[English] Brian Ridley: *Is Science Magic?*, translated by Li Bin and Zhang Butian, Guangxi Normal University Press, May 2007, 1st edition, 1st printing, 1–7000 copies, 118,000 characters, 787×1092, 9.625 sheets, 25 yuan — ★
Guangxi Normal University Press is really getting cooler and cooler!
I couldn’t resist buying this set yesterday when I saw it at WanSheng, even though today I saw that the Wild Grass Bookstore’s 25% discount copies had also arrived (by the way, Wild Grass has finally taken back and merged in the neighboring “Masterpiece Movement” that couldn’t stay in business, doubling its space). But when you see such a cool series, you really can’t not make a move right away — otherwise you won’t be able to sleep at night…
This “Xing Si” Book Series Pocket Reading collection has five titles in all: *Is Literature Dead?*, *Does Life Have Meaning?*, *How Far Is the Story from Reality?*, *Hello, Humor*, and this *Is Science Magic?* — just from the titles alone, doesn’t it already seem pretty tempting? They’re all topics full of creativity.
As for this *Is Science Magic?*, you can tell just from the cover that it can’t be bad! The author Brian Ridley’s other famous popular science book, *Time, Space and Everything*, was long ago introduced by the “First Push Series,” and it is quite wonderful (I read it, but have basically forgotten it). And among the translators, Zhang Butian is also a senior fellow who has translated many excellent popular books (I paid homage to him when I attended the philosophy of technology course~). Add to that the title of this book and the publisher, and any one of those elements would be enough to make it a must-buy; put together, they made me unable to resist coming back and reading the whole thing straight through in one sitting.
As a physicist, the author not only opposes scientism, but also champions “natural magic”! Haha, how reactionary! I’ll spare the specific excerpts and comments for the moment (the urgent philosophy of technology paper is still completely without a clue; just look at what I’ve been doing these past few days…). I’m sure this book will definitely come in handy later when I write the paper on science and religion.
The book covers quite a bit of modern physics knowledge, so it is especially suitable for physics students and scientific workers to read; but even humanities students with little knowledge of frontier physics can also take a look. On the one hand, the book is written in a very accessible way; on the other hand, frontier physics itself is also a kind of “magic” — after all, it’s the sort of thing that leaves you dizzy and dazed, feeling that it is mysterious and profound!
Since I haven’t been reading much popular writing lately, and it’s been some time since I last made a quarterly recommendation, I’ll recommend this one for this issue! Incidentally, that whole series is probably pretty good too, though I haven’t started assessing it yet.
2007-05-27 23:05
Latest comments
Yiwu
2007-05-28 20:14:32 [Reply]
Guangxi Normal University Press is really getting cooler and cooler!
I totally agree; I’ve always thought highly of it! It has introduced many good books!!!!
In today’s book industry, which is so entertainment-driven, the only university press that can really bring out the goods and still has vitality is probably this one…..
Gubu
2007-05-29 12:20:12 http://epr.ycool.com/ [Reply]
Among university presses that can still hold their own, there are also Peking University Press, Renmin University of China Press, Fudan University Press, and East China Normal University Press, which are all still doing okay. But these presses are too serious, not “cool.” In addition, Guangxi Normal University Press’s rise has almost not relied on the fame of its university; instead, it has used the press to bring fame to the university.
Wild Grass Bookstore recently got a batch of Guangxi Normal University Press books at 60% off (for example, the Athena translation series, etc.). Now that it has merged with Classical Movement, it is said that there will be a dedicated bookshelf for Guangxi Normal University Press bargain books~!
smw
2007-06-12 00:42:40 Anonymous 124.17.16.204 [Reply]
Guangxi Normal University Press is fairly good at publishing operations… although this book still feels like it is not among the better ones in Thinking in Action… Some parts do still sound a little like something a folk philosopher would say, of course the author is not a philosopher either. I think it introduces a lot of new viewpoints and does broaden one’s thinking; especially after taking Wu’s class for a semester, I found that many of the issues in the book had actually already been mentioned by the PDR school.
ps: The revival of Wild Grass really does make people happy!
Gubu
2007-06-12 01:17:09 http://epr.ycool.com/ [Reply]
The same thing sounds different when spoken in different places; the PDR school doesn’t seem to have any popular books introducing it, does it?
As for science and witchcraft — white magic, black magic — the science popularization press published a book in 1991 called *Witchcraft, Science, and Civilization*, written by Jakub Bronowski of Poland. It’s quite interesting, but that book is now hard to find on the market, and among recently published popular books, very few connect science and witchcraft, so this one is rather distinctive.
The key point is that talking back and forth about science and witchcraft suits my personal taste, so I strongly recommend it.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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