Book Review: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

Richard Dawkins is world famous evolutionary biologist and author. His book The Magic of Reality tries to explain in understandable ways some of the really complicated phenomenons of physics and science overall.

In the midway of the book, I felt like back in school. Quite many things very familiar, but the way Mr. Dawkins explains those helped to deepen the understanding quite a bit.

The book goes through topics all the way from big bang to evolution to quantum mechanics. So it is really comprehensive overview to the universe as we know it. I give the credit to him on explaining things in very understandable ways.

Mr Dawkins is a know atheist and science believer. It really shows in the book. He dismisses all religions. He does admit that there are many things science can't explain yet, but he sees it only as a shortage of current science, not as a possibility for higher forces. Atheism actually came disturbingly through from all the writing. That's a shame, in science facts should be facts without personal believes.

I have to still recommend to people who want to understand physics and the world better. I felt like getting a fast recap of learning's from physics from many years at school. It's an excellent book, if you can tolerate the pushing of atheism.


Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: The Story of Human Body by Daniel Lieberman

The Story of Human Body: Evolution, Heath and Disease by Daniel Lieberman was waiting for me in my bookshelf for a month. I really looked forward to this book. So much that I had to hurry with previous books, to get this started. It turned out to be an excellent book, just different way that I had imagined.

Daniel Lieberman is professor of biological sciences and the chair of department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. This gives him the credibility that is needed to write about evolution, which has many aspects that have to be guessed. Basically only bones, some tools and DNA we have left from old generations to study the evolution, but still there needs to be much speculation about behavior and other body parts to tell the full story. I believe in these days, Daniel Lieberman is the man who can make the best guesses.

I have to admit, that I looked forward to this book from few articles and videos from Daniel Lieberman about barefoot running. I guess I'm not the only one, since that's the part that made him famous to non-biologists. This book is so much more than barefoot running. From 350 pages, there's about 10 pages about barefoot running. When I realized that, I felt bit disappointed, but the book turned out to be full gold. It will definitely be one of those books that made me understand the world and myself much better in the future.

The book goes through the whole human evolution starting from the time bit earlier than we divided from the apes. It goes through all the sides of the story. It really digs deep on what happened and why it happened. Then the book walks from times before homo sapiens through hunter gatherers to farming and also to the cultural evolution what we are facing currently. It is a story all of us should know.

Then at final part of the book, it goes through why we are fat, why we are sick and why we die on cancer and heart diseases. It opened my eyes to really understand what we should be doing to keep healthy. I feel currently that this book changed my life forever, but of course I can't be sure.

Unfortunately book isn't easy to digest reading. It requires concentration and interest towards the topic. It is longish book, but it is full of excellent and important information. I recommend it to everyone. With some of the thoughts in this book, we could improve so many lifes. I am realistic and know that too few will ever read this. I'm so happy that I did.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book Review: Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett

Evolution theory and all the things related to it, has been an interest for me. This time I wanted to dig deeper and read Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett. It is highly appreciated book with good reviews.   It was a book I wanted to check out.

I had assumptions that this book dives in to the subject deep, but still I got amazed how deep it went. It started from old philosophic thoughts and then worked its way to Darwin and to latest thoughts in 1990's. All the topics were covered thoroughly with scientific way of comparing things from all perspectives.

Book covers subjects from the beginning of the whole universe to meme's. It talks about God and evolution theory. It covers philosophical thoughts. There is almost anything one can think that affect Darwin's original thoughts.

As an ordinary, non biology or philosophy expert, I was sometimes overwhelmed about all the information there was. Even tough sometimes I wasn't able to understand everything, I just kept going and tried to catch up later on.

I did enjoy the book. It was pretty hard to read, but the contents were such a valuable and brilliant, that it turned the book to positive experience. I did learn a lot during this book. It raised a lots of thoughts all the time I was reading it. For sure this wasn't the last book about these subjects I read. I need to know more sometimes.

I can recommend this book to people who are genuinely interested on Evolution theory, philosophy or biology overall. Without this interest, book might get too hard to read and follow. It is an excellent book, but pretty laborious to read. 

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen

Book review - The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture

Some of the readers of this blog might hope this book is about Agile SW development, but it is not. The Agile Gene is book from Matt Ridley about genetics, evolution and how people are people. It starts form really early in first studies about human and behaviors. It tells a full journey to the latest genetics researches.

The main question in the book is the long lasting debate on nature, meaning the DNA and inherited things and nurture, the things that environment effects on people. It goes trough studies from both sides and digs deep in to the main pillars of the both explanations.

One by one it starts to get more obvious that there is no one explanation on this question. Nature plays it part on growing, but nurture also has a big effect on many things. The most surprising there is that genes actually work with environment to make things possible. So those are not only enablers or disablers, but can adjust to the environment.

I have to admit the book was quite hard to follow sometimes. It went such deeply to some of the scientific subjects, that it would have required some more basic understanding of genetics to follow fully. Still mainly it was fun and interesting to read. Matt Ridley knows how to write in very interesting form.

Reading the book I had to change my mind many times. On some points I was sure that genes are the main influencer of what we turn out to be, but then after some tens of pages I again thought that environment is the important thing. I can't remember a book that have mixed my head more during reading the book than this was. That said in a good way.

I recommend this book to those who are interested on psychology, genetics or evolution. It requires interest towards those subject, otherways it becomes too technical to read. I enjoyed it a lot. It goes to the one of the best books I've read this year.

Written by +Henri Hämäläinen