Books

Books : reviews

Roland Duncan, Miranda Weston-Smith, eds.
The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance.
Pergamon. 1977

rating : 3 : worth reading

Contents

Otto R. Frisch. Why. 1977
Hermann Bondi. The lure of completeness. 1977
Ray A. Lyttleton. The nature of knowledge. 1977
John Archibald Wheeler, C. M. Patton. Is physics legislated by cosmogony?. 1977
William H. McCrea. Origin of Earth, moon and planets. 1977
Michael Rowan-Robinson. Galaxies, quasars and the universe. 1977
Douglas Gough. The solar interior. 1977
Paul C. W. Davies. Curved space. 1977
I. W. Roxburgh. Is space curved?. 1977
Bruno Bertotti. The riddles of gravitation. 1977
Thomas Gold. Relativity and time. 1977
A. J. Leggett. The "arrow of time" and quantum mechanics. 1977
C. J. S. Clarke. The hinterland between large and small. 1977
Ted Bastin. A clash of paradigms in physics. 1977
Alan Cottrell. Emergent properties of complex systems. 1977
R. W. Cahn. Transformations. 1977
Denys Haigh Wilkinson. The unknown atomic nucleus. 1977
Abdus Salam. Probing the heart of matter. 1977
Roger Penrose. Is nature complex?. 1977
Hans J. Bremermann. Complexity and transcomputability. 1977
C. W. Kilmister. Mathematics in the social sciences. 1977
Heini Halberstam. Some unsolved problems in higher arithmetic. 1977
John Kendrew. Introduction. 1977
Roy J. Britten. The sources of variation in evolution. 1977
James C. Lacey Jr, Arthur L. Weber, Kenneth M. Pruitt. The edge of evolution---a molecular historical perspective. 1977
E. W. F. Tomlin. Fallacies of evolutionary theory. 1977
John Maynard Smith. The limitations of evolution theory. 1977
Donald C. Johanson. Rethinking the origins of the genus Homo. 1977
Vincent B. Wigglesworth. The control of form in the living body. 1977
Horace B. Barlow. The languages of the brain. 1977
Richard L. Gregory. Consciousness. 1977
Henry A. Buchtel, Giovanni Berlucchi. Learning and memory and the nervous system. 1977
Francis H. C. Crick. Developmental biology. 1977
H. S. Micklem. Immunology. 1977
Arthur E. Mourant. Why are there three blood groups?. 1977
Peter J. Grubb. Leaf structure and function. 1977
Anthony Charles Neville. Symmetry and asymmetry problems in animals. 1977
K. A. Bettelheim. Bacterial pathogenicity. 1977
M. M. Lehman. Human thought and action as an ingredient of system behaviour. 1977
Michael V. Tracey. Human nutrition. 1977
Patrick D. Wall. Why do we not understand pain?. 1977
J. H. P. Willis. Drug addiction. 1977
Wilse B. Webb. Sleep. 1977
Ewan Cameron, Linus Pauling. Ascorbic acid and the glycosaminoglycans: an orthomolecular approach to cancer and other diseases. 1977
Preston Cloud. The veils of Gaia. 1977
A. G. Cairns-Smith, C. J. Davis. The design of novel replicating polymers. 1977
A. G. Cairns-Smith. Synthetic life for industry. 1977
Martin Holdgate, J. W. L. Beament. The ecological dilemma. 1977
N. L. Falcon. Ignorance below our feet. 1977
Roger W. Sperry. Problems outstanding in the evolution of brain function. 1977

Horace B. Barlow, Colin Blakemore, Miranda Weston-Smith.
Images and Understanding.
CUP. 1990

How do you paint a picture of infinity? How do you dance about death? How do you draw a diagram explaining entropy? Images and Understanding explores the human problem of moving facts and ideas from one mind to another – the problems of how we see and communicate using images expressed in pictures, diagrams, words, music and dance.

For artists as well as scientists discussion of this topic is timely; electronic and computing technology is expanding the means of generating and communicating images, while physiology and psychology are revealing the neural mechanisms of coding, perceiving and understanding them. The book is divided into six sections, each with an explanatory introduction followed by comprehensively illustrated contributions from internationally distinguished figures from fields as diverse as art history, choreography, psychology, computer science, and philosophy.

Images and Understanding is unique in viewing the problems of imagery through the eyes of both science and art; it gives new insight into images and new ideas about understanding.

Hermann Bondi, Miranda Weston-Smith, eds.
The Universe Unfolding: Milne lectures 1977-1996.
OUP. 1998

Contents

Fred Hoyle. Comets: a matter of life and death. 1977
Ray A. Lyttleton. Gravitation, ancient eclipses, and mountains. 1978
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. E. A. Milne: his part in the development of modern astrophysics. 1979
Martin J. Rees. Our universe and others. 1980
Thomas G. Cowling. Astrology, religion and science. 1981
Arnold W. Wolfendale. The origin of cosmic rays. 1982
David G. Kendall. Statistics, geometry and the cosmos. 1983
Desmond G. King-Hele. The earth's atmosphere: ideas old and new. 1984
William H. McCrea. Time, vacuum and cosmos. 1985
William A. Fowler. The age of the observable universe. 1986
Michael Atiyah. Geometry, topology and physics. 1987
V. Radhakrishnan. Polarization---its message in astronomy. 1988
Thomas Gold. Carbon---the element of life: what is its origin on Earth?. 1989
Dennis W. Sciama. Cosmology and particle physics: a new synthesis. 1990
Freeman J. Dyson. Hunting for comets and planets. 1991
Malcolm S. Longair. Modern cosmology---a critical assessment. 1992
Joseph H. Taylor. Binary pulsars and relativistic gravity. 1993
Robert P. Kirshner. Taking the measure of the universe. 1994
John C. Mather. Observing the Big Bang. 1995
Roger Penrose. The complexity of our singular universe. 1996