书店的数学变换 赵克勤/文 读吴宝俊 科学网博文 《 聊聊大学（ 14 ）——别了，大学书店》 http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-200147-939200.html ，悟记： 书变多， 店变大； 书店的数学变换， 任凭读书人想象。 书更多， 店更大； 书店的数学变换， 将变到无穷大？ Books become more, Shops become large; The mathematical transformation of the bookstore , Let reading peoples imagine. More books, Bigger shop, The mathematical transformation of the bookstore, Will become infinite ？
Life and Yoga 1.Human Anatomy 2.Thinner this year 3.Yoga Philosophy for Everyone 4.Yoga A pratical,step by step guide to yoga postures Materials and Analog 1.Principles of Electronic Materials and Devices(Third Edition) 2.Design with operatioanl Amplifiers and Analog Integrated Circuits(Four Edition) 3.DC/AC Fudamentals A system approach 4.Electric Circuits (Eighth Edition)
历史学最近屡被自然科学进犯，这不，前脚遗传学刚走，大数据和计算又来了。随便一个科学家都能到这儿玩个票。倒不是吓唬谁，这回介绍个神器： Google Books .. 图一 图二 图三 图四 图五 “计算历史学”（Computational Historiography或者干脆Computational History）是一个我杜撰的词儿，一方面是迎合目前啥事前面都加“计算”的时尚，比如最唯物的有“计算广告学”（Computational Advertising），最唯心的有“计算形而上学”（Computational Metaphysics），中间隔着计算数学、计算物理学、计算化学、计算生物学、计算语言学等等。这年头，跳大神儿的要是不会个计算，都不好意思上春晚或江苏卫视。另一方面也是给中国做历史的提个醒：大部分的中国哲学家翻译水平已经被谷歌或百度翻译器赶超了，历史学家要是再不上进，也快没饭了。历史学最近屡被自然科学进犯，这不，前脚遗传学刚走，大数据和计算又来了。随便一个科学家都能到这儿玩个票。倒不是吓唬谁，这回介绍个神器： Google Books Ngrams。不信不服。 谷歌的两位创始人在斯坦福读书时都在数字图书馆项目里干过活。早在2002年，谷歌还没出大名时，就启动了Google Print项目，要把全世界的数字图书馆项目统一起来。拉里·佩奇访问了他的本科母校密歇根大学，那里的图书馆学院是美国排名最靠前的之一，当时正有数字图书馆项目，就是用数字扫描仪把图书馆的所有书扫描然后做字符识别。佩奇参观了这个项目，结论是密歇根需要一千年才能把本校图书馆的书扫完。佩奇向校长建议：我六年就能扫完全世界的。这还真不算什么，扫描和字符识别都是成熟的技术，更重要的是谷歌有人，有钱，有效率。佩奇随后又访问了牛津最古老的Bodley图书馆，受到震撼，由此也和更多的大学图书馆结成伙伴关系：谷歌和这些图书馆合作数字化他们的所有书，从英文开始。 但三年后，谷歌迎来了两场官司，一场是作者组织的集体诉讼，另一场则来自出版商。焦点自然是版权。2008年谷歌和出版商达成协议，同意为出版商和作者提供补偿。谷歌随后将Google Print项目改名为Google Books，在Google Books中，版权已过期的书全部公开，版权没过期但得到授权的可通过“预览”功能（Preview）部分地公开。但美国作协（Authors Guild，不知是不是中国作协的姐妹单位）对谷歌和出版商的协议不满，认为出版商不能代表作家的利益，于是又对谷歌提起诉讼。2011年，一位联邦法官拒绝了谷歌和出版商的协议，于是“作协对谷歌”的案子正式进入诉讼程序，直到2013年11月，联邦法官陈卓光（Denny Chin）做出对谷歌有利的判决，他的根据是“公平使用”（fair use）原则。哈佛图书馆馆长罗伯特·达恩顿（Robert Darnton）2010年写了本书讲了这个案子的早期发展，书名很有意思，叫The Case for Books，但中文版译名为《阅读的未来》，没有了原名的多重隐意。达恩顿作为历史学家，只看到谷歌扫描书这一回事，却并没有意识到Google Books不止扫描，更多是企图用机器理解被扫描的书的内容。 到2010年，谷歌已经扫了一千五百万册书，这时谷歌决定将已经扫过的书的某些统计结果公开，这就是Google Books Ngrams。Ngrams是在文本中统计词频的算法。也就是说，书的内容不一定公开，但关于书的词频统计结果可以公开，并且Google为Ngrams做了一个“显示器”（Viewer），它可以画出输入的任何词或词组的词频统计结果。到2013年4月，已经有超过三千万册书纳入Google Books。一开始这些结果只被计算机科学家和计算语言学家所知，但现在越来越多的人文学者也开始玩起Ngrams了，估计用不了多久，这东西会成为字典一样的必备工具。 下面通过几个例子介绍Ngrams的用法。 例一、“黑鬼-黑人-非裔美国人” 上世纪六十年代美国黑人民权运动爆发之前，“黑人”普遍被歧视地称为“黑鬼”（nigger），随后则被称为“黑人”。而近年来，“非裔美国人”变成更为政治正确的叫法。在Ngrams里输入，nigger，black people和African-American，可以清晰地看到这一趋势。横坐标是时间，纵坐标是词频。（见图一） 例二、“科学、哲学与宗教” 按照罗素在《西方哲学史》里的打油说法，科学是确定性的知识，神学是不诉诸理性的教条，而哲学则介于两者之间。比罗素晚一辈的美国哲学家蒯因可能不同意，他认为哲学压根就应该是科学化的（Scientific Philosophy)，但蒯因的学生辈大概是最后一拨科学化的哲学家：新起的一大票逻辑学家都出自数学系和计算机系，哲学系已剩不下什么“科学”的玩意儿了。