Category Archives: Books

An inside look at Islam

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While spending a few weeks in the Middle East, I read the book Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. I found the book to be very informative, as it outlines the main doctrinal beliefs and history of Islam from a traditional Muslim perspective, denouncing both fundamentalism and Western modernity. The overarching message is that Islam is a complete way of life, that the relation of man to Allah, at once transcendent and immanent, is one of “ontological indebtedness.”

Nasr seems to emphasize how all Muslims have this basic set of beliefs, and though some pervert them by being extremists (a la Taliban) and some forget them by being assimilated into the Western world, for the most part Muslims form one big brotherhood. While I am not an expert on Islam, what I’ve read from other sources makes this claim sound rather Pollyanish.

Still, this was an interesting (and even inspiring) read and I recommend it to anyone looking for an insider’s perspective into Islam.

Looking back on a marriage

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Music I heard with you was more than music / And bread I broke with you was more than bread

Thus did Hugh Franklin propose to Madeleine L’Engle, beginning the union chronicled in Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage, book four of the The Crosswick Journal series of L’Engle’s autobiographical writings. This is a sweet book that reminisces about her early life and marriage and becomes more and more preoccupied with Franklin’s illness in the author’s present. In fact, the second part of the book more than anything journals L’Engle’s attempt to cope with his deteriorating condition, trying to balance hope, acceptance, and normalcy.

What surprised me about this book is how religious L’Engle was. Not terribly so, mind you, but in this book she does talk about her belief in Jesus and the solace and inspiration that she finds in religion. I suppose it’s not unexpected, since the only books of her that I read were the Time Trilogy, which have an underlying spiritual theme. I always interpreted that theme to be generically (rather than theistically) about good and evil, love and hate, though in retrospect I was taking it metaphorically where possible (the need to Deepen) and suspending my disbelief elsewhere (“he calls them all by name”).

This leads me to my meta-reaction: little atheist me chuckles on reflecting that some of my favorite books growing up are (yes, present tense) ones that deal with Big Themes by authors who turn out to be decidedly theist. L’Engle is one, of course; C. S. Lewis pops to mind as another. I suppose the main attraction lies with the fantasy and science-fiction elements, not to mention the archetypal fight between Good and Evil. It also helps that these are works of fiction, which live in a separate universe where I can suspend my disbelief. For though I know that the physical world that we share is mathematically and scientifically fascinating but unsentient, I can also inhabit inner worlds where magic and Epic Struggles do exist. And really, who wants to live without magic?

Short Story Delight

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Sometimes I get so caught up on things I have to do or want to do that I forget to read. When I do read, I seem to be turning more to non-fiction than anything else (who would have guessed?), so that when I do finally remember how much I enjoy narratives, they come as soothing balms that take me to worlds other than my own. And short stories? They are like literary tapas, tiny morsels of delight, easily grasped in one bite, all the more powerful for their brevity.

It was such a pleasure, then, on a recent flight, to gorge on the short stories in The Best American Short Stories 2002. With authors ranging from Michael Chabon to Arthur Miller to others of whom I had not heard, these stories were eclectic and delightful. And what made the whole experience more charming is that this was a book I picked up from the library on a whim during one of those rare days when I ventured outside the office.

The Drunkard’s Walk

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We’ve been discussing more and more in my office the idea that secondary education ought to require a course in probability and statistics more urgently than a course in calculus. Yes, calculus is fascinating and elegant, a true achievement of the human mind, but unless students continue pursuing science or engineering, they probably won’t use it again. I’m a big proponent of philosophia, learning for learning’s sake, but just as basic survival comes before luxuries, so too ought basic intellectual skills to come before broader learning. And what could be more basic than critical thinking to correctly interpret, analyze, and debunk the constant stream of marketing claims, political half-truths, and plain old misinformation that are presented with the veneer of scientific and mathematical certainty?

For example, say that, absent any risk factors, you take an HIV test that comes back positive. Your doctor tells you there are 999 chances out of 1000 that you will be dead within a decade, based on the 1/1000 false positive rate. What do you do? Most people might panic. If you are Leonard Mlodinow, though, you learn from the CDC that the a priori infection rate in your cohort is 1/10000, and correctly recalculate the odds that you really are infected after the test to be 1/11. (Do you see how?) Big difference!

These are the types of anecdotes that abound in Mlodinow’s acclaimed book The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. The book’s approach is narrative, focusing on the various historical figures and events that led to advances in probability and statistics, and explaining some interesting probabilistic brain teasers, such as the Monty Hall problem. The final chapter touches on the role of chance and perseverance in personal success (à la Outliers).

Mlodinow explains a few concepts, such as sample spaces and Pascal’s triangle, and talks about (but does not explain in any technical depth) others, such as combinatorics and Bayesian statistics. In this regard, I found the book a bit lacking, but I am probably not the target demographic, being mathematically savvy, having studied some of these concepts before, and going through a wannabe-amateur-statistician phase.

Where the book excels is in illustrating why an understanding of probability and statistics is so important. If it leads to more students choosing or being required to learn about these fields, it will have done its job.

Why Choose This Book?

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Starting from Darwin and Turing, Read Montague’s Why Choose This Book? relates recent research on how minds make decisions. The critical element is a valuation mechanism that can assign weights to various alternatives, and do so cheaply. Why, indeed, does a computer heat up so much while our own more complex brains are barely warm?

The book deals with an interesting topic, but I felt that it was a slow read. I would have liked the chapters to feel more coherent and pull this lay person along in a more systematic and fast-paced manner.