This work, by Toby E. Huff, is a perspective on the explosion of scientific knowledge in 17th Century Europe and England, and a probing look at why this happened in the West and not in China, India, or the Islamic states.

Using one invention in particular — the telescope — Huff documents how this instrument revolutionized the study of the heavens and how Galileo and others used it to explore the skies and make detailed observations that led to a confirmation of a heliocentric system posited by Copernicus. The paradigm shift away from a spherical, geocentric system electrified the science of the day.

Huff then traces the migration of the telescope into China, India and Islamic countries. In China Jesuit missionaries not only introduced the telescope, they also translated into Chinese the findings of Galileo and others. A few court astrologers (astronomers) were interested, but mainly to help refine the prediction of heavenly events. At the time, China held a flat-earth view of the cosmos and hadn’t even moved to a spherical, geocentric view. The new knowledge was not incorporated into Chinese study. Huff then traces parallel stories from India and the world of Islam.

And it wasn’t just in astronomy. Huff also traces the development and knowledge of forces and dynamics, and medical anatomy in the 17th Century and how in Europe scientists, from the 12th C onward, had been dissecting animals and human corpses, thereby learning about the interior anatomy of the body. Islamic faith considered dissection a form of desecration and it wasn’t allowed. Similar obstacles were in place in India and China.

Huff then postulates on the differences in culture between the West and the rest of the world. Europe and England had more or less autonomous universities and, due to the rise of Protestantism and its goal of having each person read the Bible personally, a steady rise in literacy. Literacy in the rest of the world was circumscribed and schools in China, India, and Islamic countries were mainly set up to teach traditional wisdom and religious law.

The West was living in a time of great intellectual curiosity and had had a tradition, based on Aristotle, of hands-on experimenting to discover the truths of things. Again, there was no corresponding climate in the rest of the world.

Huff’s work is academic, with copious footnotes and an extensive bibliography. He has, in no way, suggested the West was superior to the other cultures of the day, but that it was culturally different. China, India, and the Islamic states had access to the instruments developed in the West, and to the knowledge that was being discovered and disseminated, but their societies didn’t have the requisite intellectual curiosity to pursue the new knowledge.

Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution is one of the best science books I’ve read in awhile. I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of science and especially the emergence of science in the 17th Century and the culmination of many threads of knowledge in the publications of Newton.

When Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, he suspected it would cause a storm of protest and indignation from religious quarters. He was right. Evolutionary studies, along with the new geological studies of the 19th century, posited the first awareness of “deep time,” as Stephen Jay Gould would later call it. It hypothesized that the earth was older, incredibly older, than had been previously thought. The evidence, corroborated by scientists then and since, has supported the hypothesis and shown that The Bible of the Christian church isn’t a reliable guide to the history of the planet.

Worse, from a Victorian point of view, was the evidence that man, along with the great apes, had descended from a common ancestor, through a long process of natural selection. One measured in millions of years for our branch alone.

Darwin had a hard time of it publicly and was lampooned in the newspapers of the day. But, continued studies through the next 150 years plus a new understanding of genetics, has shown that, with minor exceptions, Darwin got it right. For this he is justly honored for being one of the great figures of science.

Among scientists of natural history, the theory of evolution fits the facts, full stop. Nothing scientific has ever been put forward to challenge this point of view, and the so-called “gaps” put forward by those who don’t want to believe the facts, have been closed one by one as more discoveries have been unearthed. The fossil record and the genetic record are both consistent with evolution having taken place in the deep time of the planet Earth. To most scientifically literate people, the theory of evolution is as solid as the theory of gravity.

But there are still those who resist facing the facts. While visiting a cave in Arkansas last spring, I innocently asked our guide how long it took for the magnificent large limestone formation to form. She replied, “It depends on whether you believe in the ‘millions’ theory or the ‘thousands’ theory of the earth. I’m in the ‘thousands’ camp so I’d say a few thousand years.”

The “thousands” theory? This derives from Bishop James Ussher in the 17th century who speculated that the date of the Biblical Creation could be dated by calculating the lifespans of Old Testament patriarchs. Ussher’s conclusion was that the earth began on October 23, 4004 B.C. This totally Biblical calculation has somehow survived into present times, within sects of fundamentalist Christians who believe therefore that the earth is some 6000 or so years old, despite scientific (and rather obvious) evidence to the contrary.

What people choose to believe as an article of faith, rather than reason, is a basic right in the Western world. There are people who believe in the efficacy of quartz crystals and “power spots” as well. The problem begins when beliefs such as these spill out from personal and congregational spaces into public spaces.

