Book Description
Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists. He works at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God and scripture. He believes that God cares about us and can intervene in human affairs -- on rare occasions, even miraculously. Collins has personally discovered some of the scientific evidence for the common descent of all living creatures, even though he repudiates the materialist, atheistic worldview argued by many prominent Darwinists.
In short, Dr. Collins provides a satisfying solution for the dilemma that haunts everyone who believes in God and respects science. Faith in God and faith in science can be harmonious -- combined into one worldview. The God that he believes in is a God who can listen to prayers and cares about our souls. The biological science he has advanced is compatible with such a God. For Collins, science does not conflict with the Bible, science enhances it.
For many years Dr. Collins kept his views largely to himself, as he helped oversee the Human Genome Project's stunning sequencing of the code of life. Now, in what may be the most important melding of reason and revelation since C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, Dr. Collins explains himself in detail. The Language of God makes the case for God and for science. Dr. Collins considers and rejects several positions along the spectrum from atheism to young-earth creationism -- including agnosticism and Intelligent Design. Instead, he proposes a new synthesis, a new way to think about an active, caring God who created humankind through evolutionary processes.
He has heard every argument against faith from scientists, and he can refute them. He has also heard the needless rejection of scientific truths by some people of faith, and he can counter that, too. He explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes readers on a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry, and biology can all fit together with belief in God and the Bible. The Language of God is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of all: Why are we here? How did we get here? And what does life mean?
Customer Reviews:
gman.......2007-10-14
When I first received this book from a friend, not knowing anything about the book, I was excited to read. I thought there would be some wonderful explanations of DNA (perhaps in layman terms) and its elegance.
Big Disappointment. This book is just a defense of Theistic Evolution. With many of the same tired arguments.
His defense of faith is almost entirely quotes of C.S. Lewis... so please, just read C.S. Lewis.
His defense of Evolution has many of the same arguments we've heard before...
"But how did self-replicating organisms arise in the first place? It is fair to say that at the present time we simply do not know. No current hypothesis comes close to explaining how in the space of a mere 150 million years, the prebiotic environment that existed on planet Earth give rise to life." p. 90
He goes on to explain that someday we may know. Francis, what happens if we find out something different? This feels sort of like the Theory-of-the-Gaps.
"No serious biologist today doubts the theory of evolution to explain the marvelous complexity and diversity of life." p 99
Your basic Tautology argument.
He does a poor job dismantling the creationist and Intelligent Design arguments, basically claiming their arguments simply are not true, without much support.
I believe he tries to make you feel foolish if you do not believe in evolution, or are even attempting to make arguments against it.
There is a small portion of the book which is a bright spot, and I learned something new. That was the appendix, on bioethics, discussing stem cell research and cloning.
In the end, if you're looking for a good textbook on Theistic Evolution, this is the book for you. If not, don't waste your time.
Evolution of a Genetic Scientist.......2007-10-13
This book is a thoughtful, well-reasoned answer to extreme fundamentalists and to the extreme atheistic scientists such as Christopher Hitchins and Richard Dawkins. It is the evolution of a leading scientist from atheist to Christian. I found the book though an interview on Point of inquiry, a podcast devoted to rational humanism.
No Tower of Babel Here.......2007-10-10
The Language of God is genius in Dr. Collins' skill in conveying the complexity of science and the wonder of the divine in easy-to-understand language. No polemics, no rhetoric, just the facts and they logically point to the existence of God. At last, a credible read for both the science-minded and the evangelicals among us.
Suzette Martinez Standring
Believing in God Not a Problem for Scientists and Engineers.......2007-10-08
Having heard Francis Collins speak on this topic several years ago, I eagerly awaited the chance to read this book. I was not disappointed.
This book is one which will be appreciated by every scientist and engineer as being genuine. There is no white-washing science, or diminishing its importance in our world. Collins is a scientist and it is clear that he loves his life's work. And at the same time, he recounts his personal journey to faith in God. He does not leave his intellect behind when he searches for God. Every person's journey is different, but it is fascinating to read an account of how a smart, clear thinker fully reconciles his faith in God with the incredible world that God created, while also recognizing that neither diminishes the other.
As an engineer who also has worked for the Catholic Church, I most enjoyed the parallels that he made between scientific developments and his belief in God. I've found many parallels of my own during my journey and it was a pleasure to read about the connections Collins has discovered.
On the negative side, I found the part on evolution a bit too long. Evolution is a hot button for many people, however, which is probably why he dwelled on it for so many pages. Also, the Appendix had some opinions that were counter to Catholic teaching. But despite these shortcomings, this is a book that will bring much good in helping people realize that God and the world are not "opposites" but rather both co-exist extremely well together! This may be obvious to many of us since God created the world, but not to everyone, yet.
appeals to logical fallacies at key points.......2007-09-30
This book attempts to create a bridge between evolution and the Bible by arguing for theistic evolution, but falls flat through its use of logical fallacies in defense of evolution. Here is a sampling:
p. 99 "No serious biologist today doubts the theory of evolution..." p. 174 "for anyone familiar with the scientific evidence..." This is the "poisoning the well" fallacy, where people who disagree with him are mocked as amateurs or ignorant.
p.199 "Theistic evolution is the dominant position of serious biologists who are also serious believers." Poisoning the well, and Ad Populum. There was a time when 'the earth is flat" was the dominant position of serious people. Did that make it true?
p. 99 "... it is difficult to imagine how one would study life without it (evolution)." Arguing from lack of evidence. I can't imagine it, therefore it cannot exist.
p. 146 "evolution is so overwhelmingly supported by scientific evidence". Tautology, due to the ground rules of science. Science allows only natural causes for observed effects, which rules out supernatural causes, therefore in science the only possible cause of life is evolution.
p. 96 "while there are many imperfections in the fossil record, and many puzzles remain to be solved, virtually all the findings are consistent with the concept of a tree of life of related organisms" (evolution). Aside from the data that disagrees with my view, all the data agrees with my view. The ancient astronomers observed that planets occasionally seemed to reverse direction, which they viewed as an imperfection in their orbits. Scientists later discovered that the imperfections were not in the orbits of the planets, or their data - it was in their wrong framework (geocentric) for interpreting the data. Could evolution be the wrong framework for interpreting the fossil record?
I would not note the logical fallacies, except they are essential to Collins' arguments, and therefore essential to his conclusions.
Book Description
Douglas Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach--an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity.
Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here?
I Am a Strange Loop argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is the "strange loop"--a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. The most central and complex symbol in your brain or mine is the one called "I." The "I" is the nexus in our brain, one of many symbols seeming to have free will and to have gained the paradoxical ability to push particles around, rather than the reverse.
How can a mysterious abstraction be real--or is our "I" merely a convenient fiction? Does an "I" exert genuine power over the particles in our brain, or is it helplessly pushed around by the laws of physics?
These are the mysteries tackled in I Am a Strange Loop, Douglas R. Hofstadter's first book-length journey into philosophy since Gödel, Escher, Bach. Compulsively readable and endlessly thought-provoking, this is the book Hofstadter's many readers have been waiting for.
Customer Reviews:
Very good read .......2007-09-25
Douglas Hofstadter fans will find this book fun and interesting to read. Although many of the GED ideas have been reshashed in this book but it includes some new learnings and evolution in thinking that the writer has gone through in last 30 years.
You may find the book using a bit to many analogies, but you should expect that from the writer of fluid concepts and creative analogies. Once again Hofstadter's description of Godel's incompleteness theorem is one of the best written explanation for non mathematicians.
Book maintains its focus on explanation of conciousness and overall does a decent job in making its point.
Shadman
Nice complement to GEB.......2007-09-20
If you have already read and enjoyed Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, then you should read this. Just don't expect GEB 2.
If you have not, then go read that first, then read this.
