Genre:
Non-Fiction/Philosophy/Science
Description:
“Many
words, concepts, and sentences seem obvious to us; it feels like we
know what they mean, and we do not really stop to see if we do. Often
once an actual effort is done and we try to put our 'knowing' into
words, we find things are not that simple.”
Author:
No
information available.
Appraisal:
I'm
torn about this book. There is much I liked, offset by things not so
good.
The
concept of the book is to take something most people understand, or
at least think they do, and dig deeper. In doing showing that many
concepts we think of as simple (whether our understanding is right or
wrong) is actually more complex. Some of the areas addressed are
philosophical, such as do you and I have free will? Others are more
scientific, like defining what it means for something to be
considered to have life.
On the
philosophical concepts I generally followed the logic and either
agreed with where the author's thoughts took us or at least saw it as
a valid stance. But there were times it was work following along. As
an example, the author’s book description has a sentence that says,
“Often once an actual effort is done and we try to put our
'knowing' into words, we find things are not that simple.” What
does that mean? It's saying that if we stop to think through a simple
concept (“an actual effort is done”) that we'll realize it isn't
as straightforward as first thought. It wasn't a constant problem,
but I found more of those kinds of sentences than I'd like that
forced me to stop and parse them before moving on.
I was
also concerned about the more scientific discussions because
something would be stated as fact, but I have no idea whether the
author has any qualifications in this area and I worried that their
understanding of the scientific concepts might be incorrect. This
possibility was exacerbated due to a claim early in the book where
the author made a statement that contradicted one of the basic rules
of probability. (If something has a 50/50 chance of happening, for
example a coin toss, just because three heads have been thrown in a
row doesn't make a tail more likely than 50% on the next toss.)
Still,
an interesting and thought provoking book.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No
significant issues
Rating:
*** Three Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate word count:
25-30,000 words
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