referencebooks

Encyclopedia of Water

By David E. Newton

Published by Greenwood, 2003

This is a 7" by 10" hardbound book running to 401 pages including the index, plus a preface, an introduction, and a classified guide to the articles.

See my entry for October 30, 2005, for the same author's Encyclopedia of Air, also published by Greenwood in 2003, along with another one called Encyclopedia of Fire.

Like Encyclopedia of Air, this encyclopedia looks at its subject in a vastly multi-disciplinary way, with articles covering topics in chemistry, biology, meteorology and other earth sciences, literature, mythology and religion, transportation, technology, visual arts, and history, as well as also providing many biographical entries on people whose work related to water and organizations that have to do with water. Here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the "H" sequence, "See Also" references included:

• Haliae See Nymphs
  
• Hard Water
  
• Heavy Water
  
• Holy Water
  
• Holy Waters See Sacred Waters
  
• Hookah
  
• Hovercraft See Boats and Ships
  
• "Hubbly-Bubbly" See Hookah
  
• Human Water Needs See Biological Functions of Water; Desalination
  
• Humidity
  
• Hydrate
  
• Hydraulic Device
  
• Hydraulic Press See Bramah, Joseph
  
• Hydraulics, Hydrostatics, and Hydrodynamics
  
• Hydroelectric Power
  

The entries are written in relatively simple prose given the scientific subject matter of many of them. Since it's such a multi-disciplinary encyclopedia it wouldn't be appropriate to assume too much significant background knowledge, and the author doesn't. However, he doesn't shy away from providing mathematical formulae where relevant. So, there is a fairly decent amount of information included given the breadth of scope.

Reference books like this that take a feature of the world like water and air and look at it from such a wide range of disciplines are interesting, fun, and rather odd from a practical standpoint. Usually when someone is studying something like water it is from the perspective of a particular discipline, and they will find deeper information in a resource that is created specifically for that discipline. This stems from the fact that the work that people do is usually of a certain kind. When I try to think of who would find a book like this most useful, I keep coming back to the notion of a literary writer or a visual or conceptual artist who needs to pull together ideas about water for thematic, exploratory reasons. It is difficult to say who else might find a good use for this book, but you never know. It does have a lot of good information relating to water in it.

The Cambridge Dictionary of Statistics, Second Edition

By B.S. Everitt

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2002.

This is a 7" by 10" hardbound book running to 410 pages plus a brief preface.

The preface to this straightforward book begins,

The Cambridge Dictionary of Statistics aims to provide students of statistics, working statisticians and researchers in many disciplines with relatively concise definitions of statistical terms. All areas of statistics are covered, theoretical, applied, medical, etc., although, as in any dictionary, the choice of which terms to include and which to exclude, is likely to reflect some aspects of the compiler's main areas of interest, and I have no illusions that this dictionary is any different. My hope is that the dictionary will provide a useful source of reference for both specialists and non-specialists alike. Many definitions necessarily contain some mathematical formulae and/or nomenclature, others contain none.

There are just over 3000 terms defined in the book and entries on about 100 important statisticians. For a sense of what is included, here are the first fifteen entries in the "G" sequence, synonym references excluded:

• G²
  
• Galbraith plot
  
• Galton, Sir Francis
  
• Galton-Watson process
  
• Gambler's fallacy
  
• Gambler's ruin problem
  
• Game theory
  
• Gamma distribution
  
• Gamma function
  
• Gap statistics
  
• Gap-straggler test
  
• Gap time
  
• Garbage in garbage out
  
• Gardner, Martin
  
• GAUSS
  

The definitions really are as understandable to a layperson as they possibly could be given the subject matter, making the book useful and informative to those who don't have a background in mathematics. This is a nice reference work.

Encyclopedia of American Indian Contributions to the World: 15,000 Years of Inventions and Innovations

By Emory Dean Keoke and Kay Marie Porterfield.

Published by Facts On File, 2002.

