This book is one of the series of such books. I purchased it some years ago; I have forgotten when I picked it up. All I know is that I bought it at a Half Price Books store, most likely in San Antonio.
It appears to be a series of essays. I remember trying to read it some time ago, but after the first couple of pages became bored with it.
Tonight, looking for something "new" on the bookshelves to read, I saw this book again, and set it out. About midnight I was awakened (the circumstances are unimportant) and I could not get back to sleep. My mind, apparently, was prepared to read this book this time.
I have just read the first chapter and I can tell it is going to be a fascinating read. Remember: the book is about science by a scientist. Without mentioning it directly, he speaks clearly on global warming. Remember: the book was published in 1979 (at least that's the copyright date). As far as I recall, there was nothing about global warming then (if anything, there were articles about a coming of a "new" mini ice age. Something tells me Freeman Dyson would be a proponent of "global warming." Wow, was I wrong. I thought I better check that out before going any farther. He was born in 1923 and apparently still active. According to information posted as recently as April 5, 2013 (this year), Freeman Dyson is a skeptic with regard to anthropomorphic global warming, or, I suppose, anthropomorphic climate change.
Having read the first chapter of his book, I am relieved that Freeman Dyson remained true to his philosophy: “I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic,” Dyson said, in that linked article.
So, with that as background, some notes on the book, as I read it in real time. Like all books on which I take notes, I probably won't finish the note-taking, even if I finish the book.
Part I: England
Chapter 1: The Magic City
He writes much about a book he enjoyed when he was eight years old. Like my granddaughter at the very same age, he loved reading this book while high up in a tree. The book that is at the center of the first chapter: Edith Nesbit's The Magic City.
Edith Nesbit was from every point of view a remarkable women. Born in 1858, she was intimate with the family of Karl Marx and became a revolutionary socialist long before this was fashionable. She supported herself by writing and brought up a large family of children of mixed parentage. She soon discovered that her survival depended upon her ability to write splendidly bourgeois stories for teh children of the rich.Freeman ends the chapter, surprisingly, with one of my favorite books: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Recently, a new magus has appeared upon the scene: a writer, Robert Pirsig, with a book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. His book explores the dual nature of science, on the one hand science has dedicated craftsmanship, on the other hand science as intellectual obsession.Chapter 2: The Redemption of Faust
He begins with an interesting anecdote on how he began reading books on science at an early age. The first book he encountered in a book catalogue was an account of the scientific marine expedition(s) of the HMS Challenger.
I wondered vaguely whether there might not one day be another such voyage, and whether there might not one day be anothe such voyage, and whether I might not have a chance to sail on it. But the Challenger volumes were too expensive for me to buy, and so my career as an oceanographer ended before it began.
Mathematics was cheaper.He then goes on to discuss one of the first science books he read, Piaggio's Differential Equations.
Chapter 3: The Children's Crusade
Reminiscing on his role as a civilian scientist working for Bomber Command Headquarters, Great Britain, 1942, during the war. Provides background to Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5 or The Children's Crusade.
Chapter 4: The Blood Of A Poet
His last year at Bomber Command, 1945, and reminiscing on "the bomb."
Part II: America
Chapter 5: A Scientific Apprenticeship
1947: enrolls as a graduate student, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, working under Hans Bethe
Chapter 6: A Ride to Albuquerque
A wonderful travelogue across the United States. His driver: Richard Feynman. Wow.
Chapter 7: The Ascent of F6
1948: with Robert Oppenheimer. Wow. "Sparring" partners. Freeman ultimately won.
Chapter 8: Prelude in E-Flat Minor
1954: a biographical sketch of Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. Judas to Robert Oppenheimer.
Chapter 9: Little Red Schoolhouse
The history of the development of the nuclear reactor, and why the nuclear industry has died.
Chapter 10: Saturn by 1970
Nuclear space travel. Dyson thinks it was possible; the Test Ban Treaty stopped any chance.
Chapter 11: Pilgrims, Saints and Spacemen
Governor William Bradford, Plymouth Colony
President Brigham Young, Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Gerard O'Neill, Princeton University, space colonization
Chapter 12: Peacemaking
Test ban. ACDA.
Chapter 13: The Ethics of Defense
Defense, rather than offense.
Chapter 14: The Murder of Dover Sharp
Personal experience; fire, death, at Princeton; his delay responding.
Chapter 15: The Island of Doctor Moreau
Two things we have learned from Wells and Haldane: men cannot play God an dstill stay sane. And the progress of biology is inescapably placing in man's hands the power to play God.
Chapter 16: Aeropagitca
From wiki: Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England is a 1644 prose polemical tract by the English poet and polemical author John Milton opposing licensing and censorship. Areopagitica is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression. It is regarded as one of the most eloquent defences of press freedom ever written because many of its expressed principles form the basis for modern justifications of that right.
I lost a bit of "respect" for Freeman Dyson in this chapter. He seems he was writing to be politically correct. If he was being honest, I question his judgement. The chapter uses his experience as a member of a citizens' group to come up with a recommendation regarding recombinant DNA research at Princeton. Freeman says this about Emma Epps, a black community, and one of three to write a minority report:
Emma Epps, who celebrated her seventy-sixth birthday at one of our meetings, added to the minoritiy report a briefer and more eloquent statement of her own:No further comment, except to say this: had this excerpt been put on the outside jacket of the book, it would have hurt sales immensely.
My conscience tells me to say No to this, and I don't want to go against my conscience. Also, friends who are scientists say they don't see any reason why I should go against my conscience.
Part III: Points Beyond
Chapter 17: A Distant Mirror
Chapter 17 introduces the third part of the book, Dyson's obsession with the future. He talks about his experience with Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It makes me want to go out, buy the book, read Arthur Clarke's book of the same title, the same story, written AFTER the movie.
He mentions Lewis Carroll, as a peculiar mathematician.
He mentions Barbara Tuchman, the author of A Distant Mirror which uses the history of the 14th century to study the 20th century.
And finally he mentions Michele Besso, who had "shared Einstein's thoughts in the great days of his youth and had remained for more than fifty years Einstein's closest friend." Einstein died four weeks after Ms Besso died.
Chapter 18: Thought Experiments
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