Reviews for Teaching Science in an Outdoor Environment: Handbook for Students, Parents, Teachers, and Ca...

The average rating for Teaching Science in an Outdoor Environment: Handbook for Students, Parents, Teachers, and Ca... based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-15 00:00:00 Marc Garner I don't remember now why I came to read something by Freeman Dyson. But something compelled me to consider his writings, so the next time I was in the library at BYU I checked out two of his books, this one and Infinite in All Directions. So far I have not been disappointed. Disturbing the Universe is largely autobiographical, describing much of Dyson's beliefs and discoveries in the context of his life's journey. I was impressed by his fantastic views of the future. For instance he has proposed that "One should expect that, within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star." This vision of the future (for us) and the possible present (in distant galaxies) has been called a Dyson Sphere. He also imagines, "...a solar energy system based upon green technology, after we have learned to read and write the language of DNA so that we can reprogram the growth and metabolism of a tree. All that is visible above ground is a valley filled with redwood trees, as quiet and shady as the Muir Woods below Mount Tamalpais in California. These trees do not grow as fast as natural redwoods. Instead of mainly synthesizing cellulose, their cells make pure alcohol or octane or whatever other chemical we find convenient. While their sap rises through one set of vessels, the fuel that they synthesize flows downward through another set of vessels into their roots. Underground, the roots form a living network of pipelines transporting fuel down the valley. The living pipelines connect at widely separated points to a nonliving pipeline that takes the fuel out of the valley to wherever it is needed. When we have mastered the technology of reprogramming trees, we shall be able to grow such plantations wherever there is land that can support natural forests. ... Once the plantations are grown, they may be permanent and self-repairing, needing only the normal attentions of a forester to keep them healthy." This future foliage is not surprisingly called a Dyson tree. Dyson's view of the future is refreshingly optimistic. I found Dyson's prose to be very readable. He is a scientist and presumably writes scientific papers in dense scientific language, but for this book he writes like a novelist. He is very even-handed in his treatment of the social, political, and scientific issues he discusses. I found the whole book to be interesting and entertaining. One of the last things I expected from this book was a spiritual uplift, yet there it was in the latter chapters. In particular I was moved by his last few paragraphs. He had mentioned the biblical Elijah's experience with the Lord not being in the wind or in the earthquake or in the fire, but then hearing a still small voice (1 Kings 19:11-13). Dyson wrote that he had not heard the still small voice, but later he writes, "The still small voice comes to me, as it came to Elijah, unexpectedly... "I am sitting in the kitchen at home in America, having lunch with my wife and children. I am grumbling as usual about the bureaucracy. For years we have been complaining to lower-level officials and there has never been any response. 'Why don't you go straight to the top?' says my wife. 'If I were you I would just telephone the head office.' I pick up the phone and dial the number. This comes as a big surprise to the children. They know how much I hate telephoning, and they like to tease me about it. Usually I will make all kinds of excuses to avoid making a call, especially when it is to somebody I don't know personally. But this time I take the plunge without hesitation. The children sit silent, robbed of their chance to make fun of my telephone phobia. To my amazement, the secretary answers at once in a friendly voice and asks what I want. I say I would like an appointment. She says, 'Good,. I have put you down for today at five.' I say, 'May I bring the children?' She says, 'Of course.' As I put down the phone I realize with a shock that we have ony an hour to get ourselves ready. "I ask the children if they want to come. I tell them we are going to talk to God and they had better behave themselves. Only the two younger girls are interested. I am glad not to have the whole crowd on my hands. So we say goodbye to the others quickly, before they have time to change their minds. It is just the three of us. We slip out of the house quietly and walk into town to the office. "The office is a large building. The inside of it looks like a church, but there is no ceiling. When we look up, we see that the building disappears into the distance like an elevator shaft. We hold hands and jump off the ground and go up the shaft. I look at my watch and see that we have only a few minutes left before five o'clock. Luckily, we are going up fast, and it looks as if we shall be in time for our appointment. Just as the watch says five, we arrive at the top of the shaft and walk out into an enormous throne room. The room has whitewashed walls and heavy black oak beams. Facing us at the end of the room is a flight of steps with the throne at the top. The throne is a huge wooden affair with wicker back and sides. I walk slowly toward it, with the two girls