Syllogistic fantasy.......2007-09-01
There's a revealing passage in this book, in which Hofstadter tells us how he dropped out of math graduate school, having reached the limit of his ability to handle the complex abstractions in abstract algebra and topology. I went to the same graduate school, and I know what he means. I observed there that the best mathematicians handle this complexity with two hard-earned skills operating in parallel: deft and precise manipulation of strict definitions according to the rules of logic; and deep intuition. Hofstadter has the latter, and in this book you believe he's onto something. But he's not so good at the former. At some point the analogies grow tiresome, and you just want him to spell it out.
It's disappointing that a brilliant thinker and teacher writing about a fascinating subject central to his work ends up leaving too much to the reader.
The book, in essence, expresses the following syllogistic fallacy: The human brain creates an internal "symbol" for its owner, which we call "I", and which can observe itself, creating a sort of self-enriching feedback loop called a "strange loop". Now strange loops, found primarily in mathematics, are magical things. And consciousness is a magical thing. Therefore it's the strange loop we call "I" that creates consciousness.
Unfortunately, Hofstadter never really connects all the dots. For example, he never explains precisely what a "strange loop" is. He makes a "first stab" in Chapter 8, but then never tries again, so we're left with a "definition" that is more vague than no definition at all. (It involves the word "paradoxical" and "level-crossing" - terms that wouldn't fly in a math seminar.)
He does go on to explain why he believes the self creates strange loops. The idea is that by observing its interaction with the world, it creates an ever more elaborate symbol of itself. It's a compelling idea, amply illustrated by analogies to video cameras and Gödel's theorem. But then he never quite closes the loop. What's the link between that strange mechanism and the feeling of consciousness that we all find so tangible and yet mysterious?
Quite possibly Hofstadter has rushed to a conclusion based on enthusiasm and intuition rather than evidence. It's clear that the man is obsessed with self-reference. He's never lost his early fascination with hallway mirrors and video feedback and Gödel. Which is good for us, but it doesn't serve this book well. He sees a connection between the self-reference of the mind and the self-reference of numerical systems, and leaps to a conclusion without checking his work. I can imagine the moment when the young Hofstadter realized that the self is self-reflexive, just like Gödel's proof. It must have been like the time I had this sudden insight into my own mathematics research. It was thrilling. I knew I was onto something. I rushed back home to write it down, and suddenly there were a hundred little details that had to be resolved, and it was two more years before I was done. Douglas Hofstadter isn't quite done yet, but I think he's onto something, and I look forward to the result.
Relax, It's Just Physicalist Functionalism.......2007-08-25
I became interested in philosophy of mind about three years ago, and have since read a variety of books written by philosophers, neuroscientists, psychologists and computer experts. About a year ago I heard about Douglas Hofstadter and his [then] forthcoming book "I Am A Strange Loop". I also discovered his 1979 work Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, where the strange loop concept was expounded in great detail. While GEB did indeed attempt to apply strange loops to the workings of the mind, IAASL promised to focus this idea with laser intensity upon the mysteries of human consciousness. Given what I had already read about the importance of circular processes within the brain, especially regarding the "binding" of multiple sense and memory data into a "unified impression", I looked forward to IAASL with great anticipation. I hoped that it would provide cutting insights that would help dispel the fog surrounding the current consciousness debate. In the end, however, Dr. Hofstadter provided little more than a warmed-over version of an old theory, i.e. PHYSICALIST FUNCTIONALISM; albeit with a quasi-mathematical twist to it, i.e., the Godel / strange-loop approach.
Although Hofstadter is a computer scientist, his first love appears to be mathematics. He gives a great description of what mathematicians do, i.e. finding and analyzing patterns amidst groups of numbers. He gives examples of how this is done, and then shows how these patterns are analyzed and formally documented via axioms and theorems and strings of logical symbols. He then kicks it up a notch by explaining what number theory is, i.e. the foundation for those theorems and logical constructs. Not content with stopping there, he takes you to the next level by explaining how mathematician Kurt Godel performed a brilliant meta-analysis of number theory in 1931 and found that it breaks down when "indexicals" are considered (i.e., self-referential propositions such as "this quote is untrue"). By now, most of us reasonably-intelligent readers are gasping for mental oxygen, as though we're way up in the Andes. But Hofstadter then pushes us up to the peak, i.e. the "strange loop", which is an abstraction and generalization of what Godel did to number theory.
Yikes! How many levels up have we gone? Numbers can be called first-order abstractions of reality. Identified number patterns would be a second-order; documentation of these by theorems would represent a third. Number theory is four levels up, and Godel hits the fifth floor elevator button. So a "strange loop" is a sixth-order abstraction from everyday reality. No wonder it seems somewhat "strange" to mere mortals.
But strangeness doesn't mean that an idea is useless. Hofstadter makes it clear (more so in GEB) that mathematicians have come up with all sorts of abstract ideas, which often sit for years in dusty library books until some physicist comes along looking for a way to describe something rather peculiar about the data he or she has gathered from the lab. All of a sudden, an ignored system or obscure concept is found to be exactly what is needed to solve the problem of, say, electrical superconductence at room temperature. The question here is just how useful the strange loop concept would be in solving problems. It is not a logically formal idea, in the way that a math construct such as the proof of Fermat`s Last Theorem is. The strange loop paradigm is really more of a philosopher's construct, something a bit looser around the edges. Hofstadter tries to do with math what the late, great David Bohm attempted with quantum physics, i.e. to stretch it into a bigger, more holistic thought system that extends to the far corners of the human mind. What Hofstadter and Bohm found once they reached those far corners are quite different however; instead of localized loops, Bohm saw "implicate universal order". (Bohm's 1987 book Science, Order and Creativity is to "implicate order" what GEB is to strange loops).
This is important to keep in mind if you choose to climb the mountain of thought with Hofstadter. Right up through Godel's intellectual craftwork, Hofstadter stays on the pathways of formal logic. But that last jump is different, and Hofstadter does not warn you. It's easy (for those of lesser minds like myself) to be impressed by the strict methods used to get to level number five, and believe that such intellectual acuity carries through right to the top. So keep your eyes open (even though it's difficult at such intellectual heights); Hofstadter is very impressive as a wanna-be mathematician, but may not be as skilled when he shifts to philosophy, where the "strange loop" proposition actually resides.
In GEB, Hofstadter attempts to give real-world examples of strange-loop situations. Not surprisingly, the results are of mixed efficacy. He first refers to the Escher paintings so liberally sprinkled throughout his first book (a few of which show up in IAASL). But he gains little traction - those are just optical illusions. He then refers to what almost happened during the Watergate crisis during Richard Nixon's presidency; i.e. the Supreme Court interpreting the Constitution for the Executive Branch, and the Executive Branch contrarily interpreting the Constitution regarding the Judiciary. In fact, such political situations don't loop around very much; they are resolved rather quickly by riots and bullets (luckily Nixon backed off in 1974). Hofstadter's greatest success with strange loops in GEB came in a wonderful chapter about the workings of DNA in living beings.
Hofstadter also took on the problems of the mind in GEB. However, his efforts in that field were overshadowed by the expansive brilliance of the book. And thus, in IAASL Hofstadter conveys his disappointment about not being taken more seriously by the brain-mind-consciousness crowd. He calls GEB a "shout into a chasm" - although Hofstadter did in fact team up with one of the most formidable "mind philosophers", Daniel Dennett, soon after GEB (e.g., their 1981 book The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self & Soul). I read GEB only recently, but it was rather clear to me that Hofstadter's strange-loop concept of the mind was really nothing more than physicalist functionalism, a viewpoint that has been around since the mid-1960s. Not surprisingly, Dennett is quite sympathetic to this approach. For a good introduction to functionalism and its materialist interpretation, I'd recommend David Papineau's Introducing Consciousness.
