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Errores Geniales Que Cambiaron El Mundo (2013)

by Mario Livio(Favorite Author)

3.43 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Ariel

review 1: Great scientists were mere humans, and like all humans; they were destined to make mistakes. This is not surprising, but to keep insisting on what is -today- clearly a big mistake is, I think, interesting to learn about.The author have chosen five blunders of five scientists, and have weaved them as one topic, five people that have paved to road for us to understand our universe from atoms to molecules to species to our planet and the whole universe, but rather that following this order, he preferred to put them in the historical narrative, because, in the end this is a story with morals to teach, and what's better than a tale to tell.This story is limited in that narrow path, it does not mention other great/brilliant blunders nor does it mention other blunders of the chos... moreen scientists, I think that Livio should have chosen the story of Einstein's opposition to quantum mechanics, which is very much similar to Kelvin's "age of the earth" in many aspects, but maybe he has followed the story of the alleged quote of Einstein "My biggest blunder" only to find out a different story :P
review 2: A great book that outlines the tortuous path that science actually takes.Mario Livio picks five scientists: Darwin, Kelvin, Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle and Einstein.1) Along the way it paints a very vivid picture of science in the trenches: rivalries, politics, etc. 2) I was very impressed by how dogged Watson and Crick were in their pursuit of the structure of DNA - especially since they were up against the great Linus Pauling (and they had been forbidden to work on the project by their supervisors).3) Some very good explanations of general relativity also. Especially Einstein's crucial insight that uniform acceleration was indistinguishable from gravity. Likewise, the insight that gravity is a consequence of space-time being warped by mass. Finally, also liked the quote attributed to Feynman that he "still does not understand how he [Einstein] did it".4) Very good explanation of how early calculations of the age of the earth were arrived at by Kelvin et al. 5) Found it to be particularly harsh on Darwin and Hoyle. I would not say that Darwin committed a blunder. He simply did not know what the mechanisms of inheritance were.6) Lastly, liked the quote attributed to Einstein "A theorist goes astray in two ways:1. The devil leads him by the nose with a false hypothesis. (For this he deserves our pity.)2. His arguments are erroneous and sloppy. (For this he deserves a beating.)" less

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