Customer Reviews

Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science

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4 star:		(2)
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Using a hard-core scientific approach, the author, a professor of physics, discusses various popular topics that are rooted in human spiritual belief or in superstition or in bad/misleading science. His purpose is to show how these convictions simply do not make sense when examined in light of well-established scientific principles, i.e., modern science.

The author's arguments are irrefutable in their scientific logic and are always a pleasure to read. However, in some cases, his arguments seem rather limited and fall a bit short; that is, he seems to assume that nothing will ever be discovered in science that would validate some of the issues that are currently considered as beliefs. His last sentence reads: "Science is the only way of knowing - everything else is just superstition". This statement should be supplemented by the time-honored proviso that today's superstitious beliefs are often tomorrow's scientific facts. For example, after the immense energy that is locked up inside the atomic nucleus was discovered, no less an authority than Sir Ernest Rutherford once stated something to the effect that anyone expecting to do something useful with that energy was dreaming. History has proven him wrong.

The writing style is clear, authoritative, friendly, refreshing, often tongue-in-cheek and always quite engaging; however, the book's many misprints and the odd missing word indicate that better editing could have been done. This is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone, no matter what their beliefs are.

Most of the topics in this book have been covered in others that I have read but Mr Park's style of writing is very lucid and he presents his material in a more readable way than a lot of authors. In the main I agree with his arguments and I generally enjoyed reading what he has to say, but I probably would have awarded five stars to the book were it not for a couple of related criticisms: To begin with, the first half the book is well organized, very cleverly argued and it is clear that Mr Park has spent a lot of time thinking about the various subjects he discusses. After that, however, the topics get progressively dealt with in less and less depth to the point that, towards the end, one rather feels that the author has been straining for topics to pad out the book and feels that he has to say something even if it isn't very profound. In addition, and mirroring the short shrift he gives later topics, Mr Park's approach gets less balanced and he begins to dismiss certain beliefs with little more argument than to state that they are clearly wrong. Indeed, while he comes across as eminently fair and reasonable at the beginning, his tome gets a bit strident and grumpy towards the end.I really enjoyed the first half but was less impressed with the remainder.