This is an 8.5" by 11" hardbound book runnning to 384 pages including the appendices, bibliography and indexes, plus a preface.

The preface begins:

What follows is a collection of contributions American Indian peoples have made to the world. The word contribution is defined in The American Heritage College Dictionary, Second Edition as "to give to the common fund or common purpose." American Indians, from the Arctic Circle to the tip of South America, donated many gifts to the world's common fund of knowledge in the arears of agriculture, science and technology, medicine, transportation, architecture, psychology, military strategy, government, and language. These contributions take the form of inventions, processes, philosophies, and political or social systems. For the most part until the late 19th century, they remained unrecognized outside of the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology. People throughout the world enjoyed the fruits of indigenous American invention -- such as rubberized raincoats, popcorn, hammocks, and the drug quinine -- without being aware of their origin. At the same time textbooks, novels, and later movies and television portrayed the first people of the Americas as primitives who were incapable of complex ideas or inventions.

So, the purpose of this encyclopedia is clear.

Enties are mostly short, about a quarter page to two pages in length. Each one is about a specific cultural invention or an area of invention. For an idea of the range of things covered, here are the first fifteen items in the "L" sequence (including see references):

• labor laws
  
• lacemaking
  
• lacrosse
  
• lady's slipper
  
• lamination
  
• language, American Indian influence on
  
• language, sign
  
• latex (rubber)
  
• laundry detergent
  
• laws
  
• laxatives
  
• League of Nations, American Indian Influence
  
• libraries
  
• lighthouses
  
• llamas
  

The information presented is eye-opening, showing that Native American cultures were much more innovative and highly developed (technologically and organizationally) than most of us have been taught. However, the objectivity of the authors seems compromised by their desire for the mainstream culture to respect Native American culture more than they do, with the result that their accomplishments are sometimes exaggerated (specifically in the degree of advancement of technologies that they developed). More often than exaggeration of their accomplishments, however, we see those accomplishments treated as the origin of technologies now in common use, without recognition of parallel developments within Western culture, where the actual history of our use of a technology goes back to Western origins, despite Native American peoples' having done it also, or perhaps first or perhaps better. Given that, I think the book might more accurately have been titled "Encyclopedia of Native American Innovation and Invention."

It's a good book, but the authors' wishes shine through the pages and make them a little less than objective.

Biotechnology from A to Z, 3rd edition

By William Bains

Published by Oxford University Press, 2004.

This is a regular-sized paperback book, measuring 6" by 9" and running to 413 pages of relatively large type.

The foreword explains the scope of the book and describes it as a "mini-encyclopedia," which is accurate: entries are longer and fewer than in a dictionary, but briefer than what you'd find in an encyclopedia. The foreword goes on to say, "Each entry gives a quick description of the concept, mentions related terms and ideas, and gives an indication of what the science or technology has really achieved." The entries are extensively cross-referenced and the index is thorough. The foreword also notes what is not included in the book that some might expect to find. Not included are entries on aspects of biological science that underpin biotechnology (other reference works do that job), and entries on biological warfare. There are only a handful of entries on individual people and companies, as those aren't the focus of the book.

One notable aspect of the book is that it is written in surpisingly non-technical language for such a technical subject, and for a reference book from Oxford University Press. The articles are informative but very readable for non-scientists, and go into at least a bit more depth than a popular magazine.

The author is not shy about showing his biases, which often makes it seem that he's not being completely thorough in his presentation of some topics. The article on bioethics is terrible in this regard, and actually makes the author seem somewhat ignorant about the field.

Despite that, it is a valuable book in the amount of information it communicates about biotechnology in an easy-to-understand way.

Encyclopedia of Air

By David E. Newton.

Published by Greenwood Press, 2003.

This is a 7" by 10" hardbound book running to 252 pages including the index, plus a brief introduction and a classified list of entries.