In applying strange loops to the workings of the brain, Hofstadter establishes that the mind works "recursively". Sense data flows in from the body and drives the neurons; and yet this "bottom level" activity works its way through a hierarchy to the upper levels of the mind, where sensations are felt and decisions are made. Those decisions are then "passed back down" to the neurons and synapses, completing the strange loop from low-level to high-level and back again.
The brain is thus seen as having "mind states" that exist between sensory input and behavioral output. These states are loopy and recursive; their present status is as much a function of what they were like an instant ago, as of what new sense data was just inputted into them. Through devices such as memory, they tend to stabilize human behavior, allowing a longer-term perspective. E.g., if you are chasing a rabbit for food, and the rabbit temporarily disappears behind a tree, you don't stop running just because you no longer see it - you hold a belief that it will soon reappear. Brain states, as an intermediary between stimulus and response, obviously have a function, one that contributes to survival. And thus the case for functionalism. The physicalist part rejects any dualist notions about the ontological independence of "qualia" and inner experience, and equates our mind states and their functional interactions with consciousness itself. In GEB, Hofstadter used the strange loop abstraction to get to functionalism. In IIASL, he concentrates somewhat more on the physicalist agenda.
As such, Hofstadter wears the philosopher's hat more frequently in IIASL, while in GEB he mostly kept the mathematician's cap on. But the new hat doesn't fit as well. First off, he doesn't seem to be aware that he's pouring the old wine of functionalism into the new skin of strange loopiness (to reverse the Biblical metaphor). He seems a bit too sure of himself, too ready to summarily ridicule those who have argued against functionalism, most notably philosopher John Searle. (He may be doing the bidding of his partner Daniel Dennett, who has had rather vitriolic debates with Searle over the years; but unlike Hofstadter, Dennett has spelled out in great detail his position relative to Searle's. Hofstadter, in turn, is mostly yelling insults at the enemy of his friend). He spends many pages setting up and attacking a straw man, i.e. substance dualism, a position that has not been seriously espoused since Sir John Eccles passed away.
Professor Hofstadter doesn't show any appreciation for the subtleties of modern property dualism and its hope that future progress in understanding the nature of "deep reality" may eventually close the "explanatory gap" between physics and consciousness, e.g. the "information substrate to reality" and the hologram paradigms that physicists such as John Wheeler now discuss, and which David Bohm anticipated. Hofstadter admires, yet refuses to adopt the self-doubt that his fellow materialist Derek Parfait expresses after Parfait strictly identifies qualia and self-awareness with brain electrochemistry.
Hofstadter as philosopher shows no knowledge of the "mysterian" position of Colin McGinn and Thomas Nagel; this is especially regrettable given Hofstadter's words in GEB about the human brain ultimately being a Turing algorithmic system subject, one that at some point faces a determinability limit similar to what Godel found in number theory. Is it possible that our questions regarding our own consciousness are the ultimate indexicals? Hofstadter also seeks to kill some "sacred cows" of philosophy that are antithetical to the functionalist viewpoint, such as the "inverted spectrum" thought experiment. (Hofstadter swears in the book to be a vegetarian pacifist, but I suppose that philosophic sacred cows are still fair game.) Interestingly, though, he does not attempt to "kill" the thought-experiment denizen who should trouble him the most: i.e., Frank Jackson's "Mary", the formerly color-blind neuroscientist (also explained well by Papineau, cited above).
Even when explaining his own paradigms, Hofstadter can be a bit confusing. He spends a lot of time telling us that human consciousness is like a television with a camera pointed at it (he even provides pictures of what the frame-within-frame results looks like). The implied infinite series of frames-within-frames is claimed to be much like the strange loops that power our consciousness. But if so, then how far is this paradigm from the much reviled "Cartesian theater" idea of the homunculus (tiny little person) within the brain watching a screen tied to our sense organs, with a homunculus within him/her watching a screen, with a homunculus . . . . in the end, just another infinity of screens. Nonetheless, after a lot of words about TV cameras pointed at monitors, Hofstadter then tells us that it's not the infinity of screen frames that is important; infinity would have sunk Godel had he not gotten around the problem with a finite reference to infinity. The given example of a finite reference to the infinite is the girl on the Morton Salt container, holding an identical salt container under her arm so that her image, and an infinite regress, is blocked but still implied. OK, fine, but I didn't see how the TV/screen system was squared with the salt container. Are they both kinda-sorta like indexical consciousness, but in differing ways?
And then there's Hofstadter's illusion of the marble in the box of envelopes - proving that our everyday notions regarding self-consciousness are just illusions, anyway. But illusions to who? Don't ask, just be satisfied that the illusion is had by an illusion which is perceived by another illusion . . . . ad infinitum / ad absurdum.
IAASL is an intensely personal book - it could almost be sub-titled 'Please Understand Me', with apologies to David Keirsey and his work on Myers-Briggs and human temperaments (Hofstadter is clearly an INTP "architect" - an architect of numbers, ideas and systems). You learn a lot about the life and times of Douglas Hofstadter while climbing the intellectual heights with him. He makes a lot of entertaining little jokes and quips along the way, but becomes very serious as he discusses Carol, his beloved late wife. His word are truly moving until he tries to convince you that Carol lives on in his mind, almost as much as Douglas Hofstadter does. She is still conscious within him - certainly not to the same degree that he is, but according to his hyper-functional concept of "consciousness", just as qualitatively conscious. He goes through a rather convoluted thought experiment (regarding "Twinwirld") to justify the notion that one consciousness can be shared among more than one brain.
To truly grasp what is going on here, you need to be familiar with a certain tenant of physicalist functionalism: i.e., that consciousness is "platform independent". Platform independence has been used to support the notion that living protoplasm is not a sine qua non for consciousness, and that there is no reason why artificial intelligence researchers (such as Hofstadter) will not eventually reproduce consciousness "in silico". Hofstadter has put a rather innovative twist on the platform independence theory here: why not a person-to-person transfer of conscious awareness? One could think of all sorts of skeptical questions in response, but I would like to ask something more personal: is this really healthy? At some point, don't we need to learn to let go after we lose something or someone we love? (Or am I taking Hofstadter too seriously, since he feels that all human consciousness is just a "marble in an envelope box" anyway?)
Given all the psychological sharing in IAASL, one can see how much even a brilliant person's views are shaped by their own personal history and circumstances. It's not surprising that the wrapping of physicalist functionalism with a strange loop bow comes from a fellow of prodigious intellectual talents who, as a young boy, bought math treatises and who got goose bumps thinking about self-referential propositions, and whose teenage music thrills came from Albert Schweitzer doing Bach's greatest hits. (I wonder if Hofstadter considered calling this book "Godel, Schweitzer and Bach"?) Professor Hofstadter didn't know that Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes also recorded a song using the refrain "it ain't the meat, it's the motion", which Hofstadter uses to mockingly attack Searle's consideration of the idea that living protoplasm might be essential to consciousness. Hofstadter is being unfair here, as Searle is in fact quite cautious in discussing this. As to Southside and Mr. Popeye, well, they will probably get over the slight eventually . . . .
I'd give this book two stars from the perspective of the general reader who might want an overview on the current debate regarding how our brains, minds and consciousness relate. If you are already familiar with philosophy of mind, then perhaps Hofstadter earns a third star - he will at least give YOUR mind a work-out. And if you enjoyed GEB and more-or-less understood it, then IAASL could be a four or even five-star read for you. So I've averaged it out to three stars overall. As with Hofstadter's sense of humor, which is liberally sprinkled throughout the book (aside from the Carol chapters), some will enjoy and benefit from Hofstadter's approach, but many won't.
A final note about Douglas Hofstadter's admittedly touching tribute to his late wife. Despite his heartfelt attempts to weave his theories into something of beauty in her honor, recursive mathematical constructs still pale in comparison with Tennyson's "In Memoriam":
I trust I have not wasted breath:
I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;
Not only cunning casts in clay;
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matter Science unto men,
At least to me? I would not stay.
