes: A Modern View Of The Origin Of The Universe by Steven Weinberg on page 212, page 226, and Back Matter
Earth System, The (2nd Edition) by Lee R. Kump in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
Theory of Relativity by W. Pauli on page 228, and page 253
Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)

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Books on Related Topics (learn more)

The Extraordinary Chemistry of Ordinary Things by Carl H. Snyder

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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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Average Customer Review

4.1 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Degrees of Excellence, September 27, 2002

By	Robert J. Hard (Norwalk, CT United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe (Hardcover)

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.

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars clear explanations of complex subjects, December 16, 2002

By	D. Archibald "squibix" (Bedford, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: A Matter of Degrees: What Temperature Reveals About the Past and Future of Our Species, Planet, and Universe (Hardcover)

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 Segr� 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. Segr� 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 Segr� 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.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Journey of Discovery from the Birth of Aspirin to Hydrothermal Vents, February 15, 2006

By	James East (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Segre:Amatter of degrees
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... Read more

Published 2 months ago by Susan V. Meschel

1.0 out of 5 stars Not so cool
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)... Read more

Published 5 months ago by Book Worm

4.0 out of 5 stars An open invitation to research!
This is a wonderful account relating the role temperature plays in widely varying disciplines, ranging from physiology to cosmology. Read more

Published 15 months ago by Kaushik Basu

5.0 out of 5 stars temperature explained.. and the effects it has
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. Read more

Published on June 15, 2006 by Humberto Mejia

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and lucid book!
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. Read more

Published on April 8, 2006 by Luis Mansilla Miranda

3.0 out of 5 stars Science for the curious
This book is a fantastic read for any of us who has gone through their science courses in school and wondered if there is more to science than the cut and dry information they got... Read more

Published on January 4, 2006 by laleph

2.0 out of 5 stars 2 stars for usefulness, 4 stars for interesting tidbits
I read this book after reading John Gribbin's "Deep Simplicity" and "Ice Age". If I hadn't read Gribbin's books I would not have been able to put some of Segre's political bias... Read more

Published on December 10, 2005 by L. Dwight

5.0 out of 5 stars A "segre" book...
Outstandingly excellent, a distillatgion of the "segre family quality" in the sciences.

Published on June 17, 2003 by Juan-Carlos Lerman

5.0 out of 5 stars a good philosophy/physics read...
The author is a natural teacher who explains that this work is a reflection of his observation over time that phenomena seem to have common bases. Read more

Published on May 16, 2003 by selfconscious

5.0 out of 5 stars Plenty of history and science in an intriguing survey
A few degrees temperature difference can make or break species, change environments completely, and affects both life and inert matter. Read more

Published on August 8, 2002 by Midwest Book Review

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