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Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye, by Michael Shermer
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Collected essays from bestselling author Michael Shermer's celebrated columns in Scientific American
For fifteen years, bestselling author Michael Shermer has written a column in Scientific American magazine that synthesizes scientific concepts and theory for a general audience. His trademark combination of deep scientific understanding and entertaining writing style has thrilled his huge and devoted audience for years. Now, in Skeptic, seventy-five of these columns are available together for the first time; a welcome addition for his fans and a stimulating introduction for new readers.
- Sales Rank: #73015 in Books
- Published on: 2016-01-12
- Released on: 2016-01-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.48" h x 1.13" w x 6.28" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Review
Praise for Skeptic
“Dense with facts, convincing arguments, and curious statistics, this is an ingenious collection of light entertainment for readers who believe that explaining stuff is a good idea.” –Kirkus
"Shermer makes a strong case for the value of the scientific endeavor and the power of rational thinking in 75 brief essays....Each entry is insightful, informative, and entertaining."―Publishers Weekly
"Since those old Scientific American issues have been recycled, revive the popular Shermer's writings with this collection."―Booklist
About the Author
Michael Shermer is the author of The Moral Arc, Why People Believe Weird Things, The Believing Brain, and eight other books on the evolution of human beliefs and behavior. He is the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, the editor of Skeptic.com, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. He lives in Southern California.
Most helpful customer reviews
29 of 34 people found the following review helpful.
Love his lucid writing, admire his wide range of gifts and interests. If I agreed 100% I would not be a proper skeptic.
By Graham H. Seibert
Shermer is an odd duck. Not Jewish, but so bright that he attracted Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan as mentors. Dogged enough to complete the grueling bicycle Race Across America five times. A CalTech academic, but finding expression as a popular writer. This collection of columns he wrote over the years for Scientific American is well suited to people with that level of intellect.
The third, and one of the best pieces in the book, is entitled "I was wrong." Humility is a rare and admirable quality in human beings in general, and especially among scientists. I credit this book with changing my opinions on a couple of important subjects, covered later in this review.
Shermer is especially obsessed with fraud, quackery, junk science and religion. His articles on epistemology – how we know what we know – and scientific method are worth memorizing. We all come across people who simply do not believe in vaccines, or swear by their bottled water, or homeopathic medicines, or magnets and similar quackery. In the (unfortunately rare) case that you are dealing with somebody who will listen to reason, and might even be somewhat numerate, Shermer's treatises are succinct and powerful.
Reflecting modern society itself, many of the themes he touches on are poilticially charged. A man who dwells in the snake pit of academia cannot afford to step on every serpent, but Shermer does pretty well. Let's look at a few.
On global warming, Shermer switched from being a skeptic to something of a believer. He cites the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even climate-change skeptics agree that it has risen from 180 to 350 parts per billion, and is headed higher. The thesis of the 1990s was that these greenhouse gases would trap heat and suffocate us by today. It has not happened. I'll go with Shermer that,in my father's words, we "shouldn't muck with something we don't understand." A conservative should conserve the planet as it is, not knowingly make such dramatic changes and hope for the best. On the other hand, as a libertarian Shermer must also recognize that politicians are using global warming as a stalking horse to advance many other agendas. I read him with interest and an open mind.
Shermer strongly supports Napoleon Chagnon' s anthropology among the Yanomamo against politically-charged attacks. His writing predates "Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes -- the Yanomamo and the Anthropologists," but I am sure that Shermer relishes Chagnon's setting the record straight. Primitive men were and are often violent. Civilization has improved us.
On the other hand, Shermer's mentor Stephen Jay Gould is bad odor among others whom he admires for his tenacious resistance to research on human evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and thus human biodiversity. Although he writes favorably of Richard Dawkins and E. O Wilson, Shermer generally avoids these topics, dismissing them with a single-line throw-away. He simply does not write about the work of Arthur Jensen, Richard Lynn, Philippe Rushton, Kevin MacDonald, Barbara Oakley and many others in the sociobiology movement. Even a skeptic has to keep his horns pulled in upon occasion.