As Dr. Parfait realized, dualism will not be easily vanquished. Like Professor Hofstadter, I too am a vegetarian romanticist computer geek, albeit a considerably less brilliant one. But as to being a strange loop . . . no way.
The mind plays tricks on us.......2007-08-24
Interesting fellow this author.
He has done a good job illuminating the inner clouds of thought rolling around in the brain.
Takes you on an interesting trip. Still a little tough to grasp.
Book Description
A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright’s remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States.
The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI’s counterterrorism chief, John O’Neill; and the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal.
As these lives unfold, we see revealed: the crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden . . . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole . . . O’Neill’s heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers . . . Prince Turki’s transformation from bin Laden’s ally to his enemy . . . the failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O’Neill’s high-wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life—he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others’ existence—and the nitty-gritty of turf battles among U.S. intelligence agencies.
Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.
Customer Reviews:
Compelling and Heart-stopping Account of the Rise of Al Qaeda.......2007-10-16
Lawrence Wright has written what will be arguable the best book on the subject of the Al Qaeda and their war against the West. The Looming Tower is a monumental work on a grand scale not unlike many of the epic works about World War II.
This contribution to a growing body of literature on the subject of 9/11 and the rise of Islamic extremist/terrorism is a thorough, comprehensive narrative account of one of the critical junctures of history. Wright weaves a colorful tapestry of characters, from the little known Sayyid Qutib, founder of the modern Islamic movement, circa 1940's, to Public Enemy Number One- Osama bin Laden.
Wright gives insight and background into these characters and humanizes them. We see their faults, their sophistry,their cynicysm and opportunism, but also their cunning and ruthlessness. On the American side there is the cynical Michael Scheurer (CIA), the insufferable John O'Neill--perfect charicature of an FBI/G-man, and the wily Richard Clark; bureaucractic infighters all; desparate to catch this elusive figure, this cave dweller intent on making mischief, taking innocent life.
The Looming Tower is an exhilerating, heart-stopping account of the events that led up to 9/11. After reading this book, you will have a better appreciation of what this country is facing in the War on Terror.
History that reads like a novel!.......2007-10-14
It's an enjoyable and informative read. Historians in the future will certainly cite Wright's book. Their is no need for me to say anymore as the Pulitzer says it all!
must read for every educated american.......2007-10-14
If you are an American wondering what happened to our country and why, you must read this book. It provides an unbiased perspective on what happened and why on 9/11 and who the people behind it were. I whole heartedly recommend this book
Muslims and al-Qaeda 101.......2007-10-10
The Looming Tower is a must read for anyone wanting to know why world events have brought us to today. Lawrence Wright also makes it clear how difficult it will be to negotiate any type of peace with certain Muslim sects. Very factual. Well-researched and documented.
Excellent.......2007-10-10
This book, The Looming Towers, is an excellent portrayal of the genesis of the Muslim feelings of denigration and disgrace at the hands of the leaders of Western world. This book is sobering and frightening. It is well written and extremely interesting with excellent references.
Average customer rating:
- Very Well Written; Awkward Size
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- Practical Research Book Review
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Practical Research: Planning and Design (8th Edition)
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International Relations Theory: Realism, Pluralism, Globalism, and Beyond (3rd Edition)
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Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences (6th Edition)
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Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition
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Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (2nd Edition)
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Fixing Intelligence: For a More Secure America, Second Edition (Yale Nota Bene)
ASIN: 0131108956 |
Book Description
Written in uncommonly engaging, lucid, and elegant prose, this book is an âunderstand-it-yourself, do-it-yourselfâ manual designed to help readers understand the fundamental structure of quality research and the methodical process that leads to genuinely significant results.
It guides the reader, step-by-step, from the selection of a problem to study, through the process of conducting authentic research, to the preparation of a completed report, with practical suggestions based on a solid theoretical framework and sound pedagogy. This book will show readers two things: 1) that quality research demands planning and design; and, 2) how their own research projects can be executed effectively and professionally.
For researchers and research analysts in any discipline.
Customer Reviews:
Very Well Written; Awkward Size.......2007-06-11
Excellent choice for a short (6-week) graduate research and report writing course. Extremely well written: doesn't put me to sleep immediately and succinctly conveys concepts. Extensive bibliography at the end of each chapter.
Only two observed drawbacks: price and physical size. While I know that (almost) all students think that their textbooks are overpriced, I don't quite understand how a new 8.5 x 11 inch paperback text, running 324 pages, with few line-art illustrations and no photographs or images, and 2 color text should be priced in the $80 range?
The size, 8.5 x 11 inches, as a paperback makes the book awkward for reading in an easy chair or when in bed.
Add to your Reference.......2007-03-08
This book was a require text in one of my research classes during my graduate studies. Its very easy to read, follow and understand. If you are student beginning your graduate studies, I would highly recommend you add this book to your reference.
Helpful guide.......2006-07-27
Although I've written many research papers, I found this book to be a great guide to help me 'fill in' the missing pieces in my work. It provides useful guidelines in all phases of research writing, from picking the right topic to statistical techniques.
Practical Research Book Review.......2006-02-02
Great book, it is very easy to follow and understand. It provides great samples and guides on how to do a research paper. I certainly would recommend it to anyone that needs help or guidance on research project writing.
Required Reading.......2005-09-10
Practical Research actually is required reading for my Ph.D. Since it is a text book is does cost a lot. It was the same price at Amazon as it would have been to order it through my university. However, the shipping was free with Amazon, so I came out ahead. The book is well written, in plain English. The advice is practical. Some of the advice about using technology is a bit behind the times, but that is to be expected. The font size is small, but this would not be a problem for most people under 40.
Book Description
Throughout history, arguments for and against the existence of God have been largely confined to philosophy and theology. In the meantime, science has sat on the sidelines and quietly watched this game of words march up and down the field. Despite the fact that science has revolutionized every aspect of human life and greatly clarified our understanding of the world, somehow the notion has arisen that it has nothing to say about the possibility of a supreme being, which much of humanity worships as the source of all reality. Physicist Victor J. Stenger contends that, if God exists, some evidence for this existence should be detectable by scientific means, especially considering the central role that God is alleged to play in the operation of the universe and the lives of humans. Treating the traditional God concept, as conventionally presented in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, like any other scientific hypothesis, Stenger examines all of the claims made for God's existence. He considers the latest Intelligent Design arguments as evidence of God's influence in biology. He looks at human behavior for evidence of immaterial souls and the possible effects of prayer. He discusses the findings of physics and astronomy in weighing the suggestions that the universe is the work of a creator and that humans are God's special creation. After evaluating all the scientific evidence, Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent analysis!.......2007-10-17
Dr. Victor Stenger has made a very solid analysis of religion based on the scientific method. Throughout the book, Dr. Stenger painstakingly goes item by item debunking every conceivable religious argument. The author, as a scientist also leaves the door open to probability. Even when the possibility of a contrarian probability is implausible!
The author has a poignant flair for the classical apologist and pseudo-scientific religious apologists. The book is a required to reading for the serious student of the religious/faith/logic and reason.
Without any reserve, I do recommend the book!
Another Good Book On The Subject .......2007-10-13
I read this book by Stenger in just over an hour. Stenger is correct in his title of the book. The hypothesis of a god does not hold up to any scrutiny. It falls apart and its adherents always fall back on the sacred fictional book known as the bible. Very good book from a well known scientist. Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris are trying to open the eyes of the western world and I applaud them for it. My profession is science and I do hold graduate degrees as does Dawkins and Stenger. This subject and its exposure has long been overdue.
Basically there is no evidence for a supreme being. You may want to consider this.
Some questions you may want to ask yourself as a Christian:
1. Where is heaven? Christians believe in it so it begs the question of "Where is it located specifically or even generally?" In all my studies of astronomy, I can't seem to remember any place labeled heaven. Is it near Saturn or Jupiter?
