The Dancing Wu Li Masters: an Overview of the New Physics by Gary Zukav (review)

Leonardo, Vol. 14, pp. 64-82 Pergamon Press, 1981. Printed in Great Britain. BOOKS Readers are invited to recommend books to be reviewed. In general, only books in English and in French can be reviewed at this stage. Those who would like to be added to Leonardo's panel of reviewers should write to the Founder-Editor, indicating their particular interests. This Amazing, Amazing, Amazing but Knowable Universe. V. S. Gott. Trans. from Russian by J. Bushnell and K. Bushnell. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977. (Imported Publications, Inc., Chicago) 253 pp. $2.75. Cosmos, Earth and Man: A Short History of the Universe. Preston Cloud. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1978. 372 pp., illus. $10.75. Reviewed by Roger F. Malina* These two books are vigorous statements by scientists with long and distinguished careers behind them. Based on their life experiences, both authors are strongly optimistic that the scientific principles that have guided them will continue to be applied successfully. In the case of Gott, it is the faith that the inexhaustible supply of questions provided by scientific inquiry will continue to be answerable or 'knowable'. For Cloud it is that the quiltwork of our knowledge of the universe and our species' place in it will be completed within the framework he describes. Both authors insist, from a rather different perspective , that a scientist's focus on the generality of experience ought to be intertwined with the focus on its uniqueness to humans provided by the societal or the philosophical context. Gott, a philosopher, begins with an autobiographical chapter that establishes his orthodoxy and asserts the primacy of Marxist-Leninist thought. An extensive discussion of the validity of dialectic materialism, as opposed to Machist Idealism and neo-Thomism , is followed by chapters on the role and characteristics of scientific concepts. The laws and principles of conservation and symmetry that permeate scientific formalism as well as the importance of recent discoveries in subatomic physics and cosmology are addressed. The book ends with a brief review of areas of physics that can be expected to bear fruit in the future, such as high energy physics, controlled fusion, high temperature semiconductors. Overall, the book is likely to be of rather limited interest to nonspecialists. I found the translation excellent. Cloud, a biogeologist, gives a spirited overview of scientific knowledge by means of vignettes ranging from the structure of the universe and the origin of elements to the ascendence of Homo Sapiens and the survival problems facing the species. The book is aimed at educated laypersons with basic scientific literacy. The major subdivisions are Cosmos, Earth, Life and Man. The treatment is, of course, not comprehensive but rather provides an overall structure of current knowledge, punctuated by detailed examinations of questions either still controversial or whose resolution has been particularly important . Addressed in turn are the properties and origin of the elements. the large-scale structure of the universe, the formation of the solar system. plate tectonics and the changing composition of the Earth's atmosphere, the origin of life, the mechanism of evolution, the appearance of land-based life and animals, the acquisition of temperature control in advanced animals, the demise of the dinosaur, the ascendance of humans and, finally, the probability of extra-terrestrial life. A basic thrust is that, although some of the intermediate steps are still unclear, the overall picture is known (for example, 'the question is not whether evolution happened but how it happened'). "Dept. of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A. 64 The last section reaches to the future to provide a scenario for the evolution of the Earth and conditions for human survival. Already humans intervene actively, by accident, through their activities ranging from agriculture to testing of nuclear weapons. In fact, a large effect on the equilibrium of nature, which had provided a niche for humans, is inevitable. The arithmetic indicates that even the essential activities necessary for feeding and housing the unavoidable population of the next century is bound to drastically change the face of the planet. Adding to these 'non-material intensive' areas of desirable growth in literacy and education, sciences, arts and leisure and the material intensive ones of consuming...