Category: Book Reviews

Book Review of THE FUTURE OF FUSION ENERGY by Jason Parisi and Justin Ball (2019)

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This is my submission to the Astral Codex Ten book review contest, where it tied for third place.

Fusion is the power which lights the stars. It is the source of almost all elements heavier than hydrogen in the universe. Wouldn’t it be great if we could use and control this power here on Earth?

I predict that we will get fusion before 2035 (80%) or 2040 (90%). I am a professional plasma physicist, a fusioneer if you will, so I probably know more about this subject than you, but am likely to overemphasize its importance.

The Future of Fusion Energy is the best introduction to fusion that I know. I can confirm that the information it contains is common knowledge among plasma physicists. My parents, who are not physicists, can confirm that it is accessible and interesting to read.

Things are changing fast in fusion right now, and The Future of Fusion Energy is already out of date in some important ways. I will summarize our quest for fusion as it is portrayed in the book, describe what has happened in the field since 2018, and make some predictions about where we go from here. The predictions are my own and do not reflect the opinions of Parisi or Ball.

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Book Review of LEVIATHAN AND THE AIR PUMP by Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer (1985)

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The debates between Thomas Hobbes, author of Leviathan, and Robert Boyle, inventor of the air pump, were some of the first challenges of institutionalized science (called ‘natural philosophy’ at the time). Boyle and the Royal Society won one of the most decisive victories in the history of philosophy. Hobbes is still remembered as a political and moral philosopher, but his natural philosophy was completely rejected and forgotten. Hobbes’s arguments had not even been translated out of Latin before 1985.

Shapin & Schaffer decided to take Hobbes’s side of the debate. They pretend impartially in the introduction, but consistently favor Hobbes in the text, and the last sentence of the conclusion is “Hobbes was right.”

Why should we care about the losing side of an old debate about natural philosophy?

It is interesting to see what challenges science faced in its early days and what it defined itself in opposition to. We can use these debates to help understand science and its role in society today.

Why shouldn’t we just read Hobbes directly then?

When you read only a few great authors of the past, you get a distorted view of intellectual history. It looks like there were only a few sides of the debates. Modern scholars have read much more than you could in their eras of expertise. I might have read Hobbes and Boyle, but not Torricelli or Linus or More. By reading modern scholarship, you can see how much more complex and sophisticated the debates were.

Read More » Book Review of LEVIATHAN AND THE AIR PUMP by Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer (1985)

MORMON DOCTRINE by Bruce R. McConkie (1958) was an Aberration

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McConkie was the most influential theologian in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the second half of the twentieth century. His magnus opus was Mormon Doctrine, an encyclopedia which attempted to answer all of the important questions about Mormon doctrine. It has been somewhat controversial because many of the answers it gave were wrong, but I think that it has a bigger problem. Mormon Doctrine is contrary to the way Mormonism approaches Truth.

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Book Review of A HISTORY OF THE THERMOMETER AND ITS USE IN METEOROLOGY by W. E. Knowles Middleton (1966)

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This is the sequel to The History of the Barometer (1965) and prequel to the more ambitious Invention of the Meteorological Instruments (1969). Middleton has a very particular area of expertise and knows it very well. He seems to have examined every thermometer that was produced before the year 1800 which still exists and to have read almost every text that references them, in the original language. Why was I interested in such a particular book? Middleton tells the reason in his Preface: unlike barometers, where almost all the progress since the 1600s has been technical, the history of thermometers is as much about what we think ‘temperature’ is as it is about the device itself. My interest is in how these philosophical questions about temperature were asked and answered.

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Book Review of THE ART OF NOT BEING GOVERNED: AN ANARCHIST HISTORY OF UPLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA by James C. Scott (2009)

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Scott’s expertise is the history of the people living in the hills of Southeast Asia. This people have been in contact with the largest state-building project in history (China) for thousands of years. They have arranged their societies to be anti-legible: to make it as hard as possible for the state or any large institution to establish itself.

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Book Review of THE WORLD IMAGINED by Hendrik Spruyt (2020)

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Spruyt’s previous book detailed the development of the sovereign state system in medieval Europe. In The World Imagined, Spruyt looks at how the sovereign state system spread across the world during the Early Modern Era. He contrasts it with other international systems: the Chinese tributary system, the Islamic Cultural Community, and the Galactic Empires of Southeast Asia.

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Book Review of THE SOVEREIGN STATE AND ITS COMPETITORS by Hendrik Spruyt (1994)

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We currently understand international relations in terms of states, which claim sovereignty within their borders and recognize other states as equal outside of their borders. During the High Middle Ages (~1000-1350), multiple different international systems developed. One of them, the sovereign territorial state, became dominant, first in Europe, then throughout the world.

Read More » Book Review of THE SOVEREIGN STATE AND ITS COMPETITORS by Hendrik Spruyt (1994)
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