Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Book Summary Information
Author: Neil deGrasse TysonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-11-17
ISBN: 0393330168
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
Book Review: A few flaws, but a good overview
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a mostly enjoyable collection of articles by Neil Tyson. It's somewhat marred by what former Natural History Magazine author Stephen Jay Gould called "the bugbear of essay collections, redundancy." Other reviewers have noted this, and it's true -- you will encounter the same examples numerous times, and a few of the same painfully corny jokes. Overall, I prefer Carl Sagan, who presented much more unified and continually intriguing material throughout his books, even when he drew some of that material from works he had published previously (as he does in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark). This being science, though, understanding of the universe marches on without Carl, and I mostly found Tyson's descriptions of recent advances in astrophysical thought worthy of Sagan.
One slight annoyance was the way Tyson glossed over some amazing facts. In one article, he casually notes that on Mars the atmospheric pressure is such that water could simultaneously boil and freeze. As a man of Earth, this is not particularly intuitive, but no further explanation was offered. At times like these I feel as though Tyson has tipped the balance from explaining science to simply mystifying the reader. I understand the necessity of this in writing popular science, but on a few occasions like the one described he leaves you wanting more, more that could be adequately described in a few sentences.
Lastly, I have one complaint against an irritating bias on Tyson's part. Yes, physics is the most fundamental of all sciences. But if it was the most appropriate apparatus for explaining every phenomenon there wouldn't be any other scientific disciplines. Biology builds on chemistry which builds on physics, and these delineations have been remarkably successful. Tyson references a debate with a biologist concerning the possibility of microbial extraterrestrial life on an meteorite ejected from Mars. He says that the biologist's claim that the possible organism in question could not be life due to the fact that it "was much smaller than the smallest life on Earth," reflected the small-mindedness of biology as a whole. Tyson should be ashamed of this type of generalization -- he's a scientist after all! Why take one example of close-mindedness and apply it to an ENTIRE DISCIPLINE? Biologists reasonably define life as something with a metabolism capable of reproduction. No size requirement in the definition. No doubt many biologists would absolutely agree with Tyson's assertion that life on other planets would probably diverge more from life on Earth than any two Earth organisms do from each other. I find the claim reasonable. As a student of evolutionary and molecular biology I found this attack senseless and arrogant. That was the main reason I took my rating down to 4 stars, but I believe that despite these flaws anyone can find something of interest in this book.
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