2. Where is hell? In my studies in geology, I don't remember a place called "Hell" being labeled somewhere on this earth.
3. Where is God? Does he exist somewhere in our solar system or someplace else in the universe? If he exists, he sure makes himself, herself, itself conveniently mysterious and absent.
4. The Islamic god must be more powerful than the Christian god, because the Christian god sure didn't do anything to stop 9/11 from happening. The Christian god didn't lift a finger when more than 6 million people were murdered by the Nazis in concentration camps known as the "Holocaust". Not to mention all the other disasters, diseases and such that have occurred throughout history.
This god seems to impotent and very much absent.
This whole concept of god etc.. is all in your minds, put there by parents, pastors etc... You are basically playing psychological mind games with yourself.
As a PhD myself in the biological sciences, I have given up trying to explain things to Christian fundamentalists and Christians in general regarding their irresponsible disinformation that they put out about science and theories. I have (my own personal experiences) found that many "Christians" will bend, distort and even outright lie about scientific findings in order to twist it so they can either discredit a finding or distort things to the point that they are trying to put a square peg into a round hole. The Christian believe that a "god" created everything and that the bible as factual is an agenda of most Christians. Most Christians I have spoken to do not have the correct definition of "theory" Almost like robots, they recite the rhetoric "Evolution is just a theory" Their meaning that Evolution is just a hunch or a guess, when in fact this is not so.
You throw out the theory of evolution and that throws out the foundations of biology and microbiology. So we throw Darwin's theory, do we start teaching biology from the perspective of the bible and the Christian way of thinking. As scientists, we would scrap it in a heartbeat and replace it with a new theory if it did not work anymore; however, we do not scrap it because the evidence supports Darwin's theory. I have talked to several Christians who say, "The theory of Evolution has been discredited and proven false". Well that's news to me because most of the major universities (i.e.: University of California etc.) teach evolutionary biology. Another disturbing thought process by some Christians is that they also believe that the "Big Bang Theory" has been discredited. News to me again. So you can understand why I do not have time for people who distort the truth.
I find my encounters with Christians as being either having hostility toward those who do not believe in their god or they are very much lacking in basic understanding of biology and science in general, therefore, they express hostility toward science and are very convinced that they are right. If they want to think they are right, that is okay with me, but it is not the atheists and scientists who are knocking on people's doors, congregating in buildings to spread the word. It is the religious who want everyone else to think like them. I do not wish to bend and twist my mind around a bunch of untruths and I am sure many millions of others (Atheists) agree. The thing I find so insidious about the church is the "getting to the children when they are young" Putting this belief into a child's mind when their brains have not fully developed yet. I think this is something that is very bad in our society. So excuse me if I do not have time to convince every die in wool Christian that their thinking is faulty. Unfortunately at this time in history, it is the minority (The Atheists) who has it right. However, hopefully over the next 100 years that will change and the majority will have it right and only a minority will still believe in religion and all it's dogma that surrounds it. People will look back at the late 20th century and early 21st century and not understand why so many held on to a medieval way of thinking. We look back on the people who thought the earth was flat (a majority 300-400 years ago) and wonder how anyone could have such faulty thinking. Hopefully the majority of our citizens will be saying the same thing about us 100 years from now.
I am amazed how aggressive some(not all) Christians get if you challenge their belief in this "God". Why does this all powerful "God" need you to come to his/her/it's or whatever defense.
Postscript: A friend of mine asked me in a joking manner. So if you get married and divorced and then remarry. Do you meet both of your ex-wives in heaven and how about if you end up getting remarried to your first wife after something happens to your second wife (Passes away, divorce). So who are you meeting up there in heaven he asked me. Good question I answered. I guess the Christians will know.
How do you prove the unprovable?.......2007-10-10
Stenger has bitten off a large argument here, and done a fairly admirable job at tackling certain aspects of it, but his larger premise is faulty based on his belief that humans, at present, have the ability to disprove the existence of a supreme being. While I agree with some of his goals, he takes it one step too far. Rational scientific evidence suggests that a god does not exist, and never has. This, however, is far from conclusive. Strong atheism requires almost as much faith as fundamentalism.
Perhaps the day will come when human knowledge will be such that we can provide a scientific proof against the existence of a god, but that day has not yet arrived. Stenger can disprove the "proofs" of the faithful quite convincingly, but that is all. The larger question remains unanswered, and will for some time; perhaps for all time.
Conversely, Stenger IS convincing in his assertions against religious visitations, miracles, and the answering of prayers. These are mythical stories perpetuated by those who want to believe. In all cases of so-called miracles there is a logical scientific alternate explanation. Remember Occam's Razor: the simplest solution should be the right one. Are we to believe a scientific explanation, or call it divine? Science is simpler and makes much more sense. Same goes for prayers allegedly being answered.
As for the historical evidence of the resurrection, I'm afraid the tales in ancient books of mythology do little to sway me. Many have faith that it, along with other biblical claims, did indeed happen. Faith does not equal proof.
Perhaps a god does exist, and perhaps he/she/it did create the universe. The limits of human knowledge at present are such that this can neither be proven nor disproved. However, the burden of proof is on the faithful. If I claim that the Loch Ness Monster exists, I need to provide some proof. It is not the job of unbelievers to disprove my assertion. While I find Stenger's arguments interesting, we as a species do not yet have the ability to irrefutably claim that god does not, or never has existed. Just as the faithful cannot prove that a god does exist. Perhaps we should stop trying and just agree to disagree.
Whether a god exists or not, there is substantial evidence that such a god does not intervene in worldly affairs. The stories of divine intervention on Earth have a more rational, scientific explanation. For example, Dr. Michael Persinger offers a reasonable explanation for why people can feel as though they have communed with a divine spirit. Did the Virgin Mary really appear in a grilled cheese sandwich, or is there a more rational explanation? Did Moses really see a god in a burning bush, or did he perhaps make it up? He may even have been schizophrenic. Again, Occam's Razor.
My basic point is that we can't prove that a supreme being does not exist. The evidence against it leads me to believe that a god does not exist, but this is far from conclusive. However, there is ample convincing evidence against such a god being involved in the daily happenings of its creation.
Let's say, for sake of argument, that there was a god that created the universe. What has he been up to since then? Scientific evidence indicates that he/she/it has left the universe to its own devices. Is he collecting unemployment insurance? Did he tire himself out and decide to sleep away the eons? Is he like an innocent bystander who just doesn't want to get involved? Did he figure he was finished his work and willed himself out of existence? Did he die? We can't know.
IF a god created the universe, then I guess he deserves our thanks. So, just in case, "Thanks, dude." That is all you will get from me. Daily or weekly groveling and prayer accomplishes nothing tangible, from my perspective. For the faithful, it can act as a shield against the some of the universe's harsh realities. It can also compel less thoughtful individuals to live more ethically.
As for me, I believe and accept that this is the only life I have, so I should live it fully. I can live a moral life without divine guidance. Unlike militant atheists, I can also respect the beliefs of those who disagree with me. If faith provides you with comfort and/or guidance, who am I to try and convince you otherwise? Unless you are a Scientologist, in which case I might want to call you a wack-job.
I am uncertain that strong atheism does anything to further the cause of rational scientific thought. It merely polarizes viewpoints, resulting in, as an example, a mixture of five-star and one-star reviews.
Many strong atheists see the faithful as deluded and irrational, while fundamentalists see atheists in a similar light. One interesting difference between the two groups is who holds the political power in the United States. The first President Bush once made a claim that atheists should not be considered citizens and not have the right to vote; how very enlightened from a man who once had control of a nuclear arsenal.
The atheist/agnostic movement has much to overcome to be accepted by society at large. I am not convinced that this book will help the cause.
Pseudoscience and bad history.......2007-10-07
Firstly, I would just like to point out that Professor Stenger has no historical credentials whatsoever. He is a physicist and an astronomer, not a historian! It is quite apparent that the little historical research he did, if any, is extremely skewed and faulty.
