Interesting alt-Amazon format; have to see how you get there.

Amazon usually throws a bunch of extraneous stuff in their URLs. What I usually do is a search for the book or item, then strip everything in the URL after the ISBN (for books) or ASIN (Amazon's item number, for nearly everything else). E.g. http://www.amazon.co...ch/dp/B009B0MZ8U/ I then check it to make sure it works. ;-)

I anticipate seeing what Mr. Lindley makes of the current Huge-questions re say, How shall we treat next, intellectual excursions into realms beyond even the possibility of 'experimental verification', as always means: Yet? via guessable techno means.. or At-all, ever?

I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression. He mentions and comments on such things, but only briefly. There were big battles in Boltzmann's day about whether Atoms were real or just mathematical constructs that were helpful fictions that helped one do some math that gave the right answers. Gibbs didn't use them when he developed his insightful papers on thermodynamics of materials. Mach didn't believe in them, and even more, argued that Theory was worthless. He thought the only purpose of science was to do measurements and catalog the results - that trying to build a theoretical framework wasn't science if it talked about things one couldn't measure. (Of course, Mach had to hand-wave around the question of how to know whether what he measured was really the same as what someone else measured without appealing to a baseline theory of some sort...) The subtle differences and arguments between Boltzmann and Maxwell and the others was very interesting to me. And the cautionary tale about how looking for a purely logical, consistent explanation for the world can lead to dead ends is always worth remembering.

Superstring theory is only mentioned in passing a couple of times. I won't spoil your discovery of his views. ;-) But it does give one pause, I think, to say categorically that "Superstrings aren't science" because they can't be tested when a similar state of affairs existed in the late 1800s regarding Atoms. If Superstring Theory can make testable predictions, eventually, then there may be something to it. ;-) It's probably too early to say.

It's the first book by Lindley that I've read - it was a recent gift that I read on vacation. He doesn't seem to have a recent book covering Superstrings, but does have several other physics-and-physicist related topics that may go into it in a bit more.

HTH.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Scott.

There's just so much paper out there these days, it must be a huge challenge for libraries to manage their collections - keep the important old stuff yet continuously add new. One would think it would get easier with eBooks, but the headaches from the publishers may make the situation worse - http://www.ala.org/t...ooks-us-libraries - less shelf space, but more IT headaches.

Let me know what you think of it. I hope you enjoy it - I'd hate to think that your beasties might go hungry due to a bad book!

Cheers,
Scott.