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Science Luminary Martin Gardner Dead at 95
From James Randi's blog comes word that science writer Martin Gardner has died at the age of 95. I never met Gardner, but one of his books (Entertaining Science Experiments With Everyday Objects) has been a favorite of mine since I was 6 or 7 years old; I didn't realize until just now quite how many books he authored.
Besides all his great mathematical puzzle books, I really loved Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
google books link
His pages in Scientific American were something I always looked forward to, and from which I always learned something. Glad he was among us.
Hope I make it to 95.
Gardner will be missed.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Before I discovered Martin Gardner's books, I was unable to understand mathematics, and I had very bad grades.
One day, I bought one of his books, and suddenly, I was able to see that math and logic was fun, and we could play with them.
To the amazement of my teachers, my grades increased in a few days, and I wanted to become a mathematician at this moment.
I became a programmer because I wanted to solve some of his puzzles so badly with my computer.
Thanks Martin !
Martin Gardner was one of a kind. I grew up with his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. His book Relativity Simply Explained is what I recommend whenever people ask me for a good intro to relativity. His intelligence and ability to explain were extraordinary compared to a lot of people with much more formal education. He had a long life and seems to have remained sharp and active for almost all of it.
Find free books.
I want to speak for the entire geek community, so I'm posting A.C.
Martin, you will be dearly missed. You've probably changed more lives than you could ever realize, and this planet was a better place because you existed.
Requiescat in pace.
It's guys like Martin that provided some balance against mindless idiots like those on the Texas education boards.
Let's hope there's a thousand more Martins out there. Surely he would hope the same.
RIP.
Martin Gardner was one of the best. Keen intellect, gentle wit, vast knowledge and warm heart. I only met him once, but it was memorable. He will be missed. If he had known the date and hour of his death he would have had a handful of interesting facts tying together all of the numbers. And he would have published it as a puzzle for his readers. Goodbye Mr. Gardner. We will not see your like again soon.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
Without his influence, I would not be in the position I am in now to influence the viability of man living in space.
RIP to one of the greatest influences on my life. While the mathematics got beyond me, everything else inspired me.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Phil Plait has a writeup as well.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
What a sad day. A single book that shaped me even in college from a man who could somehow make Mathematics fun. Now I'll never know him personally but I'll always know that a collection of his puzzles put me on track to be who I am today. While writers as popular as Clarke and Sagan shaped me as well, Gardner is in the lesser known category that shaped me just as much if not more.
A near maniacal thirst to algorithmically solve puzzles was instilled in me from his mind via plain old paper.
Rest in peace, Martin Gardner.
My work here is dung.
He is a man to whom scores of people thank for igniting the first spark of appreciating math and science. He will be terribly missed.
You will never have experience until after you needed it.
May his memory be for a blessing.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
In the 1970s and early 80s, before the internet, before personal computers, nothing linked geeks together more than Martin Gardner's monthly column in Scientific American. I amazed myself with his binary card deck, and collected matchboxes to make a tic-tac-toe learning computer.
His work will live on. I'm sitting next to a shelf full of his books as I type this.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Martin Gardner is known to many for his writings in recreational mathematics, but I also came to admire his persistent and vigorous work promoting naturalistic and scientific rigor and his work to discredit fringe science and junk science.
Some of the areas he wrote on were creationism, organic farming, Charles Fort, Rudolf Steiner, Scientology, Dianetics, UFOs, dowsing, extra-sensory perception, the Bates method, and psychokinesis.
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952, revised 1957) is a classic and should be required material in our school systems.
Gardner had a character called Dr. Matrix, an eccentric mathematician (perhaps not unlike the real life Paul Erdos, or Gardner himself) who popped up periodically in his columns. One I remember was Gardner interviewing Dr. Matrix in prison; seems the doc was busted for slicing twenty dollar bills into 20 strips, and "rearranging" them into modified bills composed of 19 strips each. Unfortunately, after that charming episode was published in Scientific American several people were similarly busted for copyright behavior... I suspect Mr. Gardner was amused rather than horrified by this turn of events.
>He was of the idea that there is no way to prove the non-existence of god
This is, in fact, correct. In natural sciences it is only possible to show that something does exist. It is not possible to prove non-existatnce. (It is not the case in mathematics, but mathematics is not a natural science).
The easiest way to understand it is to realize that the body observations available to science was taken in a limited period of time and area of space. Thus the our current scientific view of the world is only formally valid in this limited domain. What exist outside of it is only our educated guess.
He was not a scientist, never claimed to be one. Just a writer. As for his beliefs hurting the Atheist cause, that's just silly.
>He was of the idea that there is no way to prove the non-existence of god
This is, in fact, correct. In natural sciences it is only possible to show that something does exist. It is not possible to prove non-existatnce. (It is not the case in mathematics, but mathematics is not a natural science).
