Reviews for When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish: And Other Speculations about This and That

The average rating for When You Were a Tadpole and I Was a Fish: And Other Speculations about This and That based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-27 00:00:00 Gianluca Baldocchi When I was a kid I used to go visit my Granny's place and she always had a massive stack of Scientific American magazines. Granny, who was a brilliant mathematician, and I would spend time together playing cards (to learn about probability) and reading Martin Gardner's columns on maths, games and logic. Since having grown up I still retain a love for Mr gardner's mind. Now he's 94, and still publishing from his assisted care facility, and now he writes like a cranky old man, which is just perfect. His latest book, When I Was a Tadpole and You Were a Fish, (the title comes from a poem about evolution, reincarnation and love) is rich with classic topics. Science and scepticism of course dominate the book, but his short essay on why he is a Theist really struck me. Now, being a confirmed Atheist I am not really swayed by his arguments (and indeed I am amazed that someone as smart as he is could fall for such nonsense), but it is fascinating. To summarise his position on a supernatural deity; Gardner posits that there must be an afterlife, else human consciousness is wasted (youth wasted on the young etc) upon death. And for there to be an afterlife there must be a God. Well to me that's simply what Monty Python would refer to as a "cloth eared syllogism". Still this is a wonderful book and I enjoyed it immensely.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-03 00:00:00 Victor Theriault I was browsing through the Regulator bookshop and got this book on a lark. I only gave this two stars because I think the description on the cover was pretty misleading. I happen to really like science writing, so when I read the book cover and the keywords had to do with math puzzles, evolution, and the like I was really excited. Unfortunately, when reading it, it felt like more of the sections were on philosophy, history, and religion than on science topics. The writing was well done and the author had some interesting points and random trivia tidbits, but it wasn't what I was looking for.