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spacedouche's review against another edition
informative
4.0
This book opens up an interesting question that leans all the way into the philosophy part of physics. It was more of a historical read than a scientific one. If you want the hard science about gravity you'll have to look elsewhere (as I did after finishing the book) but I really enjoyed how it tied scientific discovery to the context in which it had to happen.
sevenlefts's review
3.0
Interspersed with some personal observations (he seems prone to falling down), Panek writes an accessible overview of our beliefs and thinking about gravity over time, from the Greek philosophers to modern scientists. It's not a particularly technical book, but even so, I sometimes had problems following the theories and ideas outlined -- a fault of the reader and not the author, I assure you.
I do think that some of the principles and ideas described could have done with a bit of illustration, although the chapter heading graphics were amusing. The early parts of the book were a bit slow for me, but once it got to Einstein, it picked up a bit. I'm attracted to books about physics, although I rarely get out of them what the authors put in.
Also, while reading this I found myself purposefully dropping things and watching them "fall."
I do think that some of the principles and ideas described could have done with a bit of illustration, although the chapter heading graphics were amusing. The early parts of the book were a bit slow for me, but once it got to Einstein, it picked up a bit. I'm attracted to books about physics, although I rarely get out of them what the authors put in.
Also, while reading this I found myself purposefully dropping things and watching them "fall."
leanderq's review against another edition
2.0
Moderately engaging writing, very little time spent on the science.
categal's review against another edition
4.0
This book starts with a look at literature and history related to gravity, which was just the right entry point for me. Galileo, Newton, Einstein: the gravity heavy weights (haha), all the way to the latest look at the universe through LIGO Lab discoveries. It's interesting, it's thoughtful, it's thought-provoking.
Excellent pacing and the narrator's good humor got me over the huh? parts of the science. What is gravity? Who knows, but it's worth the investigation.
Excellent pacing and the narrator's good humor got me over the huh? parts of the science. What is gravity? Who knows, but it's worth the investigation.
brettt's review
3.0
Early in his 2019 book The Trouble With Gravity, Richard Panek recounts a conversation with a physicist about the titular subject. "The trouble with gravity," he is told, "is that no one understands it, and no one understands that no one understands it." And despite the promise made by the subtitle, that contention will be more or less borne out by the end of the book.
Panek begins by sorting out what people have believed about the whatever-it-is that keeps us standing upright on the ground and not floating away. He explores a number of different creation stories offered by civilizations from around the world and shows that one of the things they seem to have as a common thread is the idea that "up there" is somehow different from "down here." Up there, things stay suspended above the Earth's surface, either because they're embedded in a dome or they fly or they're living beings who fly. From there, observation during the time of the ancient Greeks at least brought to Western thinking the realization that some of the things up there moved around in a regular pattern. What, these thinkers wondered, regulated it? What kept them up there while human beings and just about everything they could see stayed down here?
The answer of divine agency was enough for many, although as Galileo and Copernicus led the way in proving some of the things up there related to each other instead of to the Earth itself, and the Earth was revealed to be moving in relation to the sun, instead of the other way around. As developing sciences began to gain more and more tools to explore and reveal the way the world works, the idea of divine agency didn't disappear so much as open the door to a new question: How did God keep what was up there up there and what was down here down here?
The next chapters outline how first Isaac Newton and then others began to conceive of a universal force that linked everything together, which came to be called gravity. But as with nearly every answer since the initial creation stories, more questions lurked underneath. As Albert Einstein began to explore what the universe did as it got small, fast and weird, the answers to his questions seemed to leave gravity in a still more mysterious place. Defined as one of the four major forces governing the universe, it differs from the other three in significant ways and resists unification with them. Which is where, despite the discovery of gravitational waves and other solid advances, is where we are today: Not understanding gravity all that well and not understanding that we don't really understand it all that well.
Panek seems never have aimed to give a recap of the latest gravitational research and theory -- magazine articles might be best for that anyway, given the pace of change in the field. Trouble seems more a survey of the field that links some of our modern experimentation with ancient mythologizing as they both grope frustratingly towards an answer to something that exists all around us but which defies full explanation. The ancients were stumped by what kept things up there from falling down here; modern scientists are stumped by gravity's resistance to being quantized like the other three forces.
