View source for A Teaspoon and an Open Mind by Michael White

{{infobox1
|title=A Teaspoon and an Open Mind
|sort=Teaspoon and an Open Mind
|author=Michael White
|reviewer=Paul Harrop
|genre=Popular Science
|summary=Are time travel and eternal life possible, or merely the stuff of fantasy? The book shows clearly where science fiction ends and science fact begins.
|rating=3.5
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Yes
|pages=192
|publisher=Penguin Books Ltd
|date=November 2006
|isbn=014102481X
|cover=014102481X
|aznuk=014102481X
|aznus=014102481X
}}
A less cryptic, but more concise, title for this book could have been 'Who
Knows?' For it uses as a springboard the current revival of the long-running
BBC sci-fi series Dr Who. Its mission: to boldly analyse the things The
Doctor takes for granted. Based on the timelord's abilities (time travel;
regeneration) or other implications of the show (super-civilisations and
robots) it briefly surveys the contemporary frontiers of science.

British writer Michael White's credentials come from a six-year stint
teaching science at a sixth-form college in Oxford. But he has also written
25 other books. These include biographies of Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
Currently based in Australia, White has been a science editor on GQ magazine
and a Sunday Express columnist.

His new book is pitched somewhere between [[:Category:Stephen Hawking|Stephen Hawking's]] ''Brief History of Time'',
and [[:Category:Bill Bryson|Bill Bryson's]] similarly concise chronicle of everything. It takes an
enthusiastic but sceptical look at the cherished fantasies, not just of
Doctor Who fans, but of science fiction writers from Mary Shelley onwards.
Many of these are also mankind's oldest longings: to live forever, to travel
beyond the stars; to see into the future, to re-visit the past, or to
believe that, somewhere out there, are greater beings than ourselves.

The sad news from this book is that most of those desires will stay
unfulfilled. With admirable clarity, White sets out the universal laws which
mean that much science fiction will never become science fact. But his
bracing realism is balanced by an exciting sense of possibilities. He shows
that technology has repeatedly outstripped human imagination throughout
history. Early on, he quotes the respected scientist Lord Kelvin's 1892
claim that "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." Eleven years
later, the Wright brothers took their first flight.

Readers looking for analysis of Dr Who's abilities may be disappointed by
this book. For much of it, apart from a final summary chapter, the Doctor is
hardly mentioned. So some of the sci-fi phenomena tackled here have little
to do with the show. His chapter on teleportation for example, begins by
admitting that the Tardis rarely teleports. In fact, it has more to do with
the 'beam me up Scotty' of Star Trek. The chapter on telepathy and
telekinesis seemed equally tenuous. A previous Michael White book on the
science of the X-Files also deals with this subject. So I did wonder whether
a bit of authorial recycling had gone on here.

However, it's a rare skill to explain the most advanced science without
resorting to massive over-simplifications or childish analogies. White
generally pulls it off. Even I thought I'd grasped the basics of Einstein's
theory of relativity or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. And the
mind-boggling mathematics and paradoxes surrounding time travel seemed
almost within my grasp.

I also find it oddly comforting to be faced with the insignificance of the
Earth and of mankind within infinity of space. It puts our everyday worries
into perspective. White offers many reminders of that. Other readers may be
less enchanted by his offhand dismissal of the barmier likes of the
Theosophists and the alien interventionist theories of Erich "Chariots of
the Gods' Von Daniken.

White backs up his position with numerous facts and sensible arguments.
Amazing statistics abound. For example, a gram of anti-matter is, he claims,
worth £10,000,000,000,000,000. And interstellar travellers, even at the
near-impossible speeds of only a fraction of the speed of light, would take
thousands of years to reach our nearest stars.

The most tangible and exciting frontiers of science explored in the book are
those around human longevity. Cloning and stem cell research, and future
prosthetic developments are among the most achievable and immediate ways in
which fiction could become fact. But as elsewhere, White's excitement at
such possibilities is tempered by a sober realism and an acknowledgement of
the moral implications.

In a short book, it is inevitable that detail is glossed over or simplified.
When you go from the lost city of Atlantis to a discussion of nanobots in a
few pages, you'll inevitably provide more breadth than depth. So a short
bibliography would have been useful for those inspired to explore these
ideas further.

But in the end, what impressed me most about this book was its demonstration
that science is at least, if not more, exciting than fiction. References to
Dr Who reminded me only of its clunky sets and hammy acting. By contrast,
the possibilities offered by cyclotrons and cybernetics are infinitely more
glamorous.

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