如果哲学家们还不争气，再过个十年，也许Ngrams真会验证这个预测。在Ngrams中，分别输入首字母大写的“Science, Philosophy, Religion”，和小写的“science, philosophy, religion”，我们得到如下两张图。在大写的图中（图二），可以清楚看到在公元1600到1800年间，宗教是压倒性强势，然后是哲学，相比之下，科学还是没影的事。但1850年是转折点，科学慢慢占据优势，比宗教和哲学加起来都大。在小写的图中（图三），科学和宗教的位置互换，晚了一百年。研究文化史和科学史的恐怕各自都有解读。 科学史家劳拉·施耐德（Laura Snyder）写过一本很有意思的微观科学史著作《哲学早餐俱乐部》（The Philosophical Breakfast Club: Four Remarkable Friends Who Transformed Science and Changed the World）。讲的是十九世纪初，四位剑桥的学生：查尔斯·巴贝奇（Charles Babbage，数学家兼工程师，某种意义上，他发明了最早的计算机）, 约翰·赫歇尔（John Herschel, 天文学家兼数学家），胡威立（William Whewell，科学家、哲学家、神学家）和理查德·琼斯（Richard Jones，经济学家），他们每个周日早上一起聚餐，讨论科学问题。他们后来对科学事业和科研社团（如皇家学会）在英国的发展做出了巨大贡献。那时，他们不满意被别人称为“自然哲学家”，其中胡威立最早提出了“科学家”这个词。这段有趣的故事提供了科学从哲学中分离的微观历史。如果在Ngrams里输入“natural philosopher，scientist”，可以和劳拉的故事互为佐证。把微观的课题放在宏观的历史语境（context）中，我们会学到更多。 例三、 文坛座次 中国文坛讲究排座次，鲁郭茅巴老曹，等等。前几年也不知哪个瞎起哄非要把金庸也拉入伙。二话不说，先把老哥几个的名字一顺给Ngrams，看看咋说。注意：鲁、郭的名字七十年代前的拼法分别为Lu Hsun和Kuo Mo-jo。两秒钟出结果：瞧人家画的这图，跟炒股曲线似的（见图四）。可以看出鲁爷江湖地位不可动摇，八十年代末九十年代初有点技术性下滑，随后又呈上升态势。但貌似三四十年代，鲁略输郭。不明白为啥曹禺就不带玩了呢，即使输入老拼法Tsao Yu也不济。金庸按说是这老几位里英文最好的吧，但就是不受待见，把他小名路易·查良镛（Louis Cha Leung-yung）算上，也不管用。这张小图够北大复旦那啥系的博导们喝一壶吧。顺便再给中国作家们支个招：以后要想名垂千古，就给你们家子孙后代都取同一个名，英文名也一样，无论性别，只要女眷能分清自己爷们就行。这招特适合代笔抄袭的。 例四、 美国历史 过去是数学家研究自己的历史，所以有“数学的历史”，现在是数学家研究别人的历史，所以有“历史的数学”（Mathematics of History），这个词儿还真不是我瞎编的，哈佛的两位应用数学家艾略兹·利伯曼·埃顿（Erez Lieberman Aiden）和让-巴蒂斯特·米歇尔（Jean-Baptiste Michel）最近的主营业务就是研究历史，他们的任职单位是哈佛的IQSS（“定量社会科学研究所”），同时也在谷歌兼职，对谷歌的Ngrams项目有所贡献。哥俩最近写了本书《用大数据透视人类文化》（Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture），用通俗笔法介绍了他们的工作。书中提到了一个更有意思的例子。大家知道美国刚立国那会儿，各州之间是松散耦合，所以国名叫合众国（United States），乌合之众的意思。但内战之后，联邦的凝聚力增强，中央政府的权力也越来越大。埃顿和米歇尔用Ngrams查了两个词组：“United States are”和“United States is”。可以清楚看到，美国内战之前，民众的心态确实乌合，“合众国”原本是复数，所以大家自己的认同就是“are”，但现在的认同自然是铁板一块的“is”了。他们半开玩笑地说：美国内战其实是单数和复数之战，最后单数赢了。（见图五） 还是中国老人有智慧，啥事想不明白，就说：这事留给我们子孙后代解决。过去以为这是托辞，现在有了“计算”，觉得还真是那么回事。过去整不明白的事现在能“算”出来。1996年，IBM“深蓝”计算机逼得最牛的人类棋手卡斯帕罗夫认输，就是靠的计算：“深蓝”比卡斯帕罗夫能多看半步棋。现在人所谓“下一盘很大的棋”就是比其他人多看好几步。过去中国人追求“行万里路，读万卷书”，其实就是抱着三字经满脑子范冰冰，坐高铁去趟铁岭。但瞧人家谷歌——论行路：无人驾驶车已经在加州办好驾照了，而论读书：Google Books把全世界的书都读遍了，而且有问必答。这要是用下围棋做比喻，人家得让钱锺书或者艾兹拉-庞德们多少子啊。 以赛亚·伯林当年写过篇文章“论科学化的历史学”（The Concept of Scientific History），主旨是探讨历史学是否也能像科学那样有个客观标准，凭那时的手段和见识，这问题自然无解。也怪伯老师在牛津待的时间忒长，没和同时代剑桥的图灵过过招。但是伯林引用了英国前辈历史学家亨利·托马斯·巴克尔（Henry Thomas Buckle）的话说：历史学之所以没变成科学，主要是因为历史学家的智力不如自然科学家。他设想如果伽利略、牛顿、拉普拉斯有时间顺手玩点历史的话，历史学，说不定早就变成科学的一分子了。话虽损了点，但是出自历史学家自己之口，至少诚恳，而且还不能随便给他扣“智商歧视”的帽子，就像黑人或犹太人开自己同胞的玩笑，外人管不着。依我看，“科学化的历史学”搁现在就是“计算历史学”。 司马迁被腐刑之后，中国就没人干实地考据了。即使人家都做好了，也懒得看。现而今，坐绿皮火车去趟莫斯科图书馆回来就算中国史学界大事儿。其实要是真不想去做实际工作，莫斯科都太远，去东莞整一山寨手机，躺床上就能指导博士生。不信？我先出个题：“女权运动五百年全球发展史”。然后在Google Ngrams里偷偷敲“penis-逗号-clitoris”，并把起始时间设在公元1500年。瞧好吧，您呐。所谓“秀才不出门，便知天下事”。对了，这句话百度译为：Without going outdoors, scholar knows all the world's affairs。也可以意味深长地简化为：Lying in the beds, the world can be in your heads。■
