classics digests, reflections and reviews
Preface Mark Twain once quipped, “A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is a classic. I’m pleasantly surprised that it is not as boring and dry as I expected, but quite the contrary. It’s fascinating to observe how Darwin works, how he collects facts from nature and draws inferences, how he judges between diverse theories and […]
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The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible. New Atlantis is a Utopia ruled by scientist-kings, viz. the elite with supreme knowledge of causes of Nature. Bacon’s vision is awe-inspiring, in both senses of the word. On the one hand, it is mind-boggling to ponder the vast […]
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[Posted to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Heisenberg’s death.] Form and Potentiality in Nature Modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and Epicurus, and for Plato and the Pythagoreans. The elementary particles are certainly not eternal and indestructible units of matter. They can actually be transformed into each other. All particles are of the same substance: energy. The resemblance of the modern views to those of […]
Read moreThe Beauty of Logic I first came across an exposition of the theory of relativity in “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene, and “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking. Without those two books, I don’t know whether I would be able to understand and appreciate this book as much as I do now. With that said, however, the exposition in this book is far better than the other […]
Read moreIn “Republic”, Plato constructed an ideal State; in “Timaeus”, he designed an ideal Universe. Plato’s universe is built with proportion, order, beauty, symmetry and cycles according to the pattern of the Eternal Being. Both universe and man are governed by the same principles, such as “like to like”, which are inductive to harmony and stability; Both are composed of mortal body and immortal soul; Both are made of four elements, […]
Read moreMedicine Watcher Dr. Thomas gives a fascinating personal account of the development of medicine in the last three-quarters of a century. He grew up watching his parents practice medicine (his father was a physician, and his mother a nurse), became a physician himself, also a professor and dean of the medical school of NYU, served on the New York Board of Health overseeing public health policy and later headed a […]
Read moreA Rehash of “A Brief History Of Time” Hawking re-organizes materials from “A Brief History Of Time” in a tree-like, instead of linear, format, explaining complex physics models as clearly as possible without the use of mathematical equations. The theories of the black hole are based on principles of thermodynamics, Einstein’s curved space-time and the holographic principle. The latter states that all the information in a multi-dimensional space can be encoded […]
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