Secondly, I would like to mention how science cannot disprove any event in history, such as the resurrection of Christ. It is pseudoscientific to the extreme if any scientist attempts to do so! What happened in history happened, regardless of where science takes us.
I will now reveal the most important historical fallacies Stenger made in this book. The first historical error in this book is the claim that no extra-biblical records corroborating the darkness and earthquake during the crucifixion of Jesus exist. That is simply incorrect! There were two ancient Greek historians, who were extremely critical to the early church, who acknowledge this event in their writings. Thallus writes that this darkness was the result of an eclipse, even though he tries to explain the reason he is indeed aware of this event in history. Another Greek historian, Phlegon, also describes the darkness and the earthquake as well. He includes in his writing that the earthquake destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and killed thousands of cattle. He also includes the fact that the entire Mediterranean area was affected by the darkness.
Another major fallacy in Professor Stenger's book is his reliance on the King James Version of the Bible. I would just like to point to the fact that the KJV Bible has been shown to contain several fatal misinterpretations of the original manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments. This is due to the fact that when the KJV was written, the writers had a scarce amount of the original manuscripts. Today, we have a vast amount of the original manuscripts, thanks to archaeology. The KJV Bible should no longer be used as a source of information!
Dr. Stenger's third error, more of a speculation, in his book is the claim that some of the prophecies from the Old Testament were not fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Now, the ancient Jews thought that the fulfillment of prophecies in the time of the messiah would depend upon Israel's moral state. When Jesus of Nazareth came, he fulfilled about half of the prophecies from the Hebrew Bible. The rest of the New Testament shows that the second half of the prophecies will be fulfilled at the end of time, when Christ comes again. It is a matter of time which describes how the prophecies were, and will be, fulfilled, not Israel's moral state or a "failure" of certain prophecies!
List of Scientific proof of NO God usefull.......2007-10-06
I find the lists of Scientific proof that there is NO God are very usefull when countering the pig-ignorant primitive superstition of christians.
Book Description
Praise for THE SCIENCE OF SUCCESS
"Evaluating the success of an individual or company is a lot like judging a trapper by his pelts. Charles Koch has a lot of pelts. He has built Koch Industries into the world's largest privately held company, and this book is an insider's guide to how he did it. Koch has studied how markets work for decades, and his commitment to pass that knowledge on will inspire entrepreneurs for generations to come."
—T. Boone Pickens
"A must-read for entrepreneurs and corporate executives that is also applicable to the wider world. MBM is an invaluable tool for engendering excellence for all groups, from families to nonprofit entities. Government leaders could avoid policy failures by heeding the science of human behavior."
—Richard L. Sharp, Chairman, CarMax
"My father, Sam Walton, stressed the importance of fundamental principles—such as humility, integrity, respect, and creating value—that are the foundation for success. No one makes a better case for these principles than Charles Koch."
—Rob Walton, Chairman, Wal-Mart
"What accounts for Koch Industries' spectacular success? Charles Koch calls it Market-Based Management: a vision that nurtures personal qualities of humility and integrity that build trust and the confidence to enhance future success through learning from failure, and a culture of thinking in terms of opportunity cost and comparative advantage for all employees."
—Vernon Smith, 2002 Nobel laureate in economics
"In a very thoughtful, creative, and understandable way, Charles Koch explains how he has used the science of human behavior to create a culture that has produced one of the world's largest and most successful private companies. A must-read for anyone interested in creating value."
—William B. Harrison Jr., Former Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
"The same exacting thought, rooted in the realities of human nature, that the framers of the U.S. Constitution put into building a nation of entrepreneurs, Charles Koch has framed to build an enduring company of entrepreneurs—a company larger than Microsoft, Dell, HP, and other giants. Every entrepreneur should study this book."
—Verne Harnish, founder, Young Entrepreneurs' Organization, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, CEO, Gazelles Inc.
Customer Reviews:
The Science of Success.......2007-09-30
I really enjoyed this book as you get to get into the mind of Charles Koch. I would have given it a 5 star, except I felt he could have added more substance to the book.
Amy Buick.......2007-09-16
The Science of Success packages a lifelong study of the conditions that support or conversely, stymie greater prosperity for all, adding a new dimension to the definition of corporate responsibility. I will continue to recommend this book to young, promising entrepreneurs who not only seek success but more importantly desire to add value to society.
Management Philosophies and Methods of a Successful Long-Term Leader.......2007-09-04
The privately held Koch companies have compounded their book value by about 20 percent a year since 1967, an enviable record that's made even more impressive by realizing the diversified nature of the enterprises the companies include. At the time of the writing, the combined firms account for $90 billion in annual revenues and employ 80,000 people in 60 countries. That's big-league success. What's more remarkable is that the author, Charles G. Koch, has headed these operations for 40 years while this success was accomplished. When Mr. Koch speaks, wise people should listen.
In The Science of Success, Mr. Koch describes the management philosophy and methods he has employed to direct his organizations. A well-read and thoughtful engineer, Mr. Koch's methods are not unique to him, nor are they originated by him. Rather the philosophies and methods are ones that he has combined in a novel way that few companies pursue.
Mr. Koch is a bigger thinker than that, seeing his methods (Market-Based Management) as a stepping stone between how individual performance can be improved and how liberty can free societies to accomplish more.
In focusing on Market-Based Management, Mr. Koch describes five key elements that need to be combined with one another for full effectiveness:
1. Vision (using experimentation to improve value delivered for customers based on a sense of what the best opportunities are and what the organization can most effectively accomplish)
2. Virtue and Talents (attract and retain people who want to follow the right principles with appropriate talents for the tasks)
3. Knowledge Processes (systematically add to, disseminate, and apply knowledge related to profitability)
4. Decision Rights (encourage people to become better decision makers after they have developed their skills and to be accountable for the decisions they make)
5. Incentives (reward employees as much as possible by the long-term value they have helped deliver for the organization)
Several things are noteworthy about the book that will interest you. Today, many organizations have "vision statements" which encourage everyone to do good while doing well. Mr. Koch finds that statements inadequate: He encourages instead that employees find out what improvements will expand sales and profits the most and focus on those . . . that's what he means by vision. Back when strategic planning was being formulated, that was the original meaning of vision . . . a meaning that's mostly been lost since then. I endorse Mr. Koch's view as an important one.
Another of Mr. Koch's valuable perspectives is to measure by opportunity cost: When you picked up a dime while a $5 bill rolled by, you didn't gain a dime . . . you lost $4.90. In today's quarter-by-quarter drive for profits among public companies, opportunity cost is all but ignored. That's a major mistake.
Mr. Koch is also a believer in being sure that the message is heard and understood. He points out how often when introducing new practices that no improvements followed because people didn't understand the purposes of the initiatives.
I found his concern about how success hobbles organizations matches my own research on the stalls (bad mental models and habits) that plague successful organizations . . . and turn them into unsuccessful organizations.
If you decide to read only one book about how to be an effective business leader this year, I encourage you to make it this one.
I also suggest you go further and visit Mr. Koch's company. You won't really understand what he's talking about until you see people applying this management philosophy.
Bravo, Mr. Koch!
A Distinct Worldview .......2007-08-06
Before reading The Science of Success, I had heard of Koch Industries and Charles Koch in passing, but had never really thought about the company, its people or, most importantly, their philosophy. After reading it, however, I've come to understand, just a bit, why Koch and his company are so successful in every way.
