Innovation Watch - Science Bookshelf

Learning from the Octopus: How Secrets from Nature Can Help Us Fight Terrorist Attacks, Natural Disasters, and Disease. By Rafe Sagarin. Basic Books.

iw — Fri, 18 May 2012 23:39:55 +0000

Despite the billions of dollars we’ve poured into foreign wars, homeland security, and disaster response, we are fundamentally no better prepared for the next terrorist attack or unprecedented flood than we were in 2001. Our response to catastrophe remains unchanged: add another step to airport security, another meter to the levee wall. This approach has proved totally ineffective: reacting to past threats and trying to predict future risks will only waste resources in our increasingly unpredictable world. In Learning from the Octopus, ecologist and security expert Rafe Sagarin rethinks the seemingly intractable problem of security by drawing inspiration from a surprising source: nature. Biological organisms have been living — and thriving — on a risk-filled planet for billions of years. Remarkably, they have done it without planning, predicting, or trying to perfect their responses to complex threats. Rather, they simply adapt to solve the challenges they continually face. … Read more

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Design in Nature: How the Constructural Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization. By Adrian Bejan and J. Peder Zane. Doubleday.

iw — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 20:36:35 +0000

Reoccurring patterns in nature have long puzzled even the most devoted proponents of Darwin’s theory of evolution — and given fuel to its critics. Design in Nature changes the terms of this debate, explaining how a single principle of physics, the constructural law, is the governing force behind the illusory notion of “intelligent design.” Simply put, the constructural law explains that everything that moves — whether animate or inanimate — has the tendency to generate shape and structure that facilitates this movement. These designs evolve with a clear direction in time: they configure and reconfigure themselves to enhance their movement. Environmental and genetic factors matter, but the constructural law elegantly predicts the structural constraints that reduce the pool of potential outcomes. In the same way that soil erosion is a mechanism by which the designs of rivers might come to pass, natural selection is a mechanism by which flow efficiency in biological life is increased. Amazingly, the constructural law even extends into other facets of life, shaping everything from traffic patterns to the hierarchical flowcharts in corporations, the military, science, academia, and political bodies. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, Design in Nature is an enlightening, exuberant, and paradigm-shifting exploration that fundamentally transforms our understanding of the world around us. … Read more

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Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are. By Sebastian Seung. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

iw — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:55:12 +0000

We know that each of us is unique, but science has struggled to pinpoint where, precisely, our uniqueness resides. Is it in our genes? The structure of our brains? Our genome may determine our eye color and even aspects of our personality. But our friendships, failures, and passions also shape who we are. The question is: how? Sebastian Seung, a dynamic professor at MIT, is on a quest to discover the biological basis of identity. He believes it lies in the pattern of connections between the brain’s neurons, which change slowly over time as we learn and grow. The connectome, as it’s called, is where our genetic inheritance intersects with our life experience. It’s where nature meets nurture. Seung introduces us to the dedicated researchers who are mapping the brain’s connections, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. … Read more

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Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners. By Michael Erard. Free Press.

iw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:53:53 +0000

We all learn at least one language as children. But what does it take to learn six languages, twenty . . . seventy? Such feats of linguistic prowess provide a glimpse into what the human brain is capable of — and hold up a mirror to our desire to live without language barriers on a shrinking planet. In Babel No More, Michael Erard, “a monolingual with benefits,” sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like the nineteenth-century Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages and was such a legend that when he died people all over Europe vied for his skull. Emil Krebs, a pugnacious fin de siecle German diplomat, spoke sixty-eight languages, and Erard sees the evidence of this in Krebs’s dissected brain. Lomb Kate, a Hungarian hyperpolyglot who taught herself Russian by reading Russian romance novels, believed that “one learns grammar from language, not language from grammar.” These massive multilinguals have long offered a natural experiment into the limits of the brain; here, at last, we can inspect the results. … Read more

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Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. By Terrence W. Deacon. W. W. Norton and Company.

iw — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 02:28:38 +0000

As physicists work toward completing a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The “Theory of Everything” that appears to be emerging includes everything but us: the feelings, meanings, consciousness, and purposes that make us (and many of our animal cousins) what we are. These most immediate and incontrovertible phenomena are left unexplained by the natural sciences because they lack the physical properties — such as mass, momentum, charge, and location — that are assumed to be necessary for something to have physical consequences in the world. This is an unacceptable omission. We need a “theory of everything” that does not leave it absurd that we exist. Incomplete Nature begins by accepting what other theories try to deny: that, although mental contents do indeed lack these material-energetic properties, they are still entirely products of physical processes and have an unprecedented kind of causal power that is unlike anything that physics and chemistry alone have so far explained. … Read more

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Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information. By Manuel Lima. Princeton Architectural Press.

