Brain-Compatible Science Book

Far too many of the articles in this book read like thinly disguised promotional brochures for (very likely obsolete) various educational software packages. That's hardly surprising, given the pedigree of its editor, R. Keith Sawyer, which apparently includes a stint developing games for Atari. Unfortunately, the book is also marred by a number of copyediting botches, which undermines its credibility in my eyes. The editor himself also commits in the final essay ("Conclusion") this blunder, a real howler if, again, it didn't undermine his credibility, and the credibility of this volume:

"We usually refer to natural sciences like physics and biology as the 'hard' sciences, and social sciences like psychology, education, and sociology as the 'soft' sciences. But the biologist Edmund Wilson pointed out that, in fact, the social sciences are much harder than the natural sciences, because the systems they study are infinitely more complex (1998)" (p. 577).

Presumably Mr. Sawyer refers here to the biologist E. O. (Edward Osborne) Wilson (), the legendary ant specialist. For the record, Edmund Wilson () was a literary critic and historian who died in 1972. A simple check of the facts, a basic responsibility of any editor worth his or her salt, it seems to me, would have cleared up this unfortunate misconception. That Cambridge University allows its name to be associated with this kind of botch isn't particularly encouraging.