Things Nobody Knows
501 Mysteries of Time, Space, the Universe and Everything
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-85789-214-0 (ISBN)
Description
'There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don't know' - Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, 12 February 2002
In almost any area of human knowledge, it is often more instructive - and certainly more entertaining - to hear experts talking about what they don't know than what they do know (or what they think they know). Things Nobody Knows explores the limits of human knowledge in the fields of physical science, history, animal behaviour, psychology and numerous other areas of inquiry. The material in the book is classified, a la Rumsfeld, by degrees of not knowing rather than by subject. In that way, very diverse topics serendipitously rub shoulders with one another, making a book that is both intellectually satisfying and more-ishly dip-into-able.
Things Nobody Knows comprises the following sections:
*Things We May Discover Any Moment (including hopes for the Large Hadron Collider)
*Things We May Not Know After All (including the physics of bumblebee flight)
*Things We May Know Within Ten Years (including hopes for genetics research)
*Things We Hope To Discover One Day, But Have No Idea How (the physics of the human brain and how the genetic code actually works)
*Things We May Never Know (including philosophical questions such as 'what it's like to be a bat')
*Things We Do Not Know and Do Not Need to Know (101 more bizarre unknowns that have not fitted into anything that has gone previously)
In almost any area of human knowledge, it is often more instructive - and certainly more entertaining - to hear experts talking about what they don't know than what they do know (or what they think they know). Things Nobody Knows explores the limits of human knowledge in the fields of physical science, history, animal behaviour, psychology and numerous other areas of inquiry. The material in the book is classified, a la Rumsfeld, by degrees of not knowing rather than by subject. In that way, very diverse topics serendipitously rub shoulders with one another, making a book that is both intellectually satisfying and more-ishly dip-into-able.
Things Nobody Knows comprises the following sections:
*Things We May Discover Any Moment (including hopes for the Large Hadron Collider)
*Things We May Not Know After All (including the physics of bumblebee flight)
*Things We May Know Within Ten Years (including hopes for genetics research)
*Things We Hope To Discover One Day, But Have No Idea How (the physics of the human brain and how the genetic code actually works)
*Things We May Never Know (including philosophical questions such as 'what it's like to be a bat')
*Things We Do Not Know and Do Not Need to Know (101 more bizarre unknowns that have not fitted into anything that has gone previously)
More details
Edition
Main
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Illustrations
50 b/w photos and illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 148 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-85789-214-0 (9780857892140)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
William Hartston is a Cambridge-educated mathematician and industrial psychologist. Between 1962 and 1987 he played chess competitively, becoming an international master and winning the English chess championship in 1973 and 1975. During the 1980s he presented the BBC series Play Chess and since the early 1970s, has made many TV appearances as an expert commentator and analyst on chess world title matches. He runs competitions in creative thinking for The Independent newspaper and the Mind Sports Olympiad. He also writes the off-beat Beachcomber column for the Daily Express and has written a number of books on chess, mathematics, humour and trivia.