Art, Beauty, and Pornography Book

Update 9/3/09 - I've presented a few papers on the book, all on roughly the same theme: hanging the significance of science on "natural curiosity" is a failing strategy. Starting to think more about part II of the book, which I also think is a failure (but an interesting one), and what we can do for an alternative.

This is going to be the next text in my grad seminar. We'll see how it goes.

Original review: This book is very accessible to a wide audience, which is great. And it is pointing out a serious and important task. It ultimately fails to live up to its task, I think, but the failure is interesting. A worthwhile read, and an important book for years to come.