Bedeviled

A Shadow History of Demons in Science

By: Jimena Canales

Narrated by: Peter Berkrot

How scientists through the ages have conducted thought experiments using imaginary entities―demons―to test the laws of nature and push the frontiers of what is possible

Science may be known for banishing the demons of superstition from the modern world. Yet just as the demon-haunted world was being exorcized by the enlightening power of reason, a new kind of demon mischievously materialized in the scientific imagination itself. Scientists began to employ hypothetical beings to perform certain roles in thought experiments―experiments that can only be done in the imagination―and these impish assistants helped scientists achieve major breakthroughs that pushed forward the frontiers of science and technology.

Spanning four centuries of discovery―from René Descartes, whose demon could hijack sensorial reality, to James Clerk Maxwell, whose molecular-sized demon deftly broke the second law of thermodynamics, to Darwin, Einstein, Feynman, and beyond―Jimena Canales tells a shadow history of science and the demons that bedevil it. She reveals how the greatest scientific thinkers used demons to explore problems, test the limits of what is possible, and better understand nature. Their imaginary familiars helped unlock the secrets of entropy, heredity, relativity, quantum mechanics, and other scientific wonders―and continue to inspire breakthroughs in the realms of computer science, artificial intelligence, and economics today.

The world may no longer be haunted as it once was, but the demons of the scientific imagination are alive and well, continuing to play a vital role in scientists' efforts to explore the unknown and make the impossible real.

©2020 Jimena Canales (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"Jimena Canales comes at science from a strange and original angle―and it pays off brilliantly. Listen to the demons!" (James Gleick, author of Time Travel: A History)

"Hovering between the human and the divine, the thought experiment and whimsy, the demons of science do an impressive amount of conceptual work, as Jimena Canales shows in her wide-ranging, readable book. By hunting down the demons of physics, biology, economics, and other sciences, Canales writes a new history of modern science from a fresh and imaginative viewpoint." (Lorraine Daston, director emerita, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin)

"Jimena Canales is one of the finest contemporary writers on science, at once a dedicated scholar and a captivating entertainer. In Bedeviled, she has hit on a wonderfully curious subject, and has written a fascinating book. Who knew how many scientists had their own little devils whispering into their ears?" (John Banville, author of Mrs. Osmond)

brilliant, creative, original, masterly written!

This fantastic book will change the way we think. It is so well written it deserves a literature prize, her ideas are really new. Fantastic!

best broad science history book in years

the author is brilliant in tying together what would seem to be a trivial connection among so many aspects of the last few centuries of scientific creativity - the usages of the word "demon" and "daemon".
she teases out a much deeper set if connections than I would have imagined, and in the end, ties it all together with major ideas from the philosophy of science from Kuhn, Feyerabend, Popper, and others.
Each chapter introduces a new field of science, a way of thinking based in the *invention* of "fictional" concepts (the demons) that have played a major role in thinking scientifically.

it's both fun, and also profound.

ruined by the narration

Now - i am sure i'll buy the kindle version but the narration is unbearable.