A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars. [...] We live in a galaxy that is about one hundred thousand light-years across and is slowly rotating; the stars in its spiral arms orbit around its center about once every several hundred million years. Our sun is just an ordinary, average-sized yellow star, near the inner edge of one of the spiral arms. We have certainly come a long way since Aristotle and Ptolemy, when we thought that the earth was the center of the universe!

-A Brief History of Time 

Well. Sometimes I get these fancy ideas about what I should be reading. Reading Age of Wonder* reminded me of how much I enjoyed learning about astronomy in college, and it seemed time to delve back into that field. I also thought of how much I like Doctor Who and figured it might be interesting to learn some of the science behind, say, time travel. I remembered hearing about A Brief History of Time, which looked slim and fairly unintimidating when I picked it up from the library. What I didn't take into consideration was that even a layman's guide to astronomy would be way over my head.

Stephen Hawking makes a valiant effort to present things as plainly as possible, but the fact remains that you can only make something like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle so simple--it's a pretty abstract concept for a layperson, as are many of the concepts in discussed in A Brief History of Time. Hawking peppers the text with jokey asides (and has an endearing fondness for exclamation points), but my head was still swimming a lot of the time. There were some concepts that he illustrated pretty clearly: I thought using the ping pong game on a train to talk about relativity was very clear, and I liked his use of the Earth's surface to help explain the boundaries (or lack thereof) in the universe. But when he talked about gluons and the spin of antiparticles and what color a certain quark was, my eyes had a tendency to glaze over.

Still, I don't feel entirely defeated. I'm wondering if there's some other book out there that might be even more simplistic. Or perhaps if I read the same ideas again, a few more of them would click. I'm not by any means a science person, but I'm willing to try--it reminds me of the early days in my AP Physics class in high school, when I optimistically thought I might be good at physics. I think it lasted 3 weeks, tops. After that, things went downhill--aside from the unit on something to do with the moon (I'm hazy on the particulars), which I inexplicably understood quite well. So there's that.

Up next: Already finished Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz, which was quite a change of pace. 

*There's that book again! The book that launched a thousand books, it seems. 

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

At all events, Coleridge treasured the memory of his father's eager demonstration of the stars and planets overhead, and the possibility of other worlds: 'I remember, that at eight years old I walked with him one evening from a farmer's house, a mile from Ottery -- & he told me the names of the stars -- and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world -- and that the other twinkling stars were Suns that had world rolling round them -- & when I came home, he showed me how they rolled round. I heard him with profound delight & admiration; but without the least mixture of Wonder or incredulity. For from my early reading of Faery Tales, & Genii etc etc -- my mind had been habituated to the Vast.'

-The Age of Wonder 

I find it pretty remarkable to think that Samuel Taylor Coleridge, some 200 years ago, thought his mind "habituated to the Vast." What hope, then, do we in the 21st century have to experience wonder, when so much more of the world has been discovered and analyzed and explained? Luckily for us, we also have books like The Age of Wonder to help us to consider the world around us in a new light.

If I were to try to sum up The Age of Wonder in one sentence, I might say something like, "It's about the monumental discoveries that were made in every scientific discipline in the late 18th and early 19th centuries." Even with that "monumental" in there, though, I suspect that that sounds rather dry. (Also, passive voice. Badly done.) Imagine this instead: A Scotsman exploring an area of Africa that cartographers have left blank. A German immigrant building the largest telescope in England...and promptly discovering a new planet. A wealthy young English botanist going native in Tahiti. A 20-year-old who spent considerable time experimenting with the effects of nitrous oxide, to which he became addicted, before going on to discover elements like calcium. The Age of Wonder covers all of these stories and many more. If you've guessed that it's ambitious in scope, you would be correct.

It's amazing how much we know of science dates from this time-- even the word scientist itself didn't come into usage until the 1820s. Richard Holmes has quite a lot of territory to cover. He juggles his stories in a way that makes it look quite easy, but I can't imagine how much time must have gone into researching this book. His voice is clear and he sometimes manages to work in some very clever asides--I would definitely be interested in looking into other books of his. (He seems to have primarily written about the Romantic poets, who flit in and out of The Age of Wonder.)