His Market-Based Management is much more than a recipe for success. It's a distinct, ethical and principled worldview in a world and age often lacking in well-thought out and much-less adhered to worldviews. I am not a businessman and work for myself. Nevertheless I found The Science of Success far more than just a book which explains why the company is so successful. The worldview expounded upon by Koch involves an understanding of history, human nature, the economy, culture and politics, among others. He draws on these as he explains, in greater detail, his Market-Based Management and how it applies to Koch Industries. But I believe it can be applied not only to business, but individuals as well and how we live our lives. The subjects of vision, virtue and talents, knowledge processes, decision rights and incentives (the five dimensions which make up MBM), can all be applied to us as we go about our busy lives, in our interactions with family, friends, co-workers, bosses, and others. It is this philosophy which makes The Science of Success an important read to those wanting to make a positive impact on the world around them.
Integrating Theory and Practice.......2007-08-06
By putting complex philosophical ideas into a practical context, Charles Koch's primer for prosperity demonstrates that voluntary exchange and individual responsibility are at the heart of success. Koch recognizes that his investment is in people--and that encouraging each employee find his inner entrepreneur creates value for the organization. Businessmen and bureaucrats alike will benefit from Koch's reasoned and readable discussion of how markets foster transformation, innovation, and ultimately, a freer society.
Amazon.com
Bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb continues his exploration of randomness in his fascinating new book, The Black Swan, in which he examines the influence of highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact. Engaging and enlightening, The Black Swan is a book that may change the way you think about the world, a book that Chris Anderson calls, "a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature." See Anderson's entire guest review below.
Guest Reviewer: Chris Anderson
Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.
Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it.
Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it's something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.
The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.
Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan."
In full disclosure, I'm a long admirer of Taleb's work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature. --Chris Anderson
Book Description
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan.
Customer Reviews:
interesting.......2007-10-17
I like the fact that he presents things differently, even though he seems a little bit to "conscious" and proud of this... :)
Good book generally.
The Black Swan and What's Wrong with Nassim Taleb's Viewpoint.......2007-10-17
I'm 94 percent through reading Nassim Taleb's remarkable book about random events having higher than expected occurrence throughout history. I'm an unusual reader however in that many of the people he's met, read about and formed friendships with, I've also had the opportunity to meet, read about or write to. Being the "loner" that I am however, unlike Mr. Taleb, I didn't form friendships with these guys. Didier Sornette and Benoit Mandlebrot are two of his hero's if I can use poetic license, whose works I've followed throughout the years and as an applied scientist working first in the aerospace and auto industry, and now in finance, have had a chance to apply their work and ideas to real world problems. However, I've also been a student of Newton, Kelvin and Einstein all of whom would and did make room for the "Gaussian" curve that Mr. Taleb has disgust for. I would also fall into one of Mr. Taleb's cohorts with whom he has high disdain, since I also was educated in physics and mathematics in the usual academic curriculum. This being the case, I feel I have some credibility to offer a secondary review of his work having used the tools of "Extremistan" as he calls it.
To begin, there are many statements in his book that I agree with. The Nobel self-congratulatory awards, the assertion of many academics to request a mathematical proof of his "theory", the view that mathematics exists only in the mind for nature offers neither a true square, diamond, or triangle, the lack of an explanation for the observation of highly probable events and his continued persistence that an explanation isn't necessary are just an example of his high intellect that in the "real world" we all come to appreciate and assume some brotherhood with this smart-alec of a man. However, there is clearly a mischievousness in his demeanor that snickers at anybody who disagrees with him that is uncalled for. This appears as high arrogance that rightly his mother ascertained from his character when she said to him, "if you can get people to pay you what you think you're worth, instead of what you're really worth, then you've got something".
Let me make a thoughtful empirical criticism which underpins Mr. Taleb's ranting and raving in the book. Mr. Taleb says on page 281 of the Black Swan, "you need one simple deviation to reject the Gaussian, but millions of observations will not fully confirm the validity of its application. Why? Because the Gaussian bell curve disallows large deviations, but tools of Extremistan, the alternative, do not disallow long quiet stretches". His overall argument fails on this one simple account: there are more than one cause in effect for almost all known observations of any phenomena in the universe. What's typically done in physics is to attempt to understand the strongest influencers of an outcome, not ALL of the influencers of an outcome. He fails to understand that it's not one distribution or one cause in effect, but always multiple causes occuring. Extreme events have a different mechanism that triggers cascades while every-day events, those occurring that aren't extreme have a separate cause. One only enters into the conundrum of explanation when you try and link all observations, both from his world of Extremistan and Mediocracistan together into one cause. This is never the case in any phenomena I've ever dealt with or heard about, from weather forecasting, fluid dynamics, heat transfer, chemical kinetics, or the financial markets. There are competing effects going on, not just one. Some trigger daily and can be observed regularly, some trigger every 100 years or more.
Take for example his principal teacher of Black Swans, the financial markets. Okay, so thirsty bubbles, credit crunches, LTCM, October 1987, August 2007 occurred and weren't explained by the "Gaussian" model. Well, for ease of explanation, say there were two underlying distributions with two completely different mechanisms involved. One cause of market movements say, results in a distribution of returns modeled like a Gaussian and the other cause, is best explained by some distribution that has extreme tails, infinite variance and allows for discontinuous jumps. I have yet to meet a physicist or mathematician who wouldn't agree with this and it satisfies Mr. Taleb's points exactly. What he fails to comprehend I believe, is that multiple causes are in effect simultaneously in any problem I've ever encountered, each resulting in its own distribution of outcomes. What's not separable and creating havoc in explanation, are the multiple causes that create the underlying distributions and/or which cause has what distribution?
As a practicing computational and modeling scientist since 1987, I see Mr. Taleb's book as delightfully playful, but certainly amateurish. His understanding of science is quite ignorant really. I was amazed at the name dropping, though he continually disavows making a habit of it. And why Mr. Taleb can't see to find anybody but Herr Dr. Professor Mandlebrot to agree with him is beyond me? Perhaps the physicists he did find who agreed with him, weren't quite as famous as they needed to be, to be quoted in his book. Lastly, being a student of history that Mr. Taleb purports to be, I was amazed he didn't dig up these two quotations, one from the supreme empiricist Isacc Newton and the second from the best theorist I know, Albert Einstein:
Thus far I have explained the phenomena of the heavens and of our sea by the force of gravity, but I have not yet assigned a cause to gravity. I have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for these properties of gravity. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
I. Newton
Newton forgive me; you found the only way which in your age was just about possible for a person with the highest powers of thought and creativity. The concepts which you created are guiding our thinking in physics even today, although we now know that they will have to be replaced by others farther removed from the sphere of immediate experience, for we know that science cannot grow out of empiricism alone.
A. Einstein
I would say that one can't predict extreme events so one doesn't model them generally. It's not a failure of "modelers" as Mr. Taleb suggests, but of tackling simpler problems first. We didn't throw Newton out when his laws failed to account for relativistic velocity; we shouldn't throw Markowitz, Merton, Sharpe, Black and Scholes out either for their early contributions. Sure, they'll be overtaken by Rachev and the Levy-Stable distribution function but in 1968, who could compute a numerical basis function on a piece of paper since computers were hardly around! The Gaussian was used simply because you could compute it; it had a closed form analytical equation.
Bell curve Intellectual fraud.......2007-10-16
Didier says, "A crash occurs when order wins. In stable markets buyers and sellers balance out each other, normal times are when disorder wins. When the imitation strength K gets close to a special critical value Kc, a very large group of investors share the same opinion, a may act in a coordinated way, an abrupt drop in price, infinite slope K/Kc, a crash occurs. "New demographic, technological, or economic developments prompt spontaneous innovation in financial markets and the first wave of investors and innovators become wealthy. Then imitators arrive and overdo the new techniques. In the ensuing crises, latecomers lose big before regulators and academics put out fires."
Taleb says that the human suffers from three ailments: 1. the illusion of understanding, orhow everyone thinks he know what is going on in a world that is more complicated or random than they realize. 2. the retrospective distortion, or how we can assess matters only after the fact, as if they were in a rearview mirror (history seems clearer and more organized in history books than in empirical reality). 3. the overvaluation of factual information and the handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories-when they platonify" Taleb hedges with puts in calls that are designed to make money when a black swan occurs and that is all that matters.
