Gleiser’s ‘The Island of Knowledge’

In a Wall Street Journal review of The Island of Knowledge, a new book by Marcelo Gleiser, a professor of physics and astronomy and the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy, astronomer John Gribbin notes that Gleiser organizes his story about the endless search for knowledge and the development of science into three parts.

“First we are given what might loosely be called cosmology, the story of the universe at large. Second, the story of the very small, essentially the story of quantum physics. Finally, we are offered some speculations about mind and matter,” writes Gribbin.

Gribbin writes that as the quest for knowledge goes on, it is “always presenting us with new things to wonder about and to wonder at. Without that sense of wonder, as Mr. Gleiser’s excellent book makes clear, there would be no point in doing science at all.”

A subscription is required to read the full review, published 6/9/14 by The Wall Street Journal.