In the author's preamble to The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, I was slightly alarmed to see Cormac McCarthy thanked for his help composing the manuscript of this scientific history. Presumably this is a different Cormac McCarthy, but one does wonder.

JOHNSON: Now then, Cormac, where were we. Chapter Eight; new paragraph. Quote: ‘Edward Morley, a chemist at neighboring Western Reserve University, was as meticulous a scientist as Michelson. The two men agreed that it would be pointless to make another attempt to detect the Earth's absolute motion unless they could first confirm Fresnel's hypothesis – that the celestial backdrop is fixed in space with only pinches of aether dragged along by transparent objects.’ Just read that back for me, would you?

MCCARTHY: The sky was clear and Michelson's heart was clear and only in the far west the clarity was broken where the last cloudbank bled over the land like a jugged hare; and yet all was in motion, heart, blood and sky, spiraling forever into the measureless void and haling the ether along with it like the caul over a miscarried infant's soft and innocent head. Innocent? Nay – rife with original sin.
Michelson spat on the ground, and the parched land accepted his meager gift.
—Reckon Fresnel might have been on to something after all, Morley said, studying the westering sun.

JOHNSON: Perhaps we should take a break.

(Edit – as has been pointed out to me, it was in fact almost certainly the Cormac McCarthy. See e.g. here.)

Distracting Acknowledgements aside, this is an engaging, if slight, description of ten key experiments from across the sciences: Harvey's demonstration that blood circulates through the body, Newton's refraction of light, Michelson-Morley, Pavlov's dogs, and so on. As with any such selection, there are some surprising omissions (no double-slit experiment?), but, more fundamentally, and although the writing is decent, the chapters are a little too short and they fail to generate the sort of excitement that following these efforts should have generated.

The chapters also function as mini-biographies of the scientists involved, and in part this book is a love-letter to the ‘great men’ (they're all men) who have driven science forward through insight combined with exhaustive slog. One of the things we're left wondering at the end is whether this kind of single moving spirit may be anachronistic now: Johnson notes that there were 439 names on the paper announcing the discovery of the top quark. So lots more beautiful experiments to come, we can be sure – but most of them are likely to have been designed by committee. ( )

The table of contents was not promising. The book promises the ten "most" beautiful experiments but doesn't have Rutherford discovering the nucleus? But it does have Galvani chopping up frogs to find out if they transmit electricity.

But as I read, I came to appreciate Johnson's idiosyncratic selections. Rather than reading the Nth treatment of classic experiments, he presents some very interesting and well-told vignettes. Especially of Galvani and the frogs. And Pavlov, who turns out to have loved his dogs.

Still, some of the vignettes, like Harvey Lavosier, were less engaging. And at some point, and this is a comment about the entire science history genre, you just do not want to spend the amount of effort the books requires to try to understand theories of two fluids pumped by the heart, phlogiston, and caloric just to learn how they were discovered to be wrong.

A final thought: someone should write a book on ten experiments that failed -- and discovered something much more important as a result. Michelson and Morley would be in it, not sure the other nine, which is why someone should write it. ( )

The writing was fairly technical, so I'm not sure if this book will work for the popular audience Johnson seems to want. Johnson didn't give much context or analysis about the implications of these experiments, which I would have found more enlightening than precise descriptions of exactly how the experiments were carried out. His choices are also very heavy on physics and experimentation on animals, neither of which are particular favorites of mine. ( )

bookshelves: gr-library, published-2008, under-500-ratings, tbr-busting-2014, sciences, nonfiction, e-book, winter-20132014, essays, history, skim-through
Recommended for: GR Library Users
Read from January 08 to 09, 2014

** spoiler alert ** 1. Galileo: The Way Things Really Move

The music

2. William Harvey: Mysteries of the Heart

The music

The Anatomy Theatre of Fabricius

3. Isaac Newton: What a Color Is

The Rainbow Music

An Allegorical Monument to Sir Isaac Newton by Pittoni Giambattista

4. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: The Farmer’s Daughter

The Music

Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze (1758-1836)

5. Luigi Galvani: Animal Electricity

The music

6. Michael Faraday: Something Deeply Hidden

The Music

7. James Joule: How the World Works

The music

8. A. A. Michelson: Lost in Space

The music>

9. Ivan Pavlov: Measuring the Immeasurable

The music

10. Robert Millikan: In the Borderland

The music

At 141 pages this is a sweet little book that is both pop-hist and primer for young enquiring minds but totally irrelevant for someone sitting down for an engrossing read.

Flick through if you get a moment, there are some delightful tidbits.

3*

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I remember sitting through the many science classes in high school -- biology, chemistry, physics, and so on -- listening to the teachers lecture on different theories and then having us put them to use. Interesting stuff, but we were working with already-proven theories: how many calories in such and such food, how does a prism bend light, a2 + b2 = c2. Honestly, back then I just wanted to get through the classes, so I just accepted the theories and moved on.

Now that I'm older, my mind wants to know why this theory is correct, how did it come about. So when I randomly pulled George Johnson's book "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments" off a bookstore shelf, I was intrigued. And how can you not when the description in the dust jacket reads: "...and [Sir Isaac] Newton carefully inserting a needle behind his eye to learn how light causes vibrations in the retina."? (That hooked the horror fiend in me.)

Johnson takes a chronological approach to the experiments, beginning with Galileo's experiments with accurately measuring the speed at objects move, Newton's use of prisms and the aforementioned needle to determine what makes color, and onward through Faraday's making the connection between magnetism and electricity and Millikan's work discovering the electron. But, instead of just stating the theory, Johnson provides the back stories, what sparked the scientists to push the envelope farther, what obstacles they had to overcome, how the mindsets at their points in history affected their experiments. And that's the fascinating part, walking with each scientist step by step through the trials, successes and failures to reach some new insight into how the world works.

On a few occasions, I did find myself re-reading sections to make sure I understood what was going on. I'm not a scientist so certain facts were glossed over as if I should have known them, such as the speed of light in A.A. Michelson's study of the velocity of the Earth. In spite of that, "The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments" is fascinating and well worth a read. ( )