You’d think that 150 years of solid evidence for the evolution of life on our planet, including our own evolution into Homo sapiens, would be sufficient reason for having it taught in schools. Yet there are still fundamental Christian lobbyists who want it taught alongside something they call “intelligent design.” Judge John Jones III ruled in the Dover, Pa., case in 2002, that “intelligent design, by its very nature, is a religious belief, not a scientific fact or theory, and therefore should not be taught in schools.” Intelligent Design is a tarted up name for Creationism — an attempt to give it scientific trappings.

But the debate continues. A recent Washington Times article, “On teaching evolution: New year, old fight,” reports that “at least two U.S. states in 2012 will consider bills that downplay the notion man evolved from animals and call for Charles Darwin’s famous theory to be taught as just that – one possible explanation, not the definitive answer.” Alongside Intelligent Design, that is.

Rep. Gary Hopper of New Hampshire is quoted as saying, “I want the problems with current theories to be presented so that kids understand that science doesn’t really have all the answers. They are just guessing.”

Guessing? If this is any indication of how some people think science works, it’s clear that we need more, not less, teaching of science and scientific literacy. Certainly science doesn’t have all the answers. That’s the nature of science. A scientist, like a good detective, follows the evidence, wherever it leads. In fact science is based on challenging the evidence. Whenever a new study emerges, other scientists try to pick it apart. If it withstands the challenges and is replicated by other scientific studies, a consensus forms around the results. If, eventually, evidence points to something entirely different, then previous views are updated and a new consensus is arrived at. In brief, science is self-correcting.

Religious faith does not operate this way. It instead harbors the concept of “immutable” truths. Which is not to say that a scientist can’t be a religious person. It’s just that he or she doesn’t confuse the two “magisteria” as Stephen Jay Gould would call the different mental spaces of science and religion.

That we live in an age of science is indisputable. And the scientific consensus is that Darwin got it right. There are no evidence-based challenges to evolutionary theory, only faith-based ones. To become good, participating citizens of a scientific world, students need to be taught how science works and not have their publicly-funded science studies entangled with the religious beliefs of fundamentalist Christian (or, for that matter, Islamic) faith.

In a modern world, church and state must be kept separate. The teaching of science must be taught in the context of following the evidence, not of comparing it to religious beliefs. To do anything else would be a disservice to the students.

I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year season!

Traditionally New Years Day is a time for resolutions that will largely be unkept in the months that follow, so I’ll refrain from making any. Besides some of them are ongoing no matter what time of year: lose weight, exercise more, write more.

Looking back to 2011, I’ve had a Macbook Air (11″) for a year now and it’s so slick and useful it still feels new. As such it’s an incentive to get down to the task of writing just so I can use it. I enjoy my technologies, but it’s been a long time since one has stayed so fresh. Kudos to Apple for another brilliant design and execution.

There are rumours of a new iPad in the works some time 2012. If it turns out to be true I might be ready to pick one up. I gave my previous one to Marion after getting the more writer-friendly Macbook Air, but I confess I miss the iPad experience. I get a miniature version of it with my iPhone 4 but it’s not the same without the large viewing screen.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a fan of podcasts and I’d like to pay tribute to my two favourites: I Should Be Writing, by Mur Lafferty, and Brain Science Podcast, by Dr. Ginger Campbell. You ladies have allowed me to listen in on hours of intelligent conversation. Thank you.

I have a couple of directions I may take my writing in 2012. One idea I’ve been kicking around is putting together a series of personal essays into a Kindle book. The other is to write on a couple of subjects that interest me, but as extended feature articles that could be published as Kindle Shorts.

I don’t have any special photo projects in mind for the year. I’m content to carry a camera around with me and take shots of this and that as I see things. I plan to post a new photo on my Flickr photostream every day, if possible. The camera in my iPhone 4 increases my odds of meeting this goal.

One of the things I may do more of in 2012 is post short reviews of books I’ve read. My current reading is Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution, by Toby E. Huff. I’m about 25% into it and already it’s shaping up as the best science book I’ve read in the past year.

Currently listening to The Harrow & The Harvest, by Gillian Welch. Indispensable if you like a traditional folk sound.

My other two goals for the New Year are to study more philosophy and mathematics. I’m nearly ready to tackle my Algebra II course and I have a good Teaching Company Great Lectures course Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida that I’ve started. Staying intellectually active is less a goal than a deep-seated need. I suspect it’s the same for you.