2012 纽约时报 书评Top 10 November 30, 2012 The 10 Best Books of 2012 The year’s best books, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. FICTION BRING UP THE BODIES By Hilary Mantel. A John Macrae Book/ Henry Holt Company, $28. Taking up where her previous novel, “Wolf Hall,” left off, Mantel makes the seemingly worn-out story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn newly fascinating and suspenseful. Seen from the perspective of Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, the ruthless maneuverings of the court move swiftly to the inevitable executions. Both this novel and its predecessor were awarded the Man Booker Prize. Might the trilogy’s forthcoming conclusion, in which Cromwell will meet his demise, score Mantel a hat trick? BUILDING STORIES By Chris Ware. Pantheon Books, $50. Ware’s innovative graphic novel deepens and enriches the form by breaking it apart. Packaged in a large box like a board game, the project contains 14 “easily misplaced elements” — pamphlets, books, foldout pages — that together follow the residents of a Chicago triplex (and one anthropomorphized bee) through their ordinary lives. In doing so, it tackles universal themes including art, sex, family and existential loneliness in a way that’s simultaneously playful and profound. A HOLOGRAM FOR THE KING By Dave Eggers. McSweeney’s Books, $25. In an empty city in Saudi Arabia, a middle-aged American businessman waits day after day to close the deal he hopes will redeem his forlorn life. Eggers, continuing the worldly outlook that informed his recent books “Zeitoun” and “What Is the What,” spins this spare story — a globalized “Death of a Salesman” — into a tightly controlled parable of America’s international standing and a riff on middle-class decline that approaches Beckett in its absurdist despair. NW By Zadie Smith. The Penguin Press, $26.95. Smith’s piercing new novel, her first in seven years, traces the friendship of two women who grew up in a housing project in northwest London, their lives disrupted by fateful choices and the brutal efficiency of chance. The narrative edges forward in fragments, uncovering truths about identity and money and sex with incandescent language that, for all of its formal experimentation, is intimate and searingly direct. THE YELLOW BIRDS By Kevin Powers. Little, Brown Company, $24.99. A veteran of the Iraq war, Powers places that conflict at the center of his impressionistic first novel, about the connected but diverging fates of two young soldiers and the trouble one of them has readjusting to life at home. Reflecting the chaos of war, the fractured narrative