Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists
By Philip N. Cohen | ISBN 9780231204194 | Review By: Jeanette S. Ferrara, MFA
Philip N. Cohen’s Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists is a helpful handbook for academics in the social sciences who want guidelines for engaging with a wider audience as an informed citizen. Citizen Scholar is very personal for Cohen—as a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, he has plenty of firsthand experience and illustrative anecdotes to share with his readers. Without being overly didactic—and with a sense of human fallibility and the ease with which we can make mistakes in our modern times— Cohen shares accounts of his own faux pas navigating the digital world, as well as accounts of his successes. Citizen Scholar isn’t just for social scientists—it’s a meaningful read for anyone in academia, whether at the beginning of their career or nearing the end. By Cohen’s estimation, part of the ethical conundrum of being well-educated and well-informed is finding ways to share that wealth of knowledge in an impactful way beyond fellow academics without alienating a non-academic audience.
Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation
By Robyn Arianrhod | ISBN 9780226821108 | Review By: Jeanette S. Ferrara, MFA
Robyn Arianrhod’s Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation—as the title might suggest—is a deep dive into vectors and tensors. These mathematical tools are the foundation of modern physics, namely Einstein’s work on relativity.
Einstein’s theories of special relativity and general relativity get a lot of attention. They’ve made him one of the most famous and well-known scientists of the 20th century. Arianrhod treats these theories like the ultimate climax in the trajectory of modern physics and then dials it back—all the way to early human civilization and our most fundamental understanding of mathematics and how to communicate numerical relationships with symbols. She revisits Newton and Leibniz and the creation of calculus. She dives into Michael Faraday’s and James Clerk Maxwell’s studies of electromagnetism and their implications for the greater field of physics. Arianrhod does an amazing job of presenting each prominent physics figure’s work within the greater context of their life, providing biographical context and anecdotes to round out their historical character.
One of Isaac Newton’s most famous quotes is “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” Arianrhod illustrates this fully within the context of vectors—showing the reader the “Giants” Newton relied on to make his discoveries, as well as the impact of Newton’s discoveries on subsequent generations of physicists, up to Einstein and beyond.
Arianrhod’s passion for the subject and for sharing that passion with others through teaching is clear from her energetic and engaging prose and detailed diagrammatic explanations of mathematical concepts. Vector is clearly written with a particular audience in mind—namely those who already have an interest in mathematics and want to learn more. Not many casual readers are going to pick up a book called Vector—though perhaps they should.
