Stranger Than Fiction

photo by amy

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."  Carl Sagan

As recently as a couple years ago, I almost never read nonfiction.  I don't know exactly why, but I suspect it relates to my use of reading as a means of escape.  Over the last few years, however, I've discovered that nonfiction is often precisely what I need.  With that in mind, and following this month's theme of Nonfiction November, here are some of the nonfiction books I've read over the last couple years that I would recommend. 

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond:   An engaging book providing Diamond's hypothesis for why Western Civilization evolved as it did.  This book is so full of interesting facts that I spent almost as much time making notes as I did reading.  I loved the PBS series from this book.  I've bought Collapse by Diamond to read but haven't yet gotten to it.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion:  A memoir of the year directly following the sudden deaths of her husband and concurrent serious illness (and later death) of her daughter.  So much of what Didion describes resonates with me because of my experience of my brother's sudden death in an auto accident when he was 16 and I was 21.  I also read her later memoir Blue Nights.

The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow:  An interesting, approachable, understandable description of different theories about the origin and nature of the universe and humanity's differing historical views of it.  I would assume this book might be too basic for most scientists but is a good overview for the rest of us. 

Wild and Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed:  While both of these books are quite different, I loved the author's voice and points of view in both.  Wild is a memoir of the author's ill-planned hike on the Pacific Coast Trail in the wake of her mother's death and her own divorce.  Dear Sugar is a collection of question and answer advice columns on pretty much everything involved in being human.

The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean:  My most recently finished nonfiction work is an explanation and history of genetics.  While some of the book was a little dry, for the most part, I loved it.  Lots of interesting tidbits of info on the underlying stuff of life on this planet.  My favorite part was on epigenetics. I have Kean's Disappearing Spoon, which explores chemistry, to read soon.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames and Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris:  I listen to all of Sedaris's books on audio, narrated by him on my iPhone on long car trips.  The vignettes move from the hilarious, to the disturbing, to occasionally ho-hum, but are very often emotionally moving.  As I have lived in North Carolina my entire life, I feel like I'm hearing stories from an eccentric neighbor when I listen to him.  My favorite of his collections has been Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

My current nonfiction read is Spillover:  Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen, which explores the history and reflects on the future of zoonotic diseases.  I'm enjoying this one a lot and have his earlier work, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions to read soon.

Now that I've discovered the joy of nonfiction and the limitless, free education available to those who choose to pursue it, I try to keep a work of nonfiction underway concurrently with the novels I read.  I find these works a nice change of pace perfectly complementing my fiction reading.  Happy Nonfiction November!

Wherein An English Major Explains Quantum Physics (Ok, That May Be Hyperbolic)

 

 

photo by Anna Reavis

 

“Gentlemen…you are arguing about words, not reality.”  Richard Dawkins

Over the course of the last month, I’ve read two works of science nonfiction both of which, unfortunately, have had a common theme.  The first was Stephen Hawking’s book, The Grand Design, and the second, which I am still in the middle of is The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins.  What I have found to be the unfortunate common theme is that both authors have had to explain why people should accept several fairly well-established scientific theories, one of which is evolution. The purpose of the entire Dawkins novel, in fact, is to attempt to convince people of the truth of evolution.  The Hawking novel deals with quantum physics and the birth of the universe, but even here Hawking has to address the issue of people who refuse to “believe” in carbon dating, among other scientific techniques.

 

I find it beyond disheartening that human beings still work to refute any new idea that falls outside of their established mental comfort zone. (See Galileo, circa 1633, among other issues.)  The way the world works doesn’t change just because we choose fuzzy math.  A  scientific theory describes a predictable, stable process by which, in our experience and based on our understanding of the world, something happens.  Even chemistry on some levels can be considered theoretical because not every reaction can be mathematically expressed and solved, but that doesn’t mean the reaction didn’t happen.  (Hawking)  Acceptance of scientific theories, then, is not properly termed “belief in.”  Acceptance of scientific theories simply means to acknowledge that the observable results validate the hypothesized process.   People have no problem flipping on a light switch and accepting that the resulting light is the product of a process called electricity, even though they don’t fully understand that process.  

Humans, by nature, want to see, understand, and intuit things.  In the case of quantum physics and in fact, in the case of many of the processes by which things came to be, this just is not possible.  We must accept the limitations of our brains, without lazily falling back on faith and religion.  There is no question that the easiest route is to throw up our collective hands and say, “God did it.  We can’t figure it out.”  But that is not the path to truth, even for intelligent believers.   Ask your own questions.  Do your own research.  Become a fully developed human being.  Don’t believe the propaganda.  Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.  Find out for yourself.