Review of
The How and Why Wonder Book of Light and
Color, by Harold Joseph Highland
Three out of five stars
When reading
this book, I was puzzled by some of the language used, for it simply did not
have the expressions and tones of a physicist. For example, on page 35 there is
the sentence, “Actually, no one today is certain exactly what light is.” This
book was published in 1963 and at the time, all the characteristics of light
were well known. The wave-particle duality was by then well-established
scientific fact. Furthermore, physicists do not talk like that. When I investigated,
I learned that the author is in fact the chair of a department of business
administration and not billed as a scientist.
I found this
rather odd, this is a book about science, so it should have been written by
someone well versed in the sciences. There are other phrasings that are
questionable, for example the last sentence of the book is “What is light?” One
can ask this question in the metaphysical sense, but that should not be a topic
in an introductory book.
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