Dagomar Degroot on Black Holes: a Very Short Introduction and Moons

Katherine Blundell. Black Holes: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Illustrations. xix + 100 pp. $11.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-19-960266-7. David A. Rothery. Moons: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Illustrations. xv + 153 pp. $11.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-19-873527-4. Reviewed by Dagomar DeGroot Published on H-Sci-Med-Tech (July, 2018) Commissioned by Kathryn Olesko (Georgetown University) “Space is having a moment,” a major publish‐ to (intellectually) take their students beyond er told me recently. Maybe. Public interest does Earth. For decades, environmental historians seem to be rising, spurred by both the extraordi‐ have tried to fgure out how the non-human nary accomplishments of international space world mattered for the human past. Lately, a agencies (with probes zipping past Pluto, spinning small but growing number have insisted that the around a comet, and plunging through the rings world is not enough. The feld, they argue, should of Saturn) and an emerging arms race between ty‐ not end with the ends of the Earth: the seemingly coons who promise to make space accessible for absolute but really quite porous border between everyone. Is this indeed a feeting moment of pub‐ the atmosphere and outer space. Instead, it lic excitement, or a more significant conceptual should incorporate the ways that people have un‐ and material transformation of humanity’s en‐ derstood environments beyond Earth, responded gagement with outer space? My money is on the to changes in those environments, and even (late‐ latter, in which case historians may want to do ly) transformed those environments. what we have always done: study the past in new If these insurgents—and, full disclosure, I am ways to better understand what really matters in one of them—are right, we need concise books the present. that introduce our students to the environmental Two new entries in the Oxford University actors in our histories. Enter the moon, or rather, Press Very Short Introductions series should help Moons. In just 144 pages (including appendices), us do just that. Both books summarize how scien‐ planetary scientist Rothery aims at nothing less tists past and present understand distinct kinds of than a concise guide not just to the moon but to objects in space. Yet the objects considered in all the moons—or at least, all we have found in each book could not be more different, which our solar system. means that the books will be useful to different Despite its slender size, Moons is packed with kinds of historians. delightful detail. Did you know that the sun’s light David A. Rothery’s Moons may be just the nudges small moons in their orbits? That a video kind of book that environmental historians need game developer owns private property on our H-Net Reviews moon? That scientists have gathered more moon reader than the science of moons. Blundell, an as‐ rocks on the Earth than Soviet probes brought trophysicist, admits that she faces an unusual back from the moon? I did not, and I doubt my problem: mathematics can precisely communi‐ students will, either. Even facts I did know—the cate the true nature of black holes but only in a brighter the rays around a lunar crater, for exam‐ way that will baffle many readers, while descrip‐ ple, the younger it is—gain new dimensions in tive words can provide easy to understand expla‐ Rothery’s elegant prose. nations at the cost of accuracy. She compromises Rothery is at his best when giving simple, jar‐ with a series of cleverly chosen fgures that will gon-free explanations of complex science. Orbital prove fascinating to the historian. Many deal with mechanics may seem dull and too technical for relationships between time and space, which are short summary, yet Rothery makes it easy to un‐ badly distorted near black holes, and many there‐ derstand why asteroids in “horseshoe orbits” are fore also represent causality with a series of lines not moons, or how orbital resonances account for and points. Strangely, a book about the physics of seas below the ice crusts of giant gas moons. One black holes has something to say about how histo‐ particularly compelling example uses a series of rians can visually depict historical events, and well-chosen photographs to reveal how the how they might conceptualize the options open to moon’s surface is a natural archive engraved with historical agents. a history of our solar system. Many historians would benefit in an abstract By contrast, Rothery’s attempts at human his‐ sense from reading Black Holes, but it is harder to tory are less effective. His history of lunar science figure out how they could assign the book to stu‐ hits on some big names and breakthroughs but dents. Black holes are too intellectually and physi‐ leaves out the cultural