The easiest way to understand it is to realize that the body observations available to science was taken in a limited period of time and area of space. Thus the our current scientific view of the world is only formally valid in this limited domain. What exist outside of it is only our educated guess.
This is not generally true. It is true in some specific instances. For instance, you cannot prove that there is no such thing as a non-white swan. So in this sense you are correct to say that "it is not possible to prove non-existence." But as an aside, do note that the existence-refuting claim that there is no such thing as a non-white swan is logically equivalent to the existence-asserting claim that all swans are white, which is something you also cannot prove.
However, natural science can very easily show the non-existence of things. Very trivially, we can take a thing as non-existing if it a priori contradicts itself logically. Suppose a particle physicist has conceptualized a new particle he calls the "nihilon," which is an eternal, non-aging particle that obliterates all matter and energy that comes within a light-year radius of it. Can such a particle be shown to not exist? Of course, and very easily. If it's eternal, it was present in the early years of our universe when the size of the universe was much smaller than a light year. It would have obliterated all matter and energy then, and we wouldn't be here today. The fact that we are here today means the nihilon does not exist.
Now I know some of the particle physicist pedants here will pick apart my made up example, but the point is not to test my ability to come up with particle physics sci-fi, the point is that there are plenty of things which can be shown a priori to not exist. As another example, in biology, we can show that a function for junk DNA does not exist, by noting among many other things, that some segment of DNA is a pseudogene, or that mutations can harmlessly alter some segment of DNA, or (the gold standard) note that we can excise huge chunks of some test organism's genome and note that it is still phenotypically normal.
The belief of a deity amidst overwhelming evidence to the contrary is not an "educated guess," it's wishful thinking.
I always thought it was weird that Gardner defended theism, but to say that he was a crackpot because of this one belief despite the many contributions he has made in promoting math, science and skepticism is absurd. A man isn't measured by one mistake he makes. I'm sure your pencils have no erasers, so we can't call you stupid and weak and say good riddance when you die.
I am only arguing in favor of the first half of the statement ( "god's non-existence is impossible to prove") but not the second half ("thus I, Martin Gardner, choose to believe in its existence")
>The belief of a deity amidst overwhelming evidence to the contrary is not an "educated guess," it's wishful thinking.
This has nothing to do with my post.
Thanks for this. Using your points I can refine my thesis as follows: if existence of an entity does not contradict the available body of observations that its non-existance is impossible to prove.
Wow.
In his honor, I'd like to link to the 3D paper dragon that was created for Gathering for Gardner.
RIP Gardner.
To be perfectly honest, atheism is hurt more by the attitude that leads you to take a dump on a guy who taught so many people about science and mathematics. So he was a theist? Who cares? I had no idea about his views either way reading his books, and it doesn't matter to me. Sounds like you have some single-issue myopia.
After he saw one of my first Klein Bottles, Martin Gardner encouraged me to make them for recreational mathematics enthusiasts. "Even if the Klein Bottles don't work out, you'll have fun meeting these folks"
And so began my zero-volume business.
In high school, I followed his instructions to make hexaflexagons and fooled with Knights tours on chess boards. Much later, I was honored to correspond and meet him.
In person, he was just as curious, creative, and encouraging as you would expect from his writing.
Along with others here, I will miss Martin Gardner - his Scientific American articles, his wide ranging books, and his warm support. He leaves a wide wake behind him.
-Cliff
Well, that's what Theists do!
They do not believe in 99.9999% of the gods out there, except for one god, the one in their own religion. So, by your definition, catholics are skeptics, because they do not believe in buddha, reincarnation, aliens, xenu, and mohammad?
He had his own set of irrational believes, and disregarded other people's irrational believes as stupid. Just like the rest of theists. Get yourself an alchemist, a catholic priest, a jew, and a spoon-bender and they'll all tell you that they don't believe in a lot of stuff. That doesn't make them skeptics or rational humans. They are just defending their own believes, and disregarding others.
Same thing for this guy.
In order to be a rational human being you must NOT believe in ANYTHING. You can have a reasonable confidence in something due to experimentation and analysis on the subject. If you have faith in something, without any facts that support that idea, and a lot of facts against it, then you are not a rational human being, even if you happen to disregard a lot of other ideas. You can't believe in everything, that doesn't make you an skeptic.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I guess the pirates finally got his last coin. Or he finally ate the chocolate square with the soap on it.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
In memoriam, I dug up my copy of The Annotated Alice. Like others have mentioned, I think Gardner's research and interpretation add multiple dimensions to any reading of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
If you can find a copy, it is well worth it. I purchased mine in Portland's Powell's bookstore for (so the inscribed price tells me) $6.95, many years ago.
