鸡汤式的“科普”

先引用一篇美亚的书评：

Regurgitation without attribution

By Owen Brown on January 6, 2014
Format: Paperback

Reader, my comments refer to the 1995 edition, of which I understand this to be an "expansion." Barrow, and you, would have benefited from a contraction. This earlier work (which I must assume provides you with the basis for that of which you read this review) is a poorly-organized, and poorly-edited mish-mash of hypotheses that point at Barrow's conclusion without lending any particular force to his argument.

Which is? The world is so because it is. Extraterrestrials, if they exist, must exist as they do. The four forces of the universe cannot be any different than they are, if the moon was not where it lives in the sky, mathematics would be far different now than what it is. And by the way, we have the Minoans to blame for constellations (bright bit of conjecture there!) Why this teleological fever? I suppose because our author, a new Candide, wants to point out that our aesthetic preferences are based upon our physical/evolutionary constructs, themselves based upon what we currently conceive to be givens of physics and chemistry (and this is not a bad idea), but they couldn't be otherwise.

All presented in a prose style 5that is occasionally amusing (the best part of the book are the quotes) but far too often has one struggle with paragraphs that straggle over far too many pages. Did Barrow's agent just throw up her hands? To say nothing of the editor - after all, as ideas and connections pour forth in a feverish fashion from Barrow's pen, one would like to read of his sources. Some are listed in the bibliography, none are footnoted in the text.

One would also have liked a few other critical readers before the text made it to print. Barrow provides conclusions that benefits his anthropocentric principles as if they generally were fait accompli, but they are only one of many that might be considered. For example: "...it could be that our liking for music is merely a by-product of an advantageous adaptation for coordinated actions." Yes, I suppose it could be. Or maybe not. At other times we read sentences appalling in their banality. Here's one:

"In the absence of catastrophes, our own existence is made possible by the presence of our friendly neighbourhood star: the Sun."

Do you know something now that you didn't before? Here's another:

"The strength of rocks and metals is fixed by the strength of the electromagnetic forces of Nature, and by the masses of protons and electrons."

And here's another:

"Mankind's awareness of the stars, and of the periodic changes in the appearances of the Sun and the Moon, was already well developed at the dawn of recorded history."

These were all taken at random. There are plenty more. Barrow would reply that they are taken out of context, to which it would be fair to ask him exactly what context he has in mind. It seems that there is nothing that will not support his thesis. And then there's an over-long excursion in chapter 5 where music is compared to mathematics - for what end? You'll never really know.

I am sorry for Barrow that I give this a single star, but not for you, as his potential customer. Although there are a few interesting ideas here, as well as some workable summaries of celestial events (precession, etc.) there are far too many windy connections for the work to stand. Barrow may believe that the past shapes the present, and thus the future, but for the most part yours will be better if you avoid this book.



原文地址：http://www.amazon.com/Artful-Universe-Expanded-John-Barrow-ebook/dp/B005YMCC3C/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8





上面这篇评论写得非常中肯。
在我买这本书之前我对作者的角度，即从数学家的视角评论人类的艺术创作，是非常感兴趣的。
可是当我看完中文版序言和目录之后我总觉得好像有什么地方怪怪的，于是想去找原版来对照读，看到这篇评论后恍然大悟，原来是作者的论述方式给我带来的这种感觉。作者观察角度较有新意，可是在尽量保持表面严谨的论述方式之下，却透着一股类似于成功学畅销书的牵强逻辑。以所有有利因素为自己的观点做验证。
一位数学教授对艺术的“另外一个视角”的观察，原来并没有想象中的超乎常人。
但不管怎么说，如果把它作为一本用以启发观点的小册子来看，扫过每一章节的想法，确实还有它的作用。只是我想如书中所提这类弱关联的观点，大部分会去买这本书的人本身都已曾想到过，而书中的论述又并非有何理据，所以其实也没有什么卵用。而如果是从未想到过书中任何一星半点论述的读者，或许原本自身也缺失一些独立思考能力（或者对艺术或科学太过缺少了解），因此大概会像看成功学和鸡汤一样被简单的结论洗脑却依然说不出所以然来吧。
如此看来，本书确实价值并不高了。
但我还是会先至少把它看完一遍的:D