iw — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 20:48:23 +0000

Our ability to generate information now far exceeds our capacity to understand it. Finding patterns and making meaningful connections inside complex data networks has emerged as one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century. Designers, researchers, and scientists now employ an innovative mix of color, symbols, graphics, algorithms, and interactivity to clarify, and often beautify, what would otherwise be a clutter of data. In Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information, Manuel Lima collects and presents almost three hundred of the most compelling examples of information design — everything from representing networks of followers on Twitter and the eighty-five recorded covers of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” to depicting interconnections between members of the Al Queda network and interactions among proteins in a human cell. Lima also looks at the long tradition of mapping complex networks, offering the first book to integrate a thorough history of network vizualization with an examination of the real-life situations from which these graphics are generated. … Read more

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The Wisdom of the Body . By Sherwin B. Nuland. Alfred A. Knopf.

iw2 — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 10:30:30 +0000

From the author of the acclaimed, bestselling, National Book Award-winning How We Die, an inspiring search — within the interior life of our bodies — for the biologically elusive quality of life that defines us.

We acre for our bodies, yet in myriad ways they care for themselves. They function, simply and miraculously, to maintain the momentum of life. Dr. Sherwin Nuland offers a mesmerizing portrait of the tumultuous universe within us: the turbulence of chemistry, the seeming chaos of tissue, the volatile responsiveness of cells. And he shows how, amazingly, the stability of health rides on these tempests. … Read more

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The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World. By David Deutsch. Allen Lane.

iw — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 18:37:11 +0000

The Beginning of Infinity is a bold and all-embracing intellectual exploration. David Deutsch, the critically acclaimed author of The Fabric of Reality, explores the big issues that inform our understanding of how the physical world works. The Fabric of Reality described the four deepest strands of our current knowledge — evolution, quantum physics, knowledge and computation — and the world view that follows from them. The Beginning of Infinity applies that world view to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems. It is about free will, creativity and the laws of nature, the future of the human species and its origin, reality and appearance, explanation and infinity. Uncompromisingly rational and optimistic, Deutsch comes to startling new conclusions about the nature of human choice, scientific explanation and the evolution of culture. … Read more

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Islands of Genius: The Bountiful Mind of the Autistic, Acquired, and Sudden Savant. By Darold A. Treffert. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

iw — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 16:06:50 +0000

Savant syndrome is a rare condition in which individuals with developmental disorders have one or more areas of expertise, ability, or brilliance — ‘islands of genius’ – that exist in contrast with their overall limitations. In this fascinating book, Dr. Darold Treffert looks at what we know about this remarkable condition, and at new discoveries that raise interesting questions about the hidden brain potential within us all. Dr. Treffert explores the phenomena of genetic memory — instances in which individuals somehow “know” things they never learned — and sudden genius or “acquired savantism” — where a neurotypical person unexpectedly and spectacularly develops savant-like abilities following a head injury or stroke. Showing that these phenomena point convincingly towards a reservoir of untapped potential — an inner savant capacity — within us all, he looks both at how savant skills can be nurtured, and how they can help the person who has them, particularly if that person is on the autism spectrum. … Read more

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How Math Explains the World: A Guide to the Power of Numbers, from Car Repair to Modern Physics. By James D. Stein. Smithsonian Books.

iw — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 13:42:30 +0000

In How Math Explains the World, mathematician Stein reveals how seemingly arcane mathematical investigations and discoveries have led to bigger, more world-shaking insights into the nature of our world. In the four main sections of the book, Stein tells the stories of the mathematical thinkers who discerned some of the most fundamental aspects of our universe. From their successes and failures, delusions, and even duels, the trajectories of their innovations — and their impact on society — are traced in this fascinating narrative. Quantum mechanics, space-time, chaos theory and the workings of complex systems, and the impossibility of a “perfect” democracy are all here. … Read more

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The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. By Iain McGilchrist. Yale University Press.

iw — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 04:09:45 +0000

Why is the brain divided? Despite much research and speculation, neurologists have struggled to make sense of hemisphere differences, or of their impact on human thought and experience. It is vital that the two hemispheres work together, but in Western culture there is evidence of a power struggle, with the left hemisphere becoming increasingly dominant. The result is a dehumanized society, where a rigid and bureaucratic mentality, obsessed with structure and mechanism, holds sway, at huge cost to human happiness and the world around us. Throughout the book, McGilchrist focuses on the influence of our divided brains, both for us as individuals, and for our society. … Read more

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Drawing the Map of Life: Inside the Human Genome Project. By Victor K. McElheny. Basic Books.

iw — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 23:55:02 +0000

Drawing the Map of Life is the first account to deal in depth and balance with the intellectual roots of the Human Genome Project, the motivations that drove it, and the hype that often masked genuine triumphs. In his compelling narrative, distinguished science journalist Victor McElheny takes the story from the beginning, through the famous race between the public and private efforts, and on to today’s ever more promising research to exploit the molecule of heredity and achieve a truly personalized medicine. The setbacks he describes are as fascinating as the advances. Each time a more refined map has been achieved, new complexities arise. … Read more

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