"The Mysterious Universe" is based on lectures dating back to 1930. That was a time when true geniuses roamed the halls of academia, and James Jeans was one of them. Some of the statements made by Jeans seem rather quaint in light of 21st century science. Here are some examples: 1) Helium is comprised of four protons and four electrons (the neutron had not yet been discovered). 2) The stars are trillions (not billions) of years old, and presently weigh but a small fraction of their original mass. 3) The cores of stars generate heat by annihilating atoms of hydrogen and converting their mass directly into energy (nuclear fusion was not yet well understood). 4) Cosmic rays consist of photons created from the annihilation of hydrogen atoms (cosmic rays are in fact high-energy particles of matter, mainly protons).
Despite such knowledge gaps, which certainly weren't Jeans' fault (having been born too early) he was a true intellectual giant in the field of science. He was one of the main proponents of idealism, which proposes that space, time, matter and energy are mathematical abstractions and that reality is the product of a mathematical universal mind. There are similar proposals of a universe is based on information, such as John Archibald Wheeler's "it from bit" proposal. Jeans' concluding remark was that the universe seems to be a great thought rather than a machine.
I consider "The Mysterious Universe" a must read. The only criticism I have of the Kindle version of this book is that some of the figures that are referenced in the text seem to be missing. Otherwise I would have given it five stars.
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BJ Kendall-Dunn
Interesting if the reader is a qualified astro physicist
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 5, 2022