jumps around in time and location, but Powers anchors it with crystalline prose and a driving mystery: How did the narrator’s friend die? NONFICTION BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. By Katherine Boo. Random House, $27. This National Book Award-winning study of life in Annawadi, a Mumbai slum, is marked by reporting so rigorous it recalls the muckrakers, and characters so rich they evoke Dickens. The slum dwellers have a skillful and empathetic chronicler in Boo, who depicts them in all their humanity and ruthless, resourceful glory. FAR FROM THE TREE Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. By Andrew Solomon. Scribner, $37.50. For more than a decade, Solomon studied the challenges, risks and rewards of raising children with “horizontal identities,” traits that they don’t share with their parents. As he investigates how families have grown stronger or fallen apart while raising prodigies, dwarfs, schizophrenics, transgendered children or those conceived in rape, he complicates everything we thought we knew about love, sacrifice and success. THE PASSAGE OF POWER The Years of Lyndon Johnson. By Robert A. Caro. Alfred A. Knopf, $35. The fourth volume of Caro’s prodigious masterwork, which now exceeds 3,000 pages, explores, with the author’s signature combination of sweeping drama, psychological insight and painstaking research, Johnson’s humiliating years as vice president, when he was excluded from the inner circle of the Kennedy White House and stripped of power. We know what Johnson does not, that this purgatory is prelude to the event of a single horrific day, when an assassin’s bullet placed Johnson, and the nation he now had to lead, on a new course. THE PATRIARCH The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy. By David Nasaw. The Penguin Press, $40. Nasaw took six years to complete this sprawling, arresting account of a banker-cum-speculator-cum-moviemaker-cum-ambassador-cum-dynastic founder. Joe Kennedy was involved in virtually all the history of his time, and his biographer persuasively makes the case that he was the most fascinating member of his large, famous and very formidable family. WHY DOES THE WORLD EXIST? An Existential Detective Story. By Jim Holt. Liveright Publishing/W. W. Norton Company, $27.95. For several centuries now, thinkers have wondered, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” In search of an answer, Holt takes the reader on a witty and erudite journey from London to Paris to Austin, Tex., as he listens to a varied cast of philosophers, scientists and even novelists offer solutions that are sometimes closely reasoned, sometimes almost mystical, often very strange, always entertaining and thought-provoking.
