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Articles by Peter Pesic
The Nuclear Fallout Maps That Revealed a Contaminated Planet
BeeLine Reader uses subtle color gradients to help you read more efficiently. Today, pollutants of anthropogenic origin, starting with microplastics, are everywhere on our planet, deposited in the ice of the polar regions, dispersed in the upper atmosphere, and transported to the ocean depths. Scientific awareness of the global distribution of these pollutants is not new; our knowledge of the contamination of the world developed considerably throughout the 19th century and has continued to expand.
Two Books on Our Mathematical World
Though there are plenty of popular books explaining the wonders of math and physics, new ones continue to appear. To avoid recycling the same ideas and examples, metaphors and stories, authors are tempted to stand out by being ever more daring and provocative. Antonio Padilla, a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at the University of Nottingham, became a “star” on YouTube in 2014 for a math video now viewed more than eight million times.
Sounding Bodies
The unfolding influence of music and sound on the fundamental structure of the biomedical sciences, from ancient times to the present. Beginning in ancient Greece, Peter Pesic writes, music and sound significantly affected the development of the biomedical sciences. Physicians used rhythmical ratios to interpret the pulse, which inspired later efforts to record the pulse in musical notation.
Polyphonic Minds
Description Praise Resources An exploration of polyphony and the perspective it offers on our own polyphonic brains. Polyphony—the interweaving of simultaneous sounds—is a crucial aspect of music that has deep implications for how we understand the mind. In Polyphonic Minds, Peter Pesic examines the history and significance of “polyphonicity”—of “many-voicedness”—in human experience.
Music and the Making of Modern Science
Description Praise Resources A wide-ranging exploration of how music has influenced science through the ages, from fifteenth-century cosmology to twentieth-century string theory. In the natural science of ancient Greece, music formed the meeting place between numbers and perception; for the next two millennia, Peter Pesic tells us in Music and the Making of Modern Science, “liberal education” connected music with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy within a fourfold study, the quadrivium.
Seeing the Unseeable
BLACK HOLES: The Edge of All We Know. A film directed and produced by Peter Galison, edited and coproduced by Chyld King; in association with Sandbox Films. Distributed by Submarine Entertainment and available for streaming on Apple TV and other digital platforms through Video on Demand. Runtime 98 minutes. 2020. Though dark and mysterious, black holes have become brilliant celebrities.
‘The Ascent of John Tyndall’ Review: Science at the Summit
By Aug. 9, 2018 7:08 pm ET In the 19th century, science and technology rose to the center of public awareness. Among the luminaries of Victorian science was John Tyndall, whose remarkable careers as a scientist, mountaineer and outspoken public advocate brought him to the pinnacle of British society and gained him world-wide renown. Tyndall (1820-93) has long awaited a comprehensive biography, one now offered by Roland Jackson, a historian of science and former head of the Science Museum in London.
Enemies of Progress
Description This polemical book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its all-pervasive influence on society, arguing that sustainability, manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon: in effect, its bi-partisan appeal has depressed critical engagement and neutered politics.
Gonzo History | SpringerLink
“Gonzo” describes a style of nonfiction in which authors abandon normal expectations of objectivity or distance and put themselves directly in their narratives. Both that style of writing and the term were popularized by the American writer and journalist Hunter S. Thompson, whose books and articles contained extravagantly detailed descriptions of himself, his experiences, and his judgments. In gonzo journalism, in fact, the personality of the author is central to the unfolding of the tale itself.
The Physics of Nothing
‘Nothing will come of nothing,” King Lear says, but modern physics is even odder than that. The problem of the vacuum goes back more than 2,000 years and continues into the present. In “Void: The Strange Physics of Nothing,” James Owen Weatherall, a philosopher at the University of California, Irvine, gives a wide-ranging and concise account of this remarkable story. The concept of “nothing”—a total void or vacuum—has given rise to all kinds of questions, beginning with the ancient Greeks.
Why Adele Makes Us Cry
Along with the ability to laugh, the love of music seems essential to human happiness. But why exactly is it so important to us? In “Why You Love Music,” John Powell, a physicist who has also studied musical composition, offers an array of answers that mainly reflect his scientific background. He conveys some basic musical information painlessly, including tuning and scales, the construction of melodies, and elements of timbre and key.
Blue Notes and Blackboards
The love affair between music and science began in an ancient Greek blacksmith shop, where the legendary Pythagoras did the first experiments connecting ratios and sounds, such as the lengths of plucked strings and their pitches. The strange and wonderful connection between numbers and music has continued to be the subject of fascinated study to this day.
A History of Racket-Making
Noise and nuisance: the words seem almost cognate expressions for the vexations of modern life. Accordingly, the time seems ripe for “the first and only history of noise in all its forms,” as Mike Goldsmith describes his new book. Former head of the Acoustic Group at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, Goldsmith has written many books for young people. Discord: The Story of Noise is his first work for an adult audience and his first extended treatment of a historical topic.
Book Review: ‘Inventions That Didn’t Change the World’ by Julie Halls
Bombarded by new apps and devices of all sorts, we seem poised on an endless wave of inventions. Though human ingenuity reaches back into the dimmest past, the intensive production of inventions only began in the past few centuries. Julie Halls, a specialist in registered designs at the U.K. National Archives, offers an intriguing window into the 19th century in “Inventions That Didn’t Change the World,” a beautifully printed selection from the archives of the British Designs Registry.
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