This is an interesting reference book for its mix of scientific and cultural entries on the subject of air. There are entries having to do with chemistry, physics, and meteorology all in the same sequence as the entries having to do with mythology, military topics, government and civic organizations, biography, sports, transportation, law, and other aspects of culture.

The full list of entries from the "B" and "C" sequences is as follows:

• Baghouse
  
• Balloons
  
• Barometer
  
• Barotrauma
  
• Beaufort, Sir Francis
  
• Bernoulli's Principle
  
• Boyle, Robert
  
• Brush, Charles F.
  
• Buoyancy
  
• Carbon Dioxide
  
• Center for Clean Air Policy
  
• Civil Air Patrol
  
• Clean Air Acts
  
• Clean Air Trust
  
• Clean the Air
  
• Cariolis, Gaspard Gustave
  
• Cariolis Effect
  
• Ctesibius (Second Century B.C.)
  
• Cyclones and Anticyclones
  

Entries are very readable and informative, often getting into the history of what's being discussed. The longest entries are just a few pages in length.

It's not a very long book, and the type is on the large side, so there really isn't a whole lot here.

On the whole it is a rather odd book, seemingly a personal project from a guy whose favorite subject is air. It's not easy to see what its main uses would be, other than for associative browsing.

An Einstein Dictionary

By Sachi Sri Kantha.

Published by Greenwood, 1996.

This is a 6" by 9" clothbound book running to 298 pages including the bibliographies and index, plus a foreword, preface, acknowledgments, a chronology, a reader's guide, and a genealogy chart of Einstein's family.

This book has about 600 one- or two-paragraph long entries on Albert Einstein's life and contributions to science as well as to politics and philosophy.

For a sense of what's covered, here is a list of the first fifteen entries in the "S" sequence:

• SAILING
  
• SALAM, ABDUS (1926- )
  
• SALARY, ANNUAL
  
• SCHAEFFER, CLEMENS (1878-1968)
  
• SCHILLER, JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON (1759-1905)
  
• SCHOPENHAURE, ARTHUR (1788-1860)
  
• SCHRÖDINGER, ERWIN (1887-1961)
  
• "SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT"
  
• SCHWARZSCHILD, KARL (1873-1916)
  
• SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS
  
• SECOND WORLD WAR (1939-1945)
  
• SECURITY CLEARANCE
  
• SEELIG, CARL (1894-1962)
  
• SELF-CRITICISM
  
• SELF-PROFILE
  

As you can see, there are lots of biographical entries, both for people whom Einstein worked with and people who influenced his thought.

The best thing I can do to provide a good sense of the kind of book this is is to copy one of the entries for you:

RELATIVITY PRINCIPLE (SIMPLIFIED). In his popular article on relativity published in the London Times (November 28, 1919), Einstein wrote a footnote, explaining "yet another applicatoin of the principle of relativity for the delectation of the reader: Today I am described in Germany* as a 'German savant' and in England as a 'Swiss Jew.' Should it ever be my fate to be represented as a bete noire, I should, on the contrary, become a 'Swiss Jew' for the Germans and a 'German savant' for the English" (Einstein, 1954).

During his first American visit* Einstein was asked by reporters to summarize the theory of relativity* in a couple of sentences. He obliged as follows: "Well, just as a joke and not to be taken too literally, relativity has this effect on any thought of the universe: up to this time the conceptions of time and space have been such that if everything in the universe were taken away, if there was nothing left, then there would still remain to man time and space. But under my theory, even time and space would cease to exist because they are inseparably bound up with the conceptions of matter" (quoted in Michelmore, 1962). Einstein A. Ideas and Opinions (1954); Michelmore P. (1962).

This is a good reference book on Einstein's life and work.

The International Handbook on Innovation

Edited by Larisa V. Shavinina.

Published by Elsevier Science on their Pergamon imprint, 2003.

This is a very heavy 7" by 10" hardbound book, running to 1171 pages of slick paper including the author and subject indexes, plus a long table of contents section, acknowledgments, contributors' bios, and a preface.