The list below includes some of the authors and corresponding books that have influenced me the most in the field of signal processing. The list I provide consist of my top 15 selection. I hope to have time to do a more detailed review of each of them someday in the future: -Digital Signal Processing, Proakis (DSP Fudamentals) -Introduction to Linear Algebra, Strang (Math Basics for SSP) -Intuitive Probability and Random Processes using MATLAB, Kay (Math Basics for SSP) -Statistical Digital Signal Processing and Modeling, Hayes (Statistical SP) -Statistical and Adaptive Signal Processing, Manolakis (Statistical SP) -Applied Optimal Estimation, Gelb (Kalman Filters) -Linear Estimation, Kailath/Sayed (Kalman Fitlers) -Statistical Signal Processing, Kay (Linear Estimation) -Adaptive Filter Theory, Haykin (Adaptive Filtering) -Adaptive Signal Processing, Widrow (Adaptive Filtering) -Fundamentals of Adaptive Filtering, Sayed (Adaptive Filtering) -Spectral Analysis of Signal, Stoica (Spectrum Estimation) -Digital Spectral Analysis with Applications, Marple (Spectrum Estimation) -An Introduction to the Bootstrap, Efron (Adaptive Filtering) -Bootstrap Techniques for Signal Processing, Zoubir (Bootrap) Of these, the most influencial books for my research have been Statistical Digital Signal Processing by Hayes and Linear Estimation by Kailath.
转载： From The Sunday Times （星期日泰晤士报） July 19, 2009 Books that helped to change the world Big ideas from Vance Packard, Edward de Bono, Germaine Greer, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking altered modern thinking Bryan Appleyard Theres a hunger for the big one the idea that will make sense of the world. In the absence of religion, culture or national purpose, people seize on consoling stories, grand simplifications providing opinions, perspectives, a feeling that their life is not entirely without meaning. The big idea might be anything a way to live or work, a crusade or a new theory of the underlying truth of things. But it must, first, be a book. Books are still, in spite of all the competing technologies, the most persuasive and authoritative medium. Second, it must be big enough to fill the mind with wonder or determination. Thus, Malcolm Gladwells The Tipping Point offers a way of understanding the manner in which successful ideas are disseminated and Richard Dawkinss The God Delusion provides the tools with which to turn secularism into a cause. There have always been big-ideas books, though they became much more common in the 20th century. Several forces were at work full democracy giving people a stake in great issues, more or less universal literacy, the decline of deference and the relentless leakage of authority from the church. HG Wells was probably the ages first great intellectual populariser. For much of the first half of the 20th century, he was Britains semi-official painter of the big picture. In resonantly titled books such as The Fate of Man and The Outline of History, he brought the new orthodoxy of scientific secularism to the masses. He effectively created the genre. The post-war period was defined first by the confrontation between communism and capitalism, two utterly opposed big ideas, and second by the collapse of that confrontation and its replacement by a bewildering multiplicity of possibilities, theories, causes and conflicts. Add to that the internet explosion of global connectivity and you have a big-ideas hothouse from which emerges a tropical profusion of grand summations. Now, every week, big-ideas books pour from the presses. I get sent most of them, giving me not an intellectual problem, but a troublesome storage issue. Grand panjandrums of the big idea have emerged Gladwell, Chris Anderson (The Long Tail and Free), Dawkins and, dazed by the money to be made, academics queue up to package their ideas for the mass market. Making any kind of sense of this paper blizzard is impossible, but the blizzard itself proves that the genre is the message. The very fact that we want such books is a sign of what we have lost, primarily a coherent base from which to assess the world. In addition, the blizzard demonstrates the difficulty, if not plain absurdity, of thinking there is such a thing as a universally applicable big idea. If, said Chekhov, there are many cures for a disease, then there is no cure. The list that follows is my compilation of the 12 most effective big-ideas books of the post-war period. Effective means successful in moulding the minds of large numbers of people. This is not, of course, the same as true, or good though a few are one or both of these things. And the list does not necessarily include the most important or lasting ideas books of the period. Erwin Schrdingers What Is Life?, Ludwig Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations, James Lovelocks Gaia and Marilynne Robinsons The Death of Adam are not included simply because, crucial though they may be, they were not big popular successes. My list is, therefore, a pop chart, but one that tells us much about who we are. The Power of Positive Thinking （正面思考的力量） Norman Vincent Peale, 1952 This is the great precursor of all self-help books. Full of boundless American optimism, it offered a way through, as Bill Clinton said after Peales death, the antagonisms and complexities of modern life. Though Peale was a preacher, his books importance