It did take me a little while to get into the book, but before long I was utterly absorbed in the Tahitian adventures of Joseph Banks. On the whole, it's a very interesting book. I particularly loved the parts about astronomy (because if anything can inspire wonder, I really think it's the stars) and the dramatic tale of the adventurer Mungo Park, the first European to find the Niger River. I was less enchanted with the story of Humphry Davy, but that may have been in part because he just didn't come across as a particularly likable fellow. Overall, I feel much better informed about this era than I did prior to reading this book, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

Up next: Using Joseph Banks as a jumping off point, I'm on to Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes, in which he retraces the travels of Captain Cook. I loved the other two Horwitz books I read, so I have high hopes. 

Ghost Hunters by Deborah Blum

 "I confess that at times I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling, to prompt our curiosities and hopes and suspicions, all in equal measure, so that, although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps and messages from spirits, are always seeming to exist and can never be fully explained away, they also can never be susceptible of full corroboration."

-William James, Ghost Hunters

As a child I, like many other children, was equally fascinated and terrified by tales of the supernatural. I'd ask my mom to buy the 99-cent collections of ghost stories sold in our grocery store's checkout line. I visited New Orleans and bought a book of bayou-centric ghost stories (I can still remember the pale pink cover), but at some point decided it was ill-advised to sleep in the same room with it. I believed, in one way or another, in just about everything: ghosts, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, the Anna Anderson story, etc.

I grew more skeptical as I got older, but, I have to say, I still enjoy learning about things that can't be explained easily. Last Halloween, I discovered Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures, and was immediately taken with the show's mix of goofy charm, bravado, and a dash of the unexplained. When I stumbled upon Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof for Life After Death, I thought it might be an interesting complement to my recent viewing.

I must say, I'm not overly fond of scientific explanations of paranormal things, however logical they may be. I feel like they suck the fun out of things, to be honest. What I found interesting about the premise of Blum's book was that William James and his fellow scientists experienced things in the course of what they called their psychical research that they could not explain. James is remembered now as the father of psychology, and some of his colleagues would go on to win Nobel Prizes or be awarded knighthoods. These were very upright, very scientifically-minded men, in other words--not the type who would be taken in without good evidence.

The research of these men coincided with the height of the Spiritualism movement. Mediums were springing up all over the place in the United States (where James lived) as well as Europe (home to many of his fellow researchers). The scientific establishment had, on the whole, rejected even research into psychical phenomena as worthless. Nevertheless, these men--James, Henry Sidgwick, Fred Myers, and Edmund Gurney, among many others--were each drawn in for their own reasons. The latter three were among the scientists that formed the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882, an organization that still exists today. Through the SPR they explored many aspects of paranormal activity, though Blum especially focuses on their efforts to document the phenomenon of the "crisis apparition" (the vision of a loved one at the time of his death) and to explore the capabilities of mediums.

They were able to debunk many instances of apparent psychical phenomena that they witnessed--and yet not everything.  Their investigations seriously jeopardized their reputations as legitimate scientists, but they could not dismiss what they'd seen. James was among those who was fascinated by the American medium Leonora Piper, whose abilities, although inconsistent, had produced some very compelling evidence for either telepathy (a term coined by an SPR member) or life after death. Late in the book, Blum recounts a story of cross-correspondence--that is, different mediums in different parts of the world getting similar specific messages alleged to be from the same spirits--that certainly left me puzzled. James and his fellow researchers were often left in the state of uncertainty that he describes in the passage I excerpted above. In a time when science was constantly uncovering new things, is it any wonder that these men thought they might be on the verge of a similar breakthrough? That the concrete evidence they sought seemed to always be just beyond their grasp must have been hugely frustrating, yet it motivated them ever onward.

 Blum packs a lot of information into her book, as you can probably tell from my blathering. I won't lie: with the exception of James, whom I was already familiar with, and Richard Hodgson, who for whatever reason made a big enough impression, I found it rather difficult to keep all of the scientists straight. It wasn't quite as lively a read as I might have hoped--not really a pageturner, that is--but it certainly gave me some interesting insight into an era I confess I'm less acquainted with than perhaps I should be. I admire the passion and the commitment of these researchers to the cause they believed in, and I appreciate that, even though they never proved their case, their work certainly left even the modern reader with some things to think about.*

Up next: I really have a wealth of books to choose from right now. I'm going to go with Jane, a modern update of Jane Eyre.