This book covers recent research on innovation, mainly from an industrial psychology perspective, but drawing on many disciplines. The introduction says,

"The purpose of the handbook is multifold: (a) to pose critical questions and issues that need to be addressed by research in a given subfield of innovation; (b) to review and evaluate recent contributions in the field; (c) to present new approaches to understanding innovation; and (d) to indicate lines of inquiry that have been, and are, likely to continue to be valuable to pursue. This handbook does not provide the kind of literature reviews usually found in textbooks. The conventional understanding of a handbook -- as a compendium of review chapters suggesting a guide to practice -- seems to be very restricted in the context of the field of innovation. The 'handbook' title suggests a guide to practice only in cases where the body of knowledge is understood to be complete and more or less unchanging. For example, 'Handbook of Mathematical Formulae', or 'Handbook of Motorcycle Repair'. However, the study of innovation is a body of knowledge under dynamic theoretical development, and so I prefer to use the 'International Handbook on Innovation' instead of the 'International Handbook of Innovation'. I hope readers will find the present chapters lively and provocative, stimulating greater interest in the science of innovation."

The book is classified in the BF's in our library, based on the judgment, following LC's subject tracings, that it is mostly about the personal qualities underlying innovativeness. While it is about that, it is really more about innovation as something that can be pursued by companies, research organizations and educational or cultural institutions in a deliberate, managed way, and therefore might be more appropriately classified in some other way. It is, I grant, not easy to classify well.

The book is divided into fifteen parts, each with a number of chapters. The fifteen parts are:

1. INTRODUCTION
   
2. THE NATURE OF INNOVATION
   
3. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN INNOVATIVE ABILITY
   
4. DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATION ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN
   
5. ASSESSMENT OF INNOVATION
   
6. DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATION
   
7. INNOVATIONS IN DIFFERENT DOMAINS
   
8. BASIC APPROACHES TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF INNOVATION IN SOCIAL CONTEXT
   
9. INNOVATIONS IN SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
   
10. INNOVATION IN MANAGEMENT
    
11. INNOVATION LEADERSHIP
    
12. INNOVATION AND MARKETING
    
13. INNOVATION AROUND THE WORLD: EXAMPLES OF COUNTRY EFFORTS, POLICIES, PRACTICES AND ISSUES
    
14. INNOVATIONS OF THE FUTURE
    
15. CONCLUSION
    

This review is getting a little long, but I really want to share the chapter titles under "Innovations in Different Domains" for a sense of the scope of the book:

1. Dimensions of Scientific Innovation
   
2. Do Radical Discoveries Require Ontological Shifts?
   
3. Understanding Scientific Innovation: The Case of Nobel Laureates
   
4. Innovation in the Social Sciences: Herbert A. Simon and the Birth of a Research Tradition
   
5. Poetic Innovation
   
6. Directions for Innovation in Music Education: Integrating Conceptions of Musical Giftedness into General Educational Practice and Enhancing Innovation on the Part of Musically Gifted Students
   
7. Determinants of Technological Innovation: Current Research Trends and Future Prospects
   
8. Innovation in Financial Services Infrastructure
   
9. Innovation in Integrated Electronics and Related Technologies: Experiences with Industrial-Sponsored Large-Scale Multidisciplinary Programs and Single Investigator Programs in a Research University
   

Before seeing this book I had never considered that the phenomenon of innovation itself could be studied as a science. The book makes up an impressive collection of evidence that a real beginning has been made to a science of innovation. Precisely because innovation involves creativity at its core and anything that can be put in terms of static scientific principles or laws seems to be, well, something other than creativity, the idea of a science of innovation seems counter-intuitive. But browsing through the book shows that there is much that we can learn about innovation, how it comes about, and how to foster it.

This is a useful book for people who see themselves as innovators or want to study how to foster innovation in their own organizations.

Dictionary of Concepts in the Philosophy of Science

By Paul T. Durbin.

Published by Greenwood Press, 1988.