From the introduction:
"Let it be said at once that there is something preposterous about an annotated Alice. Writing in 1932, on the hundred-year anniversary of Lewis Carroll's birth, Gilbert K. Chesterson voiced his "dreadful fear" that Alice's story had already fallen under the heavy hands of the scholars and was becoming "cold and monumental like a classic tomb."
Gardner's version of Carroll's classic demonstrates that Alice's adventures are ongoing; that the Reverend Dodgson's imaginings are useful metaphors for the cutting edge of science today.
Gardner was a relentless popularizer of mathematics and science. His article in Scientific American in 1970 exposed Conway's game of life to the world at large. In more recent years, false rumors of his death prompted the hosts of NPR's "Car Talk" to eulogize him, only to have him contradict those rumors and come back suggesting a "puzzler" for their audience to solve.
There exists a tenuous philosophical link from Bertrand Russell to Martin Gardner, I wonder where it will continue from him?
I seem to have written an obituary. So be it.
> He was of the idea that there is no way to prove the non-existence of god, and therefore it's reasonable to believe in a god.
I've never read his annotated version of Alice in Wonderland, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Gardener would have claimed that he both believed and disbelieved in the existence of God, in a weird sort of spiritual quantum superposition.
> ... hurt the Atheist cause more than anything.
Really? I would have thought that your insensitive post might possibly have done more damage. It certainly raised my bile. You're lucky I know so many atheists who I actually respect.
> In order to be a rational human being you must NOT believe in ANYTHING.
OK. I will take your advice. That means that I don't believe in that, either. Now what do I do?
Some free advice for you. Concentrate on concrete examples where it is obvious that deistic or pseudo-scientific beliefs are not beneficial.
Trying to argue the existence or non-existence of God via logic is pointless.
Sad to hear that one of the master educators of our time is gone. But, like "Hello!", how many times was he ever on Oprah, you know?
A kind letter from Gardner after I sent him the results of an investigation I had done into polyominoes went some way to convince me that I had enough symbolic manipulation skills to change career to systems design. This proved the best decision I ever made after deciding to get married. So long, Martin Gardner, resquiescat in pace.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
In order to be a rational human being you must NOT believe in ANYTHING.
OK. I will take your advice. That means that I don't believe in that, either. Now what do I do?
Think, about it, before acting. Like with everything else.
Trying to argue the existence or non-existence of God via logic is pointless.
Not to those who get it. To them it's the red-pill.
But how would you go about it?
I recall many "puzzling" moments at the local pool reading the latest issue of "Scientific American" where he wrote a column regularly. And no, reading this title never attracted any chicks to join me on the blanket, but this is /. after all... ;-)
Godspeed Martin, your wit & humor will be missed.
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
His sci-am columns and books affected my life made me love math.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
In memory of his death, Scientific American today republished a wonderful profile of Martin Gardner from the December, 1995 issue.
They also reprinted 3 of his puzzles.
Here are some links (provided to you via Arts and Letters Daily):
The Associated Press
Sci Am
Discover
James Randy
Roger Kimball
The Man's last essay. It's titeled Oprah Winfrey: Bright (but Gullible) Billionaire.
I never met Martin Gardner, but he certainly touched my life. In the late 1970s a girlfriend of mine gave me a copy of "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science." She was given a copy but didn't want to read it.
I was not exactly a person who was ready to embrace a message scepticism. The book was mostly written before I was born. I was a hippie, a 20-something working in a natural food store, deeply distrustful of any authority and critical of what I thought of as authority-based science. My life revolved around Macrobiotics, acupuncture, Rolfing, herbalism, est, Primal Scream Therapy, foot reflexology, a syncretic hash of Eastern religions and pretty much every other new age technique that flew in over the transom. I was a pioneering subscriber to "New Age Journal," a publication that introduced the world to Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra.
I was angry when Gardner criticised the things I believed in, but fascinated and amused by the foolishness [b]other [/b] people believed in. I've heard Gardner quoted as saying "..oddly enough, most of [my critics] objected to one chapter only, thinking all the others excellent..." and that pretty much captures my reaction to the book.
I vividly remembered my amazement on reading the chapter on Rhine's ESP studies (a subject that had fascinated in my adolescence). It's been over 30 years since I've seen the book, and I may be conflating it with other books I've since read, but I recall a comparison of ESP results obtained by "sheep" (believers in ESP) and "goats" (nonbelievers), and just how resistant the "sheep/goat" effects were to attempts to blind the studies. This was a revelation,and marked the beginning of a self examination that continues to this day.
I had been drawn to New Age activities because of a deep skepticism of authority figures. Science had been taught to me almost like a religion. I thought it was a set of beliefs, handed down as truth by an older generation that had brought us a war in Vietnam, Racism, sexism, environmental disaster and a host of other evils. Garner set me on the path to discovering what science really is. I began to see that in fact its foundation was the very kind of skepticism that led me to all those New-Age practices, that in fact the scientific method supports a much deeper skepticism that allowed me to question my own cognitive biases. He gave me the courage to follow the evidence even when it conflicted with my firmest beliefs. This has served me well in my life and my careers.