*Although this is only tangentially related to the research angle, I can't help but think about the famous Fox sisters. As teenagers, they became some of the best-known mediums in the early days of the Spiritualism movement, claiming to communicate with the spirit of a peddler who'd been killed in their home years before they had moved there. The sisters fell on hard times in their later years and one confessed it had all been a hoax, though she later recanted the confession. Several years after their deaths, a skeleton was found entombed in their cellar. Now, say what you will about their abilities, but that's a bit odd, don't you think?

In Medias Res: Ghost Hunters

So I was reading Ghost Hunters, which I'm enjoying so far, when I stumbled upon this passage concerning a trip the psychologist William James took to see his brother Henry, the novelist, in England:

William relaxed into the visit. He spent afternoons in conversation at his brother's clubs, surrounded by an aromatic fog of tobacco smoke. He made occasional calls on scientists. He walked the sooty streets, enjoying Henry's company. Then he found himself suddenly alone. Back in America, Henry James Sr. was dying. Their mother had died of bronchitis earlier that year, and their sister, faced with this second impending death, felt overwhelmed. She asked Henry Jr. to come home.

William--the more high-maintenance brother--was to stay in England. "All insist William shall not come," his sister telegraphed. William debated returning home anyway, despite his nervous state, but had to admit he probably wouldn't be an ideal deathbed companion.

Interesting family dynamic they had going there.

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks

In the third month after being struck by lightning, then, Cicoria - once an easygoing, genial family man, almost indifferent to music - was inspired, even possessed, by music, and scarcely had time for anything else. It began to dawn on him that perhaps he had been "saved" for a special reason. "I came to think," he said, "that the only reason I had been allowed to survive was the music."

-Musicophilia

Musicophilia, by neurologist Oliver Sacks (Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), is a study of how the brain is affected by music, especially in cases of brain injury or affliction. I'd been looking forward to reading it for some time, so I was a bit disappointed to find that the excerpts I'd already read turned out to be the most enjoyable parts of the book.

It is a hugely informative book, no doubt, but after a while I felt as though it dragged on and on. If multiple examples of synesthesia start to seem a bit dull, you can imagine that repetitive case studies of cochlear amusia are not exactly thrilling. The repetitiveness was really brought home when I read the following two short passages:

Page 260: "[Silas] Weir Mitchell, a novelist as well as a neurologist, was fascinated by the descriptions he receieved from [Civil War] soldiers, and he was the first to take the phenomenon of phantom limbs seriously. (Prior to this, they had been regarded as purely 'in the mind,' apparitions conjured up by loss and grief, like the apparitions of recently deceased children or parents.)"

Page 261: "Before Weir Mitchell's account, phantom limbs were regarded as purely psychic hallucinations conjured up by bereavement, mourning, or yearning - comparable to the apparitions of loved ones that mourners may experience for some weeks after their loss."

Yes, I recall....from reading almost the exact same thing one page earlier. A bit sloppy, no?

Part of my issue is certainly that I am not someone who is terribly interested in the finer biological points with regard to brain function. However, I'm very interested in the idiosyncracies of our brains and I'm interested in music, although I don't know much about the technical details of that subject either. When Sacks mentioned in passing that his mother could only remember a few songs, I found that fascinating, because I've always taken my brain's ability to function as a jukebox for granted. It's pretty remarkable, though, when you think about it.

My favorite essays were "A Bolt from the Blue," which I quoted above, and "In The Moment" (which you can read here, where it was titled "The Abyss"). To me, the idea of suddenly developing musicophilia, or losing almost your entire memory, except for music, is inherently more interesting than perfect pitch, for example. I also would have liked to read more about catchy tunes/"brainworms." During the course of my reading, I heard the song "Vienna" by Ultravox on the show Ashes to Ashes; I'd heard it once before on the same show about a week earlier. A few hours after hearing it, it popped into my head and the one line I knew played and replayed endlessly. It can be a bit distracting to have a New Romantic wailing "This means nothing to me/Vienna" over and over again, I'll tell you. I can't even really articulate how the melody of that line works for me - almost like it's scratching an itch in my brain - both pleasant and almost overstimulating. I wish Sacks could have explained something like that. And why do we like the songs we do? That's the kind of thing I would love to know.

All that having been said, I've always wanted to read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and this didn't necessarily put me off. I think I might find a set of essays with more varied subject matter a better fit for me.

Up next: Plans have changed slightly, due to some new books falling my lap (thanks Robin!). I've started Pride and Prejudice and Zombies; I also bought a collection of short humor pieces by Simon Rich at the Virgin Megastore closeout sale and I'm having trouble putting it down.