lies in its very secular belief in a therapeutic system that would lead to success and in its burdening of the individual, rather than an institution, with executing a demanding programme for his own salvation. The Hidden Persuaders （隐藏的劝诱者） Vance Packard, 1957 The date is important. This was when the anxieties that lay behind post-war affluence began to emerge. Packard exposed the conspiracy beneath the good life of 1950s suburbia by showing how advertisers manipulated consumers with quasi-scientific methods derived from psychology and sociology. Its obvious now; it wasnt then. The current television series Mad Men, set in the New York advertising world of the early 1960s, derives its power from the conflict, defined by Packard, between the innocence of the public and the cynicism of the admen. Silent Spring （中译本：寂静的春天，吉林人民出版社， 1997 ） Rachel Carson, 1962 From what seemed to be a small technical insight that the pesticide DDT caused thinning of the shells of birds eggs Carsons book launched modern environmentalism. The fate of the birds, symbolised by the possibility of a silent spring, dramatised the interconnectedness of nature that is at the heart of all greenery. DDT had been thought to be present in such small quantities that it would do no harm, but the food chain focused and intensified its effects. Some say this book cost millions of lives because it led directly to the banning of DDT. Used judiciously, it could have wiped out malaria in Africa. The Use of Lateral Thinking （中译本：水平思考法，山西人民出版社， 2008 ） Edward de Bono, 1967 （博主：我发表过介绍博诺思想的多篇博文，如《词力》，见 http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=34781 ；《乱谈失败》，见 http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=48690 ） The idea that we are not using our innate capacities to the full is a central feature of contemporary paranoia. People commonly feel there must be some trick to getting more out of life. De Bono brilliantly provided one answer in a phrase lateral thinking that has become a clich. Best summarised by the current term thinking out of the box, his idea was simply to come at problems from unexpected angles. It bridged the gap between the self-help genre and the business book. The Female Eunuch （中译本：被阉割的女性，江苏人民出版社， 1990 ） Germaine Greer, 1970 A scholarly polemic that remains the best of the primary feminist texts. Rude and raucous, it redefined womanhood as aggressive, self-determining, sexually potent and outspoken. It was a crusading work, a call to arms. It sprang from the alternative society of the late 1960s and it was, perhaps, the most effective subverter of the mores of postwar affluence. After Greer, no husband could reasonably expect to cry Honey, Im home and find dinner on the table. In Search of Excellence （中译本：追求卓越，中央编译出版社， 2003 ） Tom Peters and Robert H Waterman Jr, 1982 Management theory is like Marxism in the last years of the Soviet Union nobody believes it, but everybody must pretend that they do. As a result, it has been an incubator for a series of more or less mandatory bestsellers. This book, coming at the beginning of the right-wing Reagan-Thatcher resurgence, is the primary specimen of the genre. It codified the idea that there is a single transmissible method of business success. Quaint. The Closing of the American Mind （中译本：走向封闭的美国精神，中国社会科学出版社， 1994 ） Allan Bloom, 1987 This is another primary right-wing text of the 1980s. Here, however, the politics is cultural conservatism rather than the hard capitalist right-wingery of management and economic theorising. Bloom attacked American universities for abandoning western culture in favour of various destructive ideologies that destroyed critical judgment. Though this was unarguable at the time, the book had the unintended consequence of firing neoconservatives with the gross delusion that this must mean violently imposing western culture on the rest of the world. A Brief History of Time （中译本：时间简史，湖南科学技术出版社， 2001 ） Stephen Hawking, 1988 Usually either bought but unread or read in total incomprehension, this book tried to explain the state of contemporary physics to the common reader. Its huge success inspired a wave of popular-science writing. At its heart was the assumption in the event, wrong that physicists were on the verge of a theory of everything that would account for the entire history of matter. Its scientific triumphalism led directly to the antireligious tirades of books such as Richard Dawkinss The God Delusion. The End of History and the Last Man （中译本：历史的终结及最后之人，中国社会科学出版社， 2003 ） Francis Fukuyama, 1992 Fukuyamas neoconservative text was a direct product of the collapse of communism. The West having triumphed, he argued that this represented the end of all ideological conflict. Liberal, democratic capitalism was the end of history. This no longer seems credible. Not only has history restarted in countless other ways, it is also clear that the system Fukuyama defined is only really an American version of politics. Yet he inspired the neoconservatives in the Bush administration though he broke with them over Iraq and he ignited a global debate about whether there was any credible alternative to the American way. The answer was always yes. The Tipping Point （中译本：引爆流行，中信出版社， 2002 ） Malcolm Gladwell, 2000 The book is more important than the ideas it contains. It made Gladwell the supreme modern big-ideas merchant. A brilliant