Middle World: The Restless Heart of Matter and Life
By addebook • Jun 9th, 2008 • Category: Medicine •
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Middle World: The Restless Heart of Matter and Life
Middle World: The Restless Heart of Matter and Life
By Mark Haw
Publisher: Macmillan
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2006-11-28
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1403986037
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781403986030
Binding: Hardcover
Between the microscopic world of quarks and atoms, and the macroscopic one of pebbles, planets, and galaxies there is another world, strangely neglected by science since Isaac Newton. It is inhabited by pollen, DNA and viruses, not to mention globules of paint, shampoo, milk and chocolate. Smaller than molecules but bigger than atoms, its tiny denizens have one thing in common: they cannot keep still. Physicist Mark Haw tells the story of the discovery of this restless middle world 200 years ago; how it was ignored for so long, and how it spectacularly answered Einstein’s most basic question about the nature of matter in the twentieth century. Despite this, science ignored it again until very recently. Haw reveals that today, understanding the weird, jiggling “mesoscale” has become central to nanotechnology, medicine and working out the origins of life.
Summary: Dissappointing
Rating: 2
This book attempts to fill in the “lay person” on the domain of the physical universe which lies between that ruled by Quantum Mechanics [microcosm] and the macrocosm which is ruled by Newtonian and Statistical Mechanics. In broaching the subject, the author misses a very ripe opportunity to define it well and then show us the phenomena that will make us interested in the distinction offered by such a “Middle World” definition.
Instead he begins by focussing [too much at the exclusion of other such distinctions] on Brownian Motion, citing the 3 approaches to its description and understanding, making none of them explicit or even interestingly described. He tells us then how such motion is simulateously “noise”; and a driver in the dynamics of the middle world without telling us just how this occurs either statistcally or kinematically. He often stops the discourse immediately after evoking interest in the topic under discussion. Interesting bio-examples are given re bio-engines, but just why we sould be interested is often omitted.
His “biographical” discourse seems to make the evolution of the subject a popularity contest between the well known and the not so well known, often focussing on the “human” frailties of the protagonists who we feel we have just barely met [at least in the book].
In my opinion the author’s style, which is quite British, also suffers from repeated rehash, in which he states the same idea over and over throughout the book as if ruminating on it, as opposed to explicating its many aspects, which is likely what he intended.
Finally this book is another example of the recent “science for the layman” type which shies away from gripping the difficulty of expressing fresh ideas and knowledge, by “dumbing down” the material to the point of pablum and simultaneously confusing science with the its perhaps resultant and/or enabling technology.
Finally having relied too heavily on technology to make his case as to why we should be interested in the “middle world domain” as science, only a nod is feebly given to the dangers inherent in the cited technology.
This little book at slightly less than 200 pages, falls way short of living up to either its publisher’s hype or the goals set out by the author. An excellent treatment of this subject yet awaits and will probably exceed 400 pages.
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