Beyond Reason : Eight Great Problems That Reveal the Limits of Science

Rating:
Summary: Obviously for a Specific Audience
Review: Dewdney's book is very interesting, challenging, and is, admittedly, a tough read. You might need ready access to Google to look up some of the terms he uses. But for the most part, anyone who took high school math and physics should be able to understand it. I'd recommend it to college and graduate students, and math and physics instructors. It has its down points, but on the whole is a very intriguing look at some of the problems afflicting all our logic.

Rating:
Summary: Some erroneous statements
Review: I have only glanced inside this book searching to see if there is a proper treatment of relativity. I was glad to see that no mention of relativistic mass is made, kudos for that. However, a few other sentences caught my eye.
On pg 32, it is said that a 1 kg mass is equivalent to 3 x 10^16 J from E = mc^2. Ok, I have made simple math errors before (though not after being reviewed by a publisher and the likes of M. Gardner et. al.)
On page 56 it is said that for a particle at rest the inside of the square root is zero (within the dilation factor) when it must be one. Hopefully I was "lucky" and just happened to catch the only two glaring errors but it makes me wonder who proof reads such works.

Rating:
Summary: Very Confusing
Review: The title of this book compelled me to try it as it sounded fascinating. However, I found it to be very difficult to understand for the average reader. Dewdney frequently introduces terms that he assumes the average person will understand. In most cases that is true, however there are a few times when it isn't. Furthermore, rather than relying on simple examples or other illustrations, he uses very difficult and elaborate examples. His writing clearly shows that he is a scientist and writing for an audience who has a significant background in science. I tried reading each of the 8 problems and came to the same conclusion. Writers like Bryson or even Hawking are much better at taking complex science and math and making them understandable to the layperson.

Rating:
Summary: Too Hard
Review: This book is too hard. I don't like books with big words in them. If I don't understand a book, I think it's the author's fault, not mine. I shouldn't need more than a 3rd Grade education to understand any book about anything, even science stuff. Every author in the world should tailor their writing style to my attention span and vocabulary. If they can't, then they're either a horrible writer or their subject isn't really worth reading about. Otherwise it would be easy to explain. If it's complicated, it must be a waste of my time. I refuse to educate myself just so I can grow as a reader and eventually manage to read more difficult books. Who are these Ivory Tower academics, anyway, to decide who their audience should be?

(...)