This is a 6" by 9" hardbound book running to 362 pages including the bibliography and index, plus a series foreword, preface and introduction.

More of a modest encyclopedia than a dictionary, this book aims to give an introductory treatment to concepts in the philosophy of science. The focus is on concepts in the physical sciences and on philosophical issues stemming from specific scientific ideas, rather than on the various theories of epistemology as they underly science, which are disappointingly not included. The writing, though, is very non-technical and easy to understand, which is a strong point about the book, since so many people are easily turned off by technical philosophical writing and it's a subject that can potentially interest many people. The downfall of the book, however, is that its discussions are shallower than they really need to be.

The full sequence of entries from "T" through the end of the book runs:

• Technology
  
• Teleology
  
• Theory
  
• Theory Acceptance
  
• Time
  
• Transcendentalism and Science
  
• Truth
  
• Unity of Science Movement
  
• Utility
  
• Verstehen
  
• Vitalism
  

This is a fairly useful book for finding out what philosophers say about some major issues in science.

Encyclopedia of Science and Religion

J. Wentzel Vrede van Huyssteen, Editor in Chief.

Published by Macmillan Reference USA, a division of Thomson Gale, 2003.

This is a two-volume set measuring 8.5" by 11" and running to a total of 1050 pages including an annotated bibliography and index, plus a preface, introduction, list of articles, list of contributors and a synoptic outline of the contents.

This encyclopedia covers topics in science, religion and philosophy in terms of a growing dialogue between religion and science, mainly from the point of view of those wishing to reconcile religion and science without compromising religious belief. Treatments of scientific ideas address the challenges those ideas have posed to theology and religion, as well as discussing open questions and critiques of scientific ideas as they can be taken to make room for theology. Likewise, discussion of theological ideas relate to their intersection with science; entries on ideas in philosophy relate to both science and religion.

Here are all the entries in the "D" sequence:

• Dao
  
• Darwin, Charles
  
• Death
  
• Deep Ecology
  
• Deism
  
• Descartes, René
  
• Design
  
• Design Argument
  
• Determinism
  
• Dharma
  
• Disorder
  
• Dissipative Structure
  
• Divine Action
  
• DNA
  
• Double Agency
  
• Downward Causation
  
• Dualism
  

The point of view of the Encyclopedia is postmodern in terms of its foundation for placing science and religion on an equal footing. The introduction states:

"In the West the success and prestige of science has had a fundamental influence on the way that the voices of popular culture describe our world. As a result, relationships among the religions and sciences have often suffered from what some intellectuals have called the modernist dilemma, where the objective and universally true claims of science are often unfairly contrasted with subjective and irrational religious beliefs. This has led to sharp distinctions between objective descriptions and subjective experiences, between scientific and symbolic uses of language, and between empirically justified scientific truths and privately held religious opinions. The appeal of such stark oppositions, however, has waned. Scientism is the term of approbation used for the attitude that takes for granted the alleged rational superiority of science and exclusive value of the scientific method for gaining knowledge. The reductionist views that define scientism are now being attacked relentlessly by scholars who point out that both scientific and religious beliefs, in spite of important differences, are historically and culturally embedded and shaped by comprehensive worldviews...."

As one would expect from an encyclopedia whose readership includes many people who are seated outside the sciences, the entries are uniformly clear and understandable. They go into a little more depth and detail in their discussion of scientific ideas than one might expect, however.

While this encyclopedia would probably raise the hackles of many scientific-minded people, the challenges it poses to the scientific worldview are, in my opinion, often legitimate. In any case, whether the work is on target or an apology for irrationalism, it does an excellent job of surveying the contemporary dialogue between religion and science and can be a very useful resource for anyone interested in that subject.

Reader's Guide to the History of Science

Edited by Arne Hessenbruch.

Published by Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000.

This is a big fat book, hardbound, measuring 9" by 11" by 2.5" and running to 934 pages plus 29 pages of preferatory material.