contexts in which science cally remote to feature in classes devoted to the takes shape. This is the kind of “internalist” ac‐ environmental history of space, and they seem a count of great scientists and sudden insights that stretch for inclusion in even the biggest of big his‐ no longer convinces historians interested in how tory courses. Historians of science, by contrast, science actually evolves. Rothery devotes a chap‐ may be able to use Black Holes to give their stu‐ ter to “the moon’s influence on us,” and covers dents an interesting perspective on the history of some obvious ground—telling time and tides, for the most exotic ideas in physics. example—but misses a raft of fascinating topics, Blundell delves deeper into the history of sci‐ from the seventeenth-century discovery of the lu‐ ence than Rothery does, since black holes straddle nar environment to the great moon hoax of the the boundaries between Newtonian, relativistic, nineteenth century. Naturally, a “very short intro‐ and quantum physics. In a sense, the history of duction” can only include so much content before scientific thinking about black holes—or “dark it stops being short. Yet environmental historians stars,” as a few precocious scholars imagined and their students would do well to read Moons them in the eighteenth century—mirrors the his‐ alongside other scholarship that covers the hu‐ tory of the related disciplines of physics and cos‐ man story of moons in greater detail. mology. Blundell occasionally suggests links be‐ Katherine Blundell’s Black Holes is just about tween broader social developments and the histo‐ as slender as Moons, and written in a similarly ry of science, but she concentrates on an internal‐ engaging style. It rarely explains its science with ist summary of the personal breakthroughs of the effortless grace that Rothery manages to standout scientists. achieve, partly because the mind-bending physics Maybe describing the social context of science of black holes are less accessible to the average would have led Blundell away from her main sub‐ 2 H-Net Reviews ject—the nature of black holes—and bewilder long-lost civilizations. Anthropologists study the readers already confronted by a barrage of unfa‐ intellectual colonization of space, from newly dis‐ miliar ideas. Still, the cultural and intellectual covered exoplanets to the surface of Pluto. contexts and consequences of the scientific revo‐ Historians, it seems, can profitably follow in lutions Blundell describes were so important that their wake by engaging with outer space in new leaving them out seems like a missed opportunity ways. Historians of science have long studied as‐ (at least for a historian). These omissions will ad‐ tronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, and planetary mittedly make it harder for historians of science science, although popular interest in space may to assign Black Holes to their students. Yet the now lend new urgency to these subjects. Yet envi‐ book may still serve as an elegant and concise in‐ ronmental historians have only just begun to ap‐ troduction to a pivotal subject in the science and preciate that environments beyond Earth have history of physics, one that instructors can easily helped shape human history, and courses on big supplement with more rigorous histories of sci‐ history—including the cosmic histories that set ence. the course of human evolution—are becoming Because they are short, relatively comprehen‐ possible for the first time. sive, and aimed at educated laypeople, books in Historians are poised to provide innovative Oxford’s Very Short Introductions series resemble new perspectives on histories that have led us to a “thinking reader’s Wikipedia,” as literary critic today’s transformative moment in humanity’s en‐ Boyd Tonkin has called them. In just 150 pages or gagement with outer space. To write and teach the fewer, each book aims to tackle all that is really new narratives of the fnal frontier, however, they important about a subject, no matter how com‐ will need concise, interdisciplinary books that plex. Moons and Black Holes reflect both the im‐ summarize the past and present of space and pressive strengths and very real limitations of space science. Both Moons and Black Holes ft the that approach. Both will prove stimulating for bill, even if neither describe human history in some readers and likely provoke further study, ways that will be entirely convincing to the histo‐ yet others might be beguiled by what, as we have rian. seen, is merely an illusion of comprehensiveness. For some readers, in other words, the books will excite more curiosity and more reading, while for others they will seem like the last word on sub‐ jects that can never really be fully explored in fewer than 150 pages. A Wikipedia page, by con‐ trast, could not easily seem as authoritative.

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