Middle World: The Restless Heart of Matter and Life.

MIDDLE WORLD: The Restless Heart of Matter and Life

MARK HAW

Ultralarge things, those on the scale of planets and galaxies, and ultrasmall things, on the scale of electrons and quarks, have long captured the imagination of scientists, Haw writes. However, the materials scientist focuses here on the world of molecules, pollen granules, and cells. He deems this territory the middle world, and he tells its story by starting with a great but generally forgotten botanist, Robert Brown. The nineteenth-century naturalist was fascinated by the sex life of plants and spent hours observing pollen under the microscope. The behavior of these particles--their incessant motion--seemed to contradict the theories of matter that ruled the day. The phenomenon that would eventually become known as Brownian motion defied some of Newton's deterministic laws of matter. Further work by scientists such as James Clerk Maxwell, Ludwig Boltzmann, and Ruldolf Clausius led to the laws of thermodynamics, which would overturn Newton's errant rules. Albert Einstein in 1905 finally explained Brownian motion in terms of one of his own revolutionary theories. The middle world, Haw explains, is the realm of life's processes because it's the domain of DNA, proteins, and other molecular components of cells. Finally, he speculates about what Brownian motion reveals about the nature of life. Macmillan, 2007, 197 p., hardcover, $24.95.