Galileo's Finger

Hola amigos. Here in the midst of my spring break, I am on a cruise heading up and down the Pacific Coast of Mexico. But though I may be taking a vacation from school and everyday life, there are no vacations from logging. Fortunately, I managed to muscle my way through this scientific book little by little on a plane, a boat, and a Mexican beach. Galileo's Finger was one of three books given to me by my uncle this past Christmas. It is, as its subtitle suggests, a general overview of what the author, Peter Atkins, considers to be the ten greatest ideas in science. These ideas are evolution, genetics, energy, entropy, atoms, symmetry, quanta, cosmology, spacetime, and arithmetic. Atkins has intentionally ordered the chapters not according to each theory's relevance, but from the most concrete to the most abstract in nature. It was an interesting read. At times it was mundane and review-filled, as I'm well aware, as an electrical engineer and biology minor, of much of the information presented in the text. But not all of it was review, especially toward the end of the book. Atkins seemed to have a way to make the obscure very graspable; his explanation of four spatial dimensions (in "spacetime") was almost one I could picture, for example, and his discourse on symmetry was more effective than anything else I have ever read at showing me what the different types of quarks are and how they're all related. Indeed, the book in general started out a bit dull, became interesting quickly, and ultimately ended up confusing and tough to fully care about. Still, I highly recommend it to anyone with a thirst for some scientific insight, especially regarding all or any of the ten topics I've named. Very little previous knowledge is required, I assure you, and you just might end up with a better understanding of the world around you. And in this age where intellectualism is both trendy and admirable, why not hone your scientific knowledge a bit? Of course, I'll be the first to admit that this isn't really the type of book I'd seek out myself, and I fully understand that nobody out there reading this is going to rush out to buy it (or even ask me to borrow it). My book backlog dwindles with the completion of this book, but still remains a smorgasbord of genres. Twenty-four books remain, but these include five thick "science" books like this one, four Newbery winners, six "young adult" books that belong to two separate series, eight novels of various levels of fame (all recognizable by title or at least author), and a piece of Civil War historical fiction. (Or maybe fact - tough to tell.) Yep, all in all, it's a crapshoot what I'll read next at any given moment - isn't that exciting?