Sometimes Panek's breezy style gets in his way, as he winds up a sentence with a punchline when it really needs stronger exposition. He makes enough mistakes in relating Old Testament creation pericopes that a reader has full license to wonder how well he does with the others, and that section of the book is too long by half. It doesn't really weaken his point that human beings have recognized the up-there/down-here distinction for most of history but ordinarily accuracy is to be desired in a book discussing scientific work.
Trouble is still a fairly fun trip through the development of the ideas underlying our understanding -- and, I suppose, misunderstanding -- of gravity. It helps set the stage for better comprehension of such new discoveries as may be made in coming years and makes a useful addition to the layperson's science shelf.
Panek begins by sorting out what people have believed about the whatever-it-is that keeps us standing upright on the ground and not floating away. He explores a number of different creation stories offered by civilizations from around the world and shows that one of the things they seem to have as a common thread is the idea that "up there" is somehow different from "down here." Up there, things stay suspended above the Earth's surface, either because they're embedded in a dome or they fly or they're living beings who fly. From there, observation during the time of the ancient Greeks at least brought to Western thinking the realization that some of the things up there moved around in a regular pattern. What, these thinkers wondered, regulated it? What kept them up there while human beings and just about everything they could see stayed down here?
The answer of divine agency was enough for many, although as Galileo and Copernicus led the way in proving some of the things up there related to each other instead of to the Earth itself, and the Earth was revealed to be moving in relation to the sun, instead of the other way around. As developing sciences began to gain more and more tools to explore and reveal the way the world works, the idea of divine agency didn't disappear so much as open the door to a new question: How did God keep what was up there up there and what was down here down here?
The next chapters outline how first Isaac Newton and then others began to conceive of a universal force that linked everything together, which came to be called gravity. But as with nearly every answer since the initial creation stories, more questions lurked underneath. As Albert Einstein began to explore what the universe did as it got small, fast and weird, the answers to his questions seemed to leave gravity in a still more mysterious place. Defined as one of the four major forces governing the universe, it differs from the other three in significant ways and resists unification with them. Which is where, despite the discovery of gravitational waves and other solid advances, is where we are today: Not understanding gravity all that well and not understanding that we don't really understand it all that well.
Panek seems never have aimed to give a recap of the latest gravitational research and theory -- magazine articles might be best for that anyway, given the pace of change in the field. Trouble seems more a survey of the field that links some of our modern experimentation with ancient mythologizing as they both grope frustratingly towards an answer to something that exists all around us but which defies full explanation. The ancients were stumped by what kept things up there from falling down here; modern scientists are stumped by gravity's resistance to being quantized like the other three forces.
Sometimes Panek's breezy style gets in his way, as he winds up a sentence with a punchline when it really needs stronger exposition. He makes enough mistakes in relating Old Testament creation pericopes that a reader has full license to wonder how well he does with the others, and that section of the book is too long by half. It doesn't really weaken his point that human beings have recognized the up-there/down-here distinction for most of history but ordinarily accuracy is to be desired in a book discussing scientific work.
Trouble is still a fairly fun trip through the development of the ideas underlying our understanding -- and, I suppose, misunderstanding -- of gravity. It helps set the stage for better comprehension of such new discoveries as may be made in coming years and makes a useful addition to the layperson's science shelf.
richardmtl's review
3.0
A *very* generous 3, instead of 2.5, and only because of the last chapter and the discussion on gravity waves. This was not a book about gravity, but rather, a book on philosophical and religious thought in ancient times up through the Renaissance. I ended up skipping many pages in the earlier chapters; I don't need to know nor do I care what religious thinkers thought about up and down and heaven and Earth 1500 years ago. It took me so long to read such a short book because I would rad a few pages, realize I was bored, and just put it down again. I kept at it instead of DNF just in case there was actual discussion of the physics of gravity, and there was, at the end, just a bit. I'll have to look for a different book, once that focuses on modern physics and gravity.