Product Description

James Trefil takes the reader on a thrilling tour across the borders of current scientific knowledge-from astronomy to genetics, from information technology to cosmology, the great contested questions that preoccupy researchers today and will become headlines tomorrow. In elegant, witty three-page summations, Dr. Trefil "makes sense of science for the rest of us" (Washington Post).

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #223240 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780395877401
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
"makes sense of science for the rest of us" -- Review

Review

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Fascinating reading, even a few years on
It's fascinating to read this book just a few years after it was written and to see how things have changed in just that short period of time. It's essentially a snapshot of the state of science at the time, covering 101 open questions in three pages each. One wonders how much of it will need to be rewritten 25 or 50 or 100 years down the line.

The biggest short-term changes are in genetics: Trefil devotes one of his short chapters the Human Genome Project, then well underway and some years from completion. Now, of course, the "first draft" has been completed and geneticists are contemplating the next step. One obsolete fact has come out already: Trefil states that the human genome has about 80,000 genes when the HGP (and the private counterpart Celera) has discovered, surprisingly, that there are only 30,000.

Also, Trefil discusses the possibility of past or present life on Mars without mentioning the controversial Mars meteorite ALH84001, in which, some scientists claim, there are traces of life.

And the last chapter discusses the Y2K problem, then still looming on the horizon, now safely past (thanks to the hard work of many computer programmers, including me).

Other chapters, I think, will be much the same for many years: we still have a long way to go to understand consciousness, to figure out how life began, and to come up with a fundamental theory that covers all of basic physics, both relativity and quantum mechanics. Not surprisingly, all three of these Trefil puts in his "top ten" problems.

All in all, it's a fascinating read and a great bathroom book with its short chapters - for the nerds, at least.

Interesting Read
This author tries to layout in terms normal people will understand 101 things that are important in science but that no one really understands. The author does this by using terminology any reasonably educated person would be familiar with. He also limits his explanations to 3 pages. This cuts down on too much overload. The book suffers from the author's own predictions of becoming dated because of new technologies and new discoveries but it is still relevant.

These are the topics covered:

The top ten problems in science:
1. Why is there something instead of nothing?
2. Is there a future for gene therapy?
3. Will we ever understand consciousness?
4. Why do we age?
5. How much of human behavior depends on genes?
6. How did life begin?
7. Can we monitor the living brain?
8. Are viruses going to get us all?
9. When will we have designer drugs?
10. Is there a theory of everything and can we afford to find it?

Other subject headlines are:

The physical sciences
Astronomy and cosmology
Earth and planetary sciences
Biology
Medicine
Evolution
Technology

It really opened the mind
Well, I liked the book. My partner bought it into me when I was in hospital for a couple of days and I found it to be absorbing and it kept my mind off the things that were going on around me. Trefil really made a great job of putting into plain simple language some very difficult concepts and ideas. A snapshot of science today, and it will be interesting to see in 10 years how much the list he has chosen has changed.