storyteller, he became an auditorium-filling speaker, able to dramatise ideas previously inaccessibly academic. Neither The Tipping Point nor his subsequent books, Blink and Outliers, are intellectually remarkable. But Gladwells role as an ideas entrepreneur is the clearest demonstration of the contemporary hunger for the grand, explanatory narrative. The God Delusion （中译本：上帝的迷思，海南出版社， 2010 ） Richard Dawkins, 2006 Dawkins could also have been in this list for The Selfish Gene (1976), a brilliant popularisation of one interpretation of Darwinism, but Hawkings A Brief History is a better example of science as the faith of our age. The God Delusion is the flip side of that faith a savage assault on religion. Thanks primarily to Dawkins, militant atheism is now the noisiest cult of our time. It was inspired by the mounting influence of two fundamentalisms Christian in America and Islamic across the Muslim world. Neither defines the mainstream faith and, as a result, the targets of the militant atheists appear rather narrow and specialised. The Black Swan （中译本：黑天鹅――如何应对不可知的未来，中信出版社， 2008 ） Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2007 This is the book that forecast the banking meltdown. It is unique in this list in that it promotes an anti-idea. All our big ideas are wrong, argues Taleb, because all are subject to the workings of uncontrollable chance. The banks crumbled because they used demonstrably false mathematics as a way of controlling the future. We crumble when we apply our always deficient theories to the unending sea of randomness on which we sail. But the book has a message rise above it all, adopt a classical composure in the face of defeat. If you are to be executed, remember to shave. The Black Swan could be a valedictory to the idea of the big idea, to the folly of hoping we can be made well, better, more successful or more wise by the next bestseller, But I fear not. Another fat book has just arrived The Evolution of God by Robert Wright to tell me there is a hidden pattern within the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Im sure there is, but Im afraid I have this thing that prevents me finding out what it is. I call it a life. bryanappleyard.com 本文引用地址： http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=387529
请连接 http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/howtowrite/ How to write science books In this focus Five top science book writers offer advice for budding authors in a series of interviews in Nature 's Books Arts section. Peter Atkins reveals the hard work behind a successful textbook; Carl Zimmer highlights how passion is essential for popular science; David Brin reveals how criticism improves his fiction writing; Georgina Ferry shares research tips for biographies; and Joanna Cole explains how to convey science to children. Image: Alex Staroseltsev/iStockphoto.com Books Arts QA: Joanna Cole on writing science books for kids Free access Joanna Cole has authored more than 100 science books for children, including the best-selling Magic School Bus series, the latest edition of which tackles the topic of climate change. In the last of our series of interviews with authors who write science books for different audiences, Cole reveals how clarity and colour can introduce even very young children to science. Nature 464 , 36 (4 March 2010) :10.1038/464036a :10.1038/464036a Full Text | Books Arts QA: Georgina Ferry on writing biography Free access Acclaimed biographer Georgina Ferry has chronicled the lives of two Nobel prizewinning chemists, Dorothy Hodgkin and Max Perutz. In the fourth in our series of five interviews with authors who each write science books for a different audience, Ferry reveals how detachment is needed to turn an attic's worth of personal letters into a compelling story. Nature 463 , 1025 (25 February 2010) :10.1038/4631025a :10.1038/4631025a Full Text | Books Arts QA: David Brin on writing fiction Free access After obtaining a PhD in planetary physics, David Brin found that he could make a better living as a science-fiction novelist than a researcher. In the third in our series of five interviews with authors who each write science books for a different audience, Brin reveals that criticism and a thick skin are the keys to good creative writing. Nature 463 , 883 (18 February 2010) :10.1038/463883a :10.1038/463883a Full Text | Books Arts QA: Carl Zimmer on writing popular-science books Free access Acclaimed essayist Carl Zimmer has eight popular-science books to his name, on topics from parasites and Escherichia coli to evolution. In the second in a series of five interviews with authors who each write science books for a different audience, Zimmer describes how passion breeds popular success. Nature 463 , 737 (11 February 2010) :10.1038/463737a :10.1038/463737a Full Text | Books Arts QA: Peter Atkins on writing textbooks Free access The success of Peter Atkins's classic textbook Physical Chemistry led him to trade research for full-time writing and teaching in the 1980s. In the first of a series of five interviews with authors who each write science books for a different audience, Atkins explains how the rewards for textbooks can be great, but the effort needed can affect your research. Nature 463 , 612 (5 February 2010) :10.1038/463612a :10.1038/463612a Full Text |
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