Shermer's brief comment on the controversy raised by the (unnamed) book "Inventing the AIDS Virus" led me to amend my review of that book. As with the climate change advocates, the AIDS lobby's being highly political does not mean that it is not right in many particulars. Much as I may sympathize for the abuse that the author of this book suffered, ad hominem attacks and slurs rather than refutations of his science, it appears that the refutations of the science do exist and are substantial. If I have a criticism to offer it might be that Shermer should be more candid about the politics of the issues. A model in my mind is Steven Pinker's dealing with them in "The Blank Slate."
Shermer goes at religion with the passion of the former evangelical that he is. He is especially tough on Intelligent Design. Yet, he has a compelling, moderately cast article entitled "Darwin on the Right – Why Christians and conservatives should accept evolution." His thesis is that evolution fits with theology and it explains human nature. Shermer's online biography shows him marrying late in life and does not credit him with any children. I would add that religion provides a rationale for having children. Bearing children does not offer much of a reward in the modern world. They are a great expense to raise, society is structured such that one's employer and the government are on the hook for our care in old age, and modern American society almost goes out of its way to teach children to be ungrateful. But for the religious injunction to "be fruitful and multiply" we would die out – even faster than we are doing!
"Dogged" is the theme of Shermer's piece on retracing Darwin's investigation of the Galapagos Islands and of Darwin's unrelenting quest to figure things out. It is the perfect word to describe Shermer himself. This is another excellent work. He strives to know, and relishes sharing what he has discovered.
19 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
A necessary and critical service
By David Wineberg
Skeptic is a collection of 75 articles Michael Shermer contributed to Scientific American, where he has written a column of the same name since 2001. In the articles, he probes, jabs, stabs and eviscerates a wide variety of cows, both sacred and profane. The articles run two to three pages, so they are bite-sized, succinct, and to the point. The topics run the gamut: hoaxers, charlatans, bad science, bad medicine, religion, extraterrestrials – pretty much anything where a skeptic can add light rather than just heat.
There is a perverse sort of joy throughout Skeptic. Shermer clearly loves declawing, denouncing, and debunking. He does it mercilessly and seemingly effortlessly. He gives the impression he is in full command of the facts. He doesn’t have a horse in these races, so he can dispense wisdom to all in a laid back, easygoing style of tossing off facts and doubts without fear of repercussion.It is a refreshingly fearless approach. As I read, I kept wishing I could send the article at hand to someone who clearly needed to see it.
Shermer collected the articles in ten sections: science, skepticism, pseudoscience/quackery, paranormal/supernatural, aliens/UFOs, borderlands science/alternative medicine, psychology/brain, human nature, evolution/creationism, and science/religion/miracles/God. So there are insights for pretty much anyone.
I have two wishes for Skeptic. One is an index so anyone can use it as a research tool. The other is more depth, because the book doesn’t build to anything. Just as Shermer gets me intrigued, he wraps up. And while the articles are never incomplete (or dull), there’s nothing like kicking a victim when he’s down.
David Wineberg
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Informed, beautifully composed, sharp, witty and fun to read
By Dennis Littrell
Let’s start with the prose. Shermer writes a delightful line. He eschews the mundane and celebrates the poetic. He likes the word that stands out, that surprises, e.g., “hoaxed” (as a verb), “phlogiston”, “flummery” (works well with “flapdoodle”), “homiletics,” “watchphrase,” to note a few.
Here’s some (perhaps overwrought) alliteration:
(On magnets increasing blood flow) “This is fantastic flapdoodle and a financial flimflam.” (p. 76)
(An observation on hosting a workshop at Esalen) “…the paranormal piffle proffered by the prajna peddlers…” (p. 120)
And here are some chapter titles alliterated: “Mesmerized by Magnetism,” “Cures and Cons,” “Codified Claptrap,” “The Myth Is the Message,” “Rupert’s Resonance,” “Quantum Quackery,” etc.
