A Matter of Degrees: What temperature reveals about the past and future of our species, planet, and Universe by Gino Segr`, Viking, $24.95, ISBN 0670031011
OUR relationship with heat and cold is elemental. Life itself couldn鈥檛 have happened without a relatively warm planet. And fast-forwarding a few billion years, our ancestors finally began to master heat, making fires for warmth and wrapping up against the cold. Yet the scientific measure we call temperature is only a couple of hundred years old.
It鈥檚 now a central concept in physics, and indeed in science generally. And in A Matter of Degrees physicist Gino Segr` zips back and forth over an impressive variety of topics, knitting the whole together with the central concept, temperature.
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Segr` begins with how he came to be interested in research, and later in writing about science. His uncle was Emilio Segr`, another physicist and author, and he regales the reader with charming stories about their family鈥檚 origins, throwing in a few choice titbits of Italian history as he goes. It鈥檚 an engaging start, if a bit beside the point.
Then, abruptly, he launches into the regulation of body temperature. We learn how humans stay cool in the Sahara and warm in the Antarctic, why fevers make us feverish and how aspirin helps, then after a quick detour to introduce Galen and the four humours of medieval medicine, Segr` zooms on to Pasteur and Lister; and suddenly we鈥檙e looking at giant chromosomal arrangements in fruit flies and getting to know heat shock proteins.
Segr` then tackles the birth of thermodynamics, life under extreme conditions, the geological history of the Earth, global warming, quantum mechanics, the big bang, the Sun鈥檚 heat, superconductivity, and a lot more. Generally, in his bright and breezy style, he does a good job of keeping this mass of ideas under control.
But though his writing is always accessible, it is not always coherent. If his book were one side of a conversation, the listener would be constantly interrupting, asking Segr猫 to slow down, take it easy, fill in some of the gaps. In fact, his hectic style is bound to cause problems. A couple of pages after reading about the fruit flies and giant bundles of chromosomes, I remembered the passage and realised I didn鈥檛 know what it was all about, or why it was there. Still don鈥檛, in fact.
The jumpy style can also mask a certain reluctance to offer judgements on speculative matters. This can create blandness. Discussing life under extreme conditions of hot and cold, for example, he mentions the Antarctic meteorite ALH84001, which some NASA scientists claim contains fossil evidence of bacteria from Mars. What is this evidence and reasoning, and what do other scientists make of it? Oops, too late. Our author is already talking about the chances of life on the Jovian moon Europa, and then racing to Vostok, the Russian Antarctic station. We never do get to hear any more about ALH84001. Does Segr猫 think it contains bugs from Mars, or doesn鈥檛 he? He isn鈥檛 saying.
It鈥檚 the same when he writes about scientific uncertainty over global warming and the American government鈥檚 unwillingness to sign up to the Kyoto treaty. He betrays little sense of where he stands on these important matters. Scholarly detachment is not always to be admired.
On the whole, however, Segr` succeeds in portraying, with an admittedly broad brush, considerable swathes of modern science. He has an easy familiarity with his material, even when he strays far from his home ground of physics, and he is up to date with many of today鈥檚 scientific debates.
A Matter of Degrees is like a fast drive in a sports car through a spectacular landscape: racy and breathless, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes cutting corners in the most alarming fashion. You鈥檝e certainly been on a ride, and you probably have startling images and impressions clinging trembling to your memory.
But how much will stick?