following behind. They are a little nervous, and so am I. It seems there is nobody here. I look at my watch again. Probably God did not expect us to be so punctual. We stand at the foot of the steps, waiting for something to happen. "Nothing happens. After a few minutes I decide to climb the steps and have a closer look at the throne. The girls are shy and stay at the bottom. I walk up until my eyes are level with the seat. I see then that the throne is not empty after all. There is a three-month-old baby lying on the seat and smiling at me. I pick him up and show him to the girls. They run up the steps and take turns carrying him. After they give him back to me, I stay with him for a few minutes longer, holding him in my arms without saying a word. In the silence I gradually become aware that the questions I had intended to raise with him have been answered. I put him gently back on his throne and say goodbye. The girls hold my hands and we walk down the steps together." This is the end of the book. I don't know whether what he related was a dream or just from his imagination, but it moved me greatly. If you like any of the extensive quotes I've given, you should read this book. You won't regret it.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-02-07 00:00:00 Craig Laverick On hearing that I am working on a book of essays, WL lent me Freeman Dyson's Disturbing the Universe. He was a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. "Born in England," the biographical note continues, " he came over to Cornell University in 1947 as a Commonwealth Fellow and settled permanently in the U.S. in 1951." A summary of his career, the next paragraph also indicates the topics of his essays: "Professor Dyson is not only a theoretical physicist; his career has spanned a large variety of practical concerns. His is a unique career inspired by direct involvement with the most pressing concerns of human life, minimizing loss of life in war, to disarmament, to thought experiments on the expansion of our frontiers into the galaxies." From his essays, it is clear that Dyson is that rare thing, a man deeply passionate about both science and literature. His essays make reference to Goethe's Faust, Auden and Isherwood's The Ascent of F6, H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, John Milton's great defense of press freedom Areopagitica. The title of the book comes from T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The first essay "The Magic City," my favorite of the book, is a meditation on the frightening pertinence of Edith Nesbit's children's story of the same name to the abuse of science in our contemporary world. Dyson himself is a very good writer, lucid and graceful. The force of the writing comes not only from style, however, but also from the moral discrimination that Dyson wields in confronting his life and the world's problems. He blamed himself for not taking any action though he knew as a civilian statistician at the Research Division that the Allies' strategic bombing of German cities in the last years of WWII was not only unconscionable but also ineffective and lethal only to the lives of RAF pilots. He made the interesting argument that it was the Americans' success at firebombing Tokyo that paved the way to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Having built up a Strategic Bombing Command at great cost, the Allies were almost bound to use it. In another fine essay, "The Blood of a Poet," Dyson paid a heartfelt tribute to his Winchester schoolfriend Frank Thompson whose intelligence and liveliness marked him out as a leader of men. He was a poet too. He joined the Communist Party and enlisted in the war from the start in 1939. While playing the dangerous role of the Allies' liaison with Bulgarian partisans, he was captured and executed by the Fascists, but not before giving his audience their common sign of liberty, a salute with a clenched fist, and thus inspiring the men captured with him to do the same and march to their deaths with heads held high. The other portraits in this book are of his fellow physicists at Cornell and Princeton. Dick Feynman and his intuitions. His opposite, Julian Schwinger and his mathematical equations. The mercurial arrogance of Robert Oppenheimer. The humanity of Hans Bethe. Dyson contrasts the egotism of the physicists with the cooperative spirit of the engineers. He also astutely observes how all the Los Alamos alumni spoke nostalgically of the A-bomb project as a time of thrilling camaraderie. He is clear about the constant temptation facing scientists of treating all questions, even those with vast moral consequences, as merely technical questions. He humanizes the public perception of Edward Teller, who spoke against Oppenheimer at the latter's security hearings. The scientists, all intellectual giants, are shown to be human and fallible. The portraits, however, are not malicious. They are suffused with affection and admiration. Dyson is not therefore blind to faults. The last section of the book, which takes up the subjects of space exploration and extra-terrestrials, is less interesting to me than the two earlier sections, "England" and "America." Someone of a more speculative cast of mind will enjoy these essays. When Dyson shades into mysticism in the last essay, finding a Mind behind the mind at work in making quantum observations, and the mind beyond brain cells and synapses, he loses me.