I look forward to seeing and hearing from friends in 2012. May your 2012 be a wonderful year.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 15,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

For some time I’ve been wanting a replacement for my old Canon S3 IS. I use my Panasonic Lumix G2 and lenses when I’m willing to carry a bag of gear around in order to get my best image quality. For a carry-around I like my Canon S90 as a compact camera. It fits snugly into a belt pack. And for plain fun, I use my iPhone camera because it frees me up from all worry about image quality. But what I’ve been missing is a good ultrazoom utility camera.

I’ve owned ultrazooms before and like them as a simple all-in-one cameras that are lightweight and easy to carry (though not as easy as the S90) but having tremendous zoom range plus macro capability. My favorite of these was a Canon S3 IS that gave me excellent service and made my trip to Alaska a great photo experience. I left it behind when I felt the image quality wasn’t keeping up with the industry.

I was tempted by the SX30 when it was released but reports of bad chromatic aberration plagued all the reviews. With the SX40 Canon appears to have taken the good ideas from the SX30 and fixed them. I’ve been shooting with it for a couple of weeks now and have not seen any noticeable CA in any of my shots.

It also has the larger 2/3-inch sensor and a better Canon processing engine. IQ is good enough for a utility camera. I’m surprised at the quality of images taken with the equivalent of 840mm.

Yes, 840mm! The 35mm equivalence of the camera is 24-840mm. The long zoom is especially helpful to me for shooting ducks, gulls, and boats on the open water where the Credit River empties into Lake Ontario.

Which is not to say the camera is perfect. It’s a little slow to start up and slow to focus. The EVF quality is primitive compared to my Lumix G2. The feel of the camera in the hand is similar to a sculpted brick. None of these things surprised me though because it was the same when I owned an S3 IS. I don’t expect this camera to perform like a more advanced camera. It performs well enough to get the job done, most of the time. Like a utility hitter in baseball. Don’t expect home runs, but he’ll usually get on base.

Because of its convenience and its workmanlike ability, I’m using the SX40 more than my Lumix and more even than my S90. It’s a good practical compromise — the kind of thing Canadians love.

So the best I can do is track some of the highlights of science, technology, and medicine that make it into the news. The task is made easier through the use of Twitter, by adding science and technology Twitter feeds to my account. I’m currently following 45 sci-tech feeds and receiving up to 100 tweets a day. I expect the number of feeds to increase as I discover more of them.

Although Twitter is a great help in keeping up to date on things sci-tech, it’s a burden to read through the daily feeds. I spend a lot (too much) time on the Internet as it is but there are more feeds than I can easily track. As a consequence I was missing a lot of interesting stories.

What I needed was an easier way to track the stories. I found a good compromise solution by using Paper.li, a nifty service that allows you to create a daily online newspaper from your Twitter feeds. Paper.li lets you set up your newspaper on a once-a-day or twice-a-day publishing schedule, and you can set the times of publication.

Using this service I’ve created Gene’s Sci-Tech Daily, a twice-a-day paper and it’s proven a helpful way to track news items. It keeps me up to date on the hunt for the Higg’s Boson, the voyage of Curiosity to Mars, the potential cloning of wooly mammoths, reviews of new tech items such as the Kindle Fire, and the latest in the Apple-Samsung lawsuits. The paper misses some stories, of course, but on the whole it seems to vacuum up the main items.

Feel free to bookmark this newsletter and use it if you want a pleasant way to track science and technology news. Drop me a line if you find it useful.

I’ve owned a Kindle for a good while now and it’s become my preferred way to read most books. I’m reading more than at any time of my life, and buying more. Note to publishers: “buying more.”

What I don’t get are the crazy prices some publishers charge for e-books. Admittedly I got used to the introductory Kindle $9.95 price which many publishers claim make them sell books at a loss. I must admit I’m among those who are skeptical about this. It really takes very little work to prep a novel or nonfiction book that is mainly text for e-book publication. I’ve done it myself with Recreational Writing.

Nonetheless I’m willing to bend a little on this and will pay up to $11.99 for an e-book if I think it’s warranted. Bear in mind that I’m on a retirement budget and I’m not willing to pay more for an e-book than for a paperback version of a book. So I looked at the possible purchase of some books that interested me recently and what I found was some outlandish grasping by certain publishers.

Examples:

A Widow’s Story: A Memoir by Joyce Carol Oates: Hardcover, $11.06, Ebook, $16.96. HarperCollins.

