13 Things That Don't Make Sense

They say you should never judge a book by its cover, and, thinking about what the cover generally has on it, that would suggest not judging by the title either. This book may be a bit of an exception to that rule:

"13 Things That Don't Make Sense" - by Michael Brooks

What's it about? Well, surprisingly enough, its about... 13 things that don't make sense...

Michael Brooks provides a list of 13 things which, in his opinion, science has not yet provided a satisfactory explanation for. These include the likes of dark matter/dark energy, gravity, life, death, sex and aliens. His discussion on each is generally well rounded, informed and thought provoking and makes for a good bed time story.

Although the topics are all highly varied, one common theme does unit the majority of the book. A theme that makes less sense than any of the topics explicitly mentioned.

The fact that many scientists treat science like a religion.

The book is mostly about the silly behaviour of scientists known as the "paradigm shift".

"Scientists work with one set of ideas. Everything they do is informed by that set of ideas. There will be some evidence that doesn't fit, however. At first that evidence will be ignored or sabotaged." Only when the evidence builds up to critical mass does the whole system break down and a new law is put in place.

However, this new order generally requires alot more than new evidence. It requires a new set of scientists with a new set of beliefs and a new set of followers. In other words, a new religion.

So powerful is the force of religious science that the writer himself, despite the majority of the book providing countless evidence of it, falls foul of it himself in his debate on free will. On rather flimsy evidence he declares, "We do not have what we think of as free will." The rest of the debate then takes this statement as fact, and the "thing that does not make sense" is that so many people believe we do. True, it can be argued that free will does not exist and there may not be any strong logical arguement as to why it should, but the evidence he bases his conclusion on is inconclusive at best.

The book therefore leads to an interesting debate on the 14th thing. Why is the human mind so strongly wired towards religion, that even those who go out of their way to find an evidence based, logical alternative to religion still just end up with another religion?