After reading this book, I am left with a certain sense of tragedy; it is like having watched a play where you know what every character us up to (though they don't) and watching as each makes a series of mistakes based on faulty assumptions that in hindsight are regretted. I would have thought this a comedy of errors were not the consequences so dire. It is too clear that the public's understanding of reality is biased almost beyond hope; that The Science Gap could be read by everyone!

Each chapter is a myth about science, of which there are sixteen:

1. "Nothing exists until it is observed." 2. "Nothing is known for sure." 3. "Nothing is impossible." 4. "Whatever we think we know now is likely to be overturned in the future." 5. "Advanced civilizations of the future will have the use of forces unknown to us at present." 6. "Advanced civilizations on other planets posess great forces unavailable to us on earth." 7. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 8. "Scientists don't have any imagination." 9. "Scientists create theories by intuition." 10. "All theories are equal." 11. "All scientists are objective." 12. "Scientists are always making false predictions." 13. "All problems can be solved by computer modeling." 14. "More technology will solve all problems." 15. Myths about Reductionism 16. "Myths are just harmless fun and good for the soul."

Each is taken down from its gilded pedestal and its serious flaws are revealed. I found chapter fourteen to be most enlightening; the bulk is devoted to the problem of exponential growth and overpopulation. Have you ever seen those 'starving children in Africa' commercials run by christian charities? I thought about them while I read this chapter. Sure, you can send impoverished people 'pennies a day' to make their lives better. But what happens when your efforts result in all five of their children surviving instead of one or two? Who will feed them? And when they have children themselves?

It is like some obscene pyramid scheme that temporarily alleviates suffering and mysery so that even more people can experience it in the future. The implications are terrifying.

It is sad then that people who apply various myths (technological and theological) conspire to prevent family planning in these regions. The tragedy of overpopulation is the result. We must overcome our tenacious clinging to these destructive myths or the destruction will increase. The further tragedy is that I don't think it will happen any time soon.

One of the main thesis which we see emerge in the chapters is that realism has brought about the dramatic blossoming of science while the pursuit of idealism have been a barren exercise. Chapter ten gives a well-illustrated summary of the difference between realists and idealists in politics (with examples of how they react to abortion or flag burning). The idealist position is grounded in myths and a good number of them are simply wrong. Without a firm basis in reality, the tragedy of applied mythology continues.

The book is in general about various constants of physics their values and how they arew measured. the ides is that nothing is proven unless it is verified with the experiment and precision of the experiment is a mojor factor in the reliability of the theories. Various constants of Nature such as gravity, speed of light, charge are all explained and major tests are explained with the problems encountered while doing the test. It is a narrative book, no calculations no formulas are given, you just get the concept of the test and underlyingm problems with them.
It is something that is worthy of reading.

The title of this book says it all. As a primer of physics, it is fairly useful and very easy to understand. However it is written by a skeptic and it could have just as easily been titled "A Skeptics Guide to Physics..."

The attitude of the writer is apparent throughout the work and that forces the reader to take everything with a grain of salt. That said, the author is clearly very intelligent and very studied and his use of science to dispute the claims of science fiction makes for an interesting excercise for the reader.

Recommended to anyone who enjoys the rhetoric of a text as much as (or more than) the concepts behind it.