Earlier that decade I had witnessed as a fellow natural-food buff died of cancer while dosing himself with bitter almonds (then though to be a "natural" version of Laetrile, a supposed cancer cure) refusing conventional treatment that might have extended his life. He left behind a wife and child. Watching him get worse and worse as he cheerfully talked of his impending cure was heartbreaking, and I remember thinking about how little his belief in the cure helped him ouut. I know that in the decades that have since passed I've steered one or two of my family and friends away from worthless quack cures, and I'd like to think I've saved a few lives taht way. If so, those people have Martin Gardner to thank.
Well, I've run on far, far longer than I meant,but I wanted to add my thoughts. We'll miss him, but take joy in the fact his work will be there to enlighten people like that 20-something me for a very long time.
However, natural science can very easily show the non-existence of things. Very trivially, we can take a thing as non-existing if it a priori contradicts itself logically.
Yeah, the problem with such arguments is that they depend on (1) the current conception of a "proper" logical argument, as well as (2) the "a priori" assumptions.
For example, historically, St. Anselm claimed to "prove" the existence of God using what he thought was a logical argument. Descartes, after claiming to throw out all assumptions and only asserting "I think, therefore I am," only a little while later only is able to get out of his solipsism by using what he thinks is a logical argument that God exists. Today, most logicians wouldn't agree that such arguments are logical. Can we guarantee that our present understanding of logic will hold up over time?
As for the second issue, take, for example, your scenario about the novel particle. You manage to prove that it's a logical contradiction only based on the current conception of an expanding universe originating at a Big Bang. 75 years ago, you couldn't depend on physicists to believe your "a priori" assumption; even 50 years ago, there were still a number of hold-outs for the "steady state" theory of the universe, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Who's to say that in another century, scientists might not discover something that requires a new model of the history of the universe (or maybe just a more subtle one) that wouldn't rule out your scenario? Or, for your DNA example, you again rely on our current genetic understanding, which is still in the process of rapid development. Perhaps there is some minor and as-yet unnoticed function for junk DNA.
Of course, I agree with your general conclusions, and I don't think either of your scenarios is likely. But many scientists have made the mistake in the past of assuming certain things to be "impossible" (or possible) based on supposed "a priori" arguments. It's a fun exercise to try to prove things "impossible," but you're only proving that your scenarios contradict our current theories and understanding using accepted logical standards of today, not that they are actually logically impossible to ever exist in the universe.
Outside of this time and setting your conclusion might be wrong. Spooky eh.
Martin Gardner probably had more impact on my intellectual development and rigor of thinking as a teenager than anyone else. As an adult, his book "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener" had more impact on my thoughts on philosophy than anyone else. My hat is off to him.
I became aware of Martin Gardner as an adolescent (in the 1970s), and I've often looked to his work as the best evidence that a self taught amateur can ably and artfully pursue a love of science, math, and a rational life without the aid (or hindrance) of advanced university degrees or a lab full of expensive equipment.
Mr Gardner's infectious enthusiasm and excellence in recounting his explorations played a big role in shaping my sense of self and my appreciation for the positive role model that an amateur mathematician can play in the life of another person, namely me.
Goodbye Mr Gardner and thank you.
I want to submit an astrological death chart to Randi's site.
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I will always remember Martin Gardner as one of the key influences in my mathematical leanings. His column in Scientific American was always interesting, even when I didn't know enough to understand half of what he wrote.
Anybody knows if one can get a collection of all his SciFi columns in a single volume or a set of volumes? I would gladly pay significant bucks to be able to have all those interesting articles in my possession.
So long Martin. Thanks for all the wonderfully wasted hours.
What is this 'he authored' business? Sounds like a celebrity front for a ghost-writer.
..And I am PISSED OFF!
I had to find out from slashdot that he died ??
He was one of my scientific heroes!
Ok, ok- So I don't read Randi or SciAm on a regular basis, but you'd think that at least the "regular" news might have had a small mention about him this past weekend.
TV? Radio? Nope.
As soon as I heard of his death, I quickly opened up Google news.
Nary a mention.
When I put "Martin Gardner" into the search box, I came up (obviously) with the SciAm article, some other English lang scientific journals, and then a whole slew of FOREIGN LANGUAGE journals.
It's sad that our society and its mainstream news feeds currently spends so much on current gossip crap, and so little on items such as Martin Gardner's passing.
Hmmnn.. Well, maybe that's the way it always was...?
NO! It wasn't.
People were much more interested in the more sublime things 30 or 40 years ago. At least in North America. It's not my imagination..
I could keep ranting here- but perhaps I should shut up now.
RIP, Martin
.
- aqk
F U
A rare talent. RIP and thank you sir.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.