Properities of Extremistan: Scalable; Wild randomness; the member is either a giant or a dwarf - strong inequalities in the extreme; winner take almost all effects; vulnerable to the Black Swan; total will be determined by a small number of events; hard to predict from past information; history makes jumps; and the distribution is either Mandelbrotian gray Swans or totally intractable black Swans.
"Gaussian-bell curve variations face a headwind that makes probabilities drop at a faster and faster rate as you move away from the mean, while scalables or mandelbrotian variations, do not have such a restriction." Didier demonstrated using a log periodicity equation that sudden changes could occur and that stock market crashes followed a curve. I observed that Didier used fractuals and mandelbrots, in his book.
Gaussian bell curve did not provide an accurate prediction of reality for the German dutschmark when in the 1920, four trillion were exchanged for one dollar. "An outcome that tells you that the bell curve is meaningless as a description of the randomness in currency fluctuations. All you need to reject the bell curve is for such a movement to occur once - just consider the consequences." The bell curve is used as a risk-measurement tool by regulators and central bankers. The point of Gaussian bell curve is that most observations hover around the mediocre, the average. A gaussian bell curve of men reaching 9 feet 1 inch is one in one with 100 zeros behind it. So if you see a nine foot Chinese, according to the bell curve that is impossible and yet the possibility does exist. Suppose an increasing number of 8 foot Chinese emerge and suddenly a nine foot Chinese exist then pay attention to the black swan. The black swan is impossible according to the bell curve but its random existence should cause one to pay attention.
Outsourcing has not caused America to bankrupt. Wealth is scalable because workers have shifted into a post-industrial society were ideas are valuable. For example, software is scalable, costing almost nothing to produce but capable of generating massive amounts of wealth. "The inequality among the superrich is the same as the inequality among the simply rich-it does not slow down" "For any large total, the breakdown will be more and more asymmetric". Work is unfair. One programmer may be capable of producing more power designs and code than twenty of his peers. "The 80/20 rule is metaphorical; it is not a rule, even less a rigid law." In some situations you may have a concentration of the 80/20 type and you can identify beforehand where the 20 percent are. Why is the bell curve so popular? The Bell Curve allows for certainties to exist and confidence to increase; the bell curve disregards the possibility of sharp jumps or discontinuities and are inapplicable to extremistan; large unpredictable deviations are rare, but can not be dismissed; the Gaussian way is to focus on the ordinary; if there is gravity pulling numbers down that we have the gaussian approach, but if we have a singularity emerges than a rarity of enormous magnitude has occurred, a black swan, an anti-gravity field canceling out gravity, a inward spiral of energy, to a single point; the mediocristan type of randomness does not allow for some extremes; the consequence of variation (errors) around the average of gaussian are not truly worrisome. Fuzzy Logic is better than probability. Fuzzy logical explains the chance that a possibility will occur. Probability predicts whether something will exist and may exclude things that rarely exist. It gets worse, standard deviations outside the gaussian do not matter and gaussian are the only class of distributions that standard deviation describe.
What causes catastrophes? "Statistics is not a science, it is a fraud." Divergence form the mean was considered an error. Marx picked up on this and promoted the idea of average man. "The notion of the average man is steeped in the culture attending the birth o the European middle class, the nascent post-Napoleonic shopkeeper's culture, chary of excessive wealth and intellectual brilliance." The outcome is a society without any deviate outcomes. Nervousness caused from disbelief causes catastrophes.
The World of Unknown Unknowns.......2007-10-15
NNT's use of a "narrative" strategy based on a questionable premise (did the sighting of the first black swan in Australia really impact the world?) to attract readers has paid dividends and his book has attained Grey Swan status among Amazon's Business & Investing bestsellers. The author, as he admits, has clearly enjoyed the writing experience which, besides dealing with the Impact of the Highly Improbable, has enabled him to sideswipe individuals and groups he sees mired in a world of Gaussian illusion.
On reading the book for the second time I kept asking myself "is this new to me?" and, if it is, "what is its relevance to me?". On reviewing one's own life to date, as the author recommends, it is clear that much of it has indeed been determined by high-impact unforeseeable events. This does not come as a great surprise - but then Taleb says that it never does, in retrospect! This contrasts with the chilling realization that there are almost certainly more such occurrences ahead. It is interesting to read explanations for why humans "don't know they don't know" they live in an extreme world but many, without realizing it, will already be familiar with psychological phenomena such as "platonism", "tunnelling", "confirmation bias" and the "narrative fallacy".
Interestingly, Taleb seems to miss what could well be the main reason why individuals "don't know they don't know": they just don't want to know they don't know they don't know! It seems to be a natural human reaction to put one's head in the sand when faced with the possibility of unforeseeable, high impact, possibly negative, events - particularly when they believe they can do nothing about them.
What, perhaps, is newer and more relevant to many is the fact that the professionals apparently rely on defective tools for analysing their particular piece of reality. Having some knowledge of the financial world and its questionable mathematical models, I can readily believe that many professionals - and even Nobel Prize winners - are led astray by the humble Bell Curve, as Taleb suggests. In fact the reasonably experienced small investor already has little faith in market "experts". On the other hand this same investor does not automatically transfer his scepticism to experts in other important fields, such as the social sciences, economics, environmental studies and military planning, where predictive errors can be far deadlier.
Besides peppering his text with the names and contributions of important thinkers - apparently a deliberate technique to achieve greater credibility - Taleb gives us some fascinating theory in the shape of non-linear relationships, the limitations of the Gaussian distribution, and the ability of so-called "power laws" to turn some Black Swans into Grey Swans. However this review stops a long way from demonstrating that life is largely determined by full-blooded (i.e. totally unpredictable) Black Swans.
Although I don't think that Taleb will make us see our lives in a totally new light it is important that he reminds us - in case 24-hour world news ever allows us to forget - that day-to-day affairs can be subject to unforeseen, and potentially devastating, modification. He also offers us the flip side: some ideas on how we can take advantage of positive Black Swans. It may be due to a lack of imagination but, not being a venture capitalist or a "quant", I couldn't immediately see measures of easy application in this area. Defence against Black Swans seems easier, namely diversification across very disparate fields. Taleb himself suggests a portfolio composed of up to 90% of extremely safe financial instruments (like Treasury bills) and as little as 10% in leveraged speculative bets like options (ideally involving "venture-capital style portfolios"). His general advise is more homely: learn to recognise undertakings exposed to positive and negative Black Swans, don't be narrow minded, seize opportunities, be wary of government plans, etc.
Many interested in the impact of randomness will find the book a good, if fairly demanding, read. In the end, however, it is not entirely satisfactory. This has something to do with the fact that rather than be carried long by a limpid river of reasoning we are subjected to an avalanche of opinionative observations, some relevant, some less so. Some readers might also find many of the chapter and section headings irritating: "The Vagueness of Catherine's Lover Count", "How many Wittgenstein's can dance on the head of a pin?", etc. I suppose its all part of the relatively successful effort to make randomness fun. But although we'd enjoy seeing pompous academics and self-satisfied hedge-fund partners squirming with mice down their necks is it really necessary to rub the long-suffering French up the wrong way?
Interesting, but long-winded.......2007-10-15
Interesting perspective. Shows how unpredictable large-impact events shape life and why we must watch out for these. But you need patience to go thro the 300+ pages. Taleb spends more pages on what Black Swans are and their impact, less on what one can do to lessen their impact. Would love to hear more on what he recommends, though I will take them with a 'handful' of salt....I am as skeptical of experts as he is
Book Description
In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. For the first time in human history, he observes, more is no longer synonymous with better -- indeed, for many of us, they have become almost opposites.
Coming to Peace With Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology
Mere Christianity
God's Universe
The God Delusion
Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist
