The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (1-80)

I have begun the intriguing book The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments, by George Johnson, a nonfiction text about how the ten most beautiful experiments of history were accomplished. The book is divided into ten chapters, with each chapter consisting of an explanation of how the experiment was done, what happened in the experiment, and the importance of these experiments that were conducted. My favorite chapter so far is the second chapter about how William Harvey conducts an experiment regarding the human heart's functions.

He compared the movement to a machine's: "One wheel gives motion to another, yet all the wheels seem to move simultaneously." He knew that some of his readers might be offended by this mechanical description. But that was not his intention. "Whether or not the heart, besides propelling the blood, giving it motion locally, and distributing it to the body, adds anything else to it-heat, spirit, perfection - must be inquired into the by-and-by, and decided on the other grounds."(25)

He, William Harvey in this quote, suspected that there was more to the body than just the physical processes, that the heart was "the sun of the microcosm" (Johnson 24) and blood a spiritual substance, an instrument of heaven. However that did not mean the hearts motions could not be studied systematically. Additionally, he points out that the heart does not just flow in one direction and go endlessly to another, but flows in more of a circle like "one wheel [giving} motion to another," letting the blood have to circulate around the whole of the body. Before this experiment people though blood was created then destroyed at the end, and did not circle the body. This book is an amazing work that I would recommend to anyone looking for a good read, who has interested in mathematics or science, or is just looking for a good read.

Johnson, George. The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments. New York City: Random House Incorporated, 2008.