The book is something a bit different from an encyclopedia of the history of science, being instead a guide to the literature on the history of science in the form of a large collection of annotated bibliographies.

The preferatory material includes an editor's note, a list of the members of the board of advisers, a list of contributors (long), an alphabetical listing of all the entries, and a thematically-divided list of entries. Entries are mostly around a page and a half in length. There are about 500 entries, on individuals, disciplines, institutions, and broad themes. Each begins with a list of the books and articles that it discusses, and then essentially does a literature review that helps explain this history of the topic it's addressing.

The first fifteen items in the "M" sequence are:

• Mach, Ernst
  
• Madness
  
• Magnetism
  
• Malaria
  
• Malthus, Thomas
  
• Malthusianism
  
• Management Sciences
  
• Marey, Etienne-Jules
  
• Marshall, Alfred
  
• Martineau, Harriet
  
• Marx, Karl
  
• Marxism and Science
  
• Materials Science
  
• Mathematical Instruments
  
• Mathematical Modernity
  

This is quite a useful book, because in addition to serving its main purpose as a bibliographic guide to the literature on the history of science, the entries have explanatory value in and of themselves.

Fitzroy Dearborn publishes some books like it in a number of other areas.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, Sixth Edition

Published by McGraw-Hill, 2003.

This is a big, 9" by 11" book of 2380 thin pages including the appendix, plus several sections on how to use the dictionary.

Printed in double columns of small type, with wide margins to fit its numerous illustrations, this is a thorough dictionary covering all areas of vocabulary from the hard sciences (with psychology thrown in).

The dictionary mixes words from all areas of science into one alphabetic sequence, which means that you don't have to know anything about the meaning of a technical term in order to look it up.

Each entry begins with an abbreviation for the scientific field that the definition belongs to. It took me about ten seconds of browsing to notice one that was incorrect ("heavy water," which has the correct definition, is incorrectly identified as a term from invertibrate zoology). This might have been a fluke (no pun intended).

The actual definitions are very concise and clear. Here is a two typical examples:

perthitic [GEOL]  Of a texture produced by perthite, exhibiting sodium feldspar as small strings, blebs, films, or irregular veinlets in a host of potassium feldspar.

Lombard effect [ACOUS]  The change in a talker's articulation effort when he or she speaks in a noisy environment; for example, trying to raise the voice or to make the voice better understood by the listener.

Pronunciations are indicated using the standard phonetic markings that you find in any English dictionary.

Etymologies would be interesting, but are outside the scope of this very useful and already very large and dense book.

This is a great resource for anyone encountering scientific and technical terms that won't be found in an ordinary English dictionary.

Life-Spans, Or How Long Things Last

By Frank Kendig and Richard Hutton

Published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979

This is a 5" X 8" hardbound book of 265 pages in larger type on cheaper paper, apparently produced originally for a mass audience rather than for library reference collections.

It is simply a really great compilation of information about how long things last. It's divided into five major sections, each with subsections dividing the paragraphs that talk about how long individual things last. The major sections are:

1. The Human Life-Span
2. The Animal Kingdom
3. Beyond the Beasts
4. Foods and Beverages
5. The Products of Man

In the section on the human life span we get historical information, information on infant mortality in selected countries, average lifespans by nationality, occupation, and marital status. Then it talks about how long various human organs can be kept alive outside the body (one of many areas in which the book is certainly dated).

In the section on the animal kingdom there are brief paragraphs on the lifespans of numerous animals, as well as mythical creatures (e.g. "Dwarfs - folklore's tiny humanoids - are gnarled little men who live in caves and subterranean places. They are selfish and greedy hoarders of treasure and live about 200 years.")

In the section, Beyond the Beasts, the lifespans of things as diverse as comets, deserts, earthquakes, flowers and trees are discussed.

The information in this book may not be as authoritative as sometimes needed, but it's stuff that would be difficult to find elsewhere. It's a fun and useful book.