Inquiring Minds

We will read Vaclav Smil’s book How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We Are Going, published in 2022 (ASIN: B09CDB69WT‎).

From the Amazon webpage: “An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible — a scientist’s investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish.… This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity: from energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future.”

Vaclav Smil is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Manitoba. He completed his graduate studies at the Carolinum University in Prague and Pennsylvania State University. His interdisciplinary research interests encompass a broad area of energy, environmental, food, population, economic, historical, and public-policy studies, and he has applied these approaches to energy, food, and environmental affairs of China.
These are the reading assignments:

January 9: Introduction, Chapter 1
January 30: Chapters 2–3
February 13: Chapter 4, Chapter 5 (stop at p. 140)
February 27: Chapter 5 (p. 141 to end), Chapter 6 (stop at p. 187)
March 6: Chapter 6 (p. 188 to end), Chapter 7, Appendix

Facilitator: Maria Penny retired from two careers, as a high-school physics teacher and as a scientific programmer. She earned a BA in physics from New York University and a PhD in science education from the University of Maryland.
 

Presenter Biography