I especially liked the way he worked some fancy poets and bit of their poetry into the narratives, including Dylan Thomas, W.B. Yeats, Alexander Pope, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. And it was fun to read again Arthur C. Clarke’s three laws. First Law: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” Indeed. And the Third: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I would add, as Shermer himself observes elsewhere in the book, any really advanced beings will be to us as gods. And it felt like a return to my youth to recall Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics from his novel “I, Robot”:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
But what really makes this book stand out (and others by the very articulate Dr. Shermer : see my review of his “Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown”) is just how incisive he is in revealing, exposing, satirizing, demeaning and being amused by the oceans of BS that surrounds us. Here are a couple of examples of his perceptive, penetrating, perspicacious and piercing prose:
“…[T]ruth in science is not determined democratically. It does not matter whether 99 percent or only 1 percent of the public believes a theory. It must stand or fall on the evidence, and there are few theories in science that are more robust than the theory of evolution. The preponderance of evidence from numerous converging lines of inquiry (geology, paleontology, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, genetics, biogeography, etc.) all independently point to the same conclusion: evolution happened.” He calls this a “convergence of evidence” and adds, “Whatever you call it, it is how historical events are proven.” (p. 224)
Writing about rising above our nature, Shermer avers, “Limited resources led to the selection for within-group cooperation and between-group competition in humans, resulting in within-group amity and between-group enmity.” (Call it tribalism.) “This evolutionary scenario bodes well for our species if we can continue to expand the circle of whom we consider to be members of our in-group.” Shermer adds that he believes that the trend is for including more people, women and minorities into the in-group deserving human rights. (p. 209) Call it the trek from bands to tribes to nation states to internationalism.
I also liked this little comeuppance for “the end is nigh” people: “I’m skeptical whenever people argue that the Big Thing is going to happen in THEIR lifetime. Evangelicals never claim that the Second Coming is going to happen in the NEXT generation…Likewise, secular doomsayers typically predict the demise of civilization within their allotted time (but that they will be part of the small surviving enclave.” (p. 155)
Naturally I have a few differences with Shermer, but only a few. Here’s one. In the chapter “Why ET Has Not Phoned In” he believes that the lifetime of communicating civilizations (“L” in the famous Drake equation for estimating the number of technological civilizations in our galaxy) is rather short. He gives L = 420.56 years based on the lifetime of civilizations historically on earth. I believe this is in error since the rise and fall of Rome and some Chinese dynasties, etc. which Shermer has averaged do not connote planet civilizations capable of communicating over vast distances of interstellar space. Those civilizations, if only based on the fact that they have the technology to communicate, clearly must be longer-lived. What he is suggesting is that civilizations such as Rome, Egypt, etc. typically don’t last long enough to become technologically capable of interstellar communication. What he is apparently not noticing is that these very same civilizations haven’t really disappeared from the earth, but have evolved into the civilizations now present, which is what one might expect on other planets in the galaxy.
Unlike most people Shermer is positive about the prospect for cloning human beings. He comes up with “The Three Laws of Cloning” in the chapter “I, Clone” and argues that we have nothing to fear. I agree, but with this understanding: we already have too many people on the planet, cloned or otherwise.
And here’s a small difference of experience. I write a lot of essays very similar to Shermer’s (although perhaps not as eloquently) and I have found that being forced into a tight window of expression actually improved my prose. Shermer feels that something is sometimes lost when he has to trim his essays. Typically he was restricted to about 700 words for these essays which are from his column in the Scientific American magazine, although augmented and in some cases corrected for this volume.
One last thing: on page 223 Shermer’s title subhead reads “The advance of science, not the demotion of religion, will best counter the influence of creationism.” I agree, but I could not help but read “The advance of science, not the DEMON of religion, will best counter the influence of creationism.”
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
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