11/22/63 by Stephen King: Hardcover, $19.25, Ebook, $26.48. Simon & Schuster.

Under the Dome, by Stephen King: Hardcover, $22.39, Paperback, $11.43, Ebook, $16.12. Simon & Schuster.

Admittedly these are star authors and the publishers like to make their maximum profit from them, but this kind of pricing is short-sighted. Many of us who buy the e-book edition don’t buy it instead of the hardcover edition. In truth we wouldn’t buy the book at all in hardcover edition.

Publishers are having a hard time of it, and I have some compassion for them. But I think their approach to e-book pricing nothing short of hostile toward the format that may save them from extinction.

Flip this around and look at what else is happening.

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman: Paperback, $10.17, Ebook, $4.95. Ridan Publishing.

Playing for Keeps, by Mur Lafferty: Paperback (Swarm Press), $14.95, Ebook: $4.99.

These two titles are published by an Indie press in the case of Haldeman, and by the author (for the e-book) in the case of Lafferty. The Forever War is a Sci-Fi classic, and Playing for Keeps is a good SF novel by a popular up-and-coming author.

Then there are the authors who publish their works for free, for $0.99, or for $1.99-$2.99. Yes, some of them are first authors and not all these works are good, but publishers don’t kid yourselves. There’s some real talent coming through who are picking up a serious following among readers.

The issues may be complicated, but what I’m basically saying to the big publishing houses is this: “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.” Bring down those inflated prices of e-books. Because if you don’t, readers will take other options and they won’t be contributing to your bottom line at all.

Note: The prices quoted above are subject to change at any time.

I’ve recently read two remarkable nonfiction books, Blue Nights, by Joan Didion and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot.

In Blue Nights, Didion reflects on the death of her daughter, Quintana, and the difficulty of coming to terms with it and understanding it as well as the increasing fear of frailty and loneliness as Didion herself turns 75. A New York Times review said, “It is a searing inquiry into loss and a melancholy meditation on mortality and time.”

A Culture review quotes Didion on the writing: “I’m not talking about it being easy because of the difficulty of the subject, or the sensitivity of the subject, I think it was a difficult book for me to write because it was an entirely different kind of book than I’ve ever written. It wasn’t a narrative, it was a reflection.”

The Amazon.com description of the The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks explains it this way:

“Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first ‘immortal’ human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the ‘colored’ ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.”

Both books are highly recommended.

After watching through six episodes of Ringer I’ve decided to give it up. This doesn’t make me very happy because I really like Sarah Michelle Gellar, the star of the series, and I hoped to get into this new drama and enjoy it.

It’s not that it doesn’t have an intriguing premise: Gellar plays twins who couldn’t be more different. One twin takes the place of the other and the plots are filled with twists, turns, and cliff hangers.

The problem, for me, is that the series is unrelentingly dark. There is little humor, no camaraderie, no bonding, and no very compelling characters. The dialog is unexciting.

In short, the show doesn’t live up to its promise. For Gellar’s sake I hope the series is successful, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not on the air next year.

I love the fall. The weather cools down, the trees turn colour, and the pace of life picks up.

Marion and I had a delightful day trip and picnic lunch with our friend Suzanne. We drove up to Forks of the Credit and enjoyed the autumn countryside. It takes a long time to get out of the city now with the GTA expanding northward. One day I expect it to be solidly urban from Mississauga to Orangeville.

This fall I’m taking an online course “Writing the Personal Essay,” from Creative Nonfiction. We have weekly readings and tutorials, occasional online chats, written assignments, and peer review. It’s stretching me as a writer, for which I’m thankful.

I’ve been reading so much my Kindle is smoking. I’m on an SF&F spree that I hope never ends. I’m also reading some mystery fiction. I don’t read much mainstream literature — I find it boring. Contemporary literary fiction, most of it anyway, leaves me cold. But science fiction challenges me and the inventiveness and creativity of the authors delight me. My Kindle is currently subscribed to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Clarkesworld. And for more serious reading, Philosophy Now.

The delightful thing is that as soon as the issues are released by the publisher, they download into my Kindle.

The fall marks the new TV season as well, and this season I’m watching Dexter, CSI, Silk, Inspector Lewis, and Ringer. Plus documentaries and specials.

Not to mention listening to podcasts galore, including the bracing TED Talk videos.

And I was delighted to hear that my friend Earl has picked up a Macbook Air.

Finally, for anyone interested, I’ve started a paper.li Internet newspaper called Gene’s Sci-Tech Daily.