Scientific American
“In his new book, The Primacy of Doubt, climate physicist Tim Palmer argues that the science of uncertainty is woefully underappreciated by the public even though it is central to nearly every field of research. Embracing uncertainty and harnessing “the science of chaos,” he says, could help us unlock new understandings of the world, from climate change to emerging diseases to the next economic crash”
“Palmer gets specific with accessible, everyday examples… [and] excels in explaining evolving areas of research where reducing uncertainty is vital to figuring out just how bad things could get, such as whether clouds will speed up or slow down warming… The Primacy of Doubt makes a compelling case for either reducing uncertainty or operating with confidence in the “reliability” of the uncertainty that remains.”
Popular science
This is quite possibly the best popular science book I've ever read (and I've read many hundreds). To describe what Tim Palmer, a physicist turned meteorologist, does in simple terms does not do it justice. But essentially he explores the nature of (mathematically) chaotic systems and shows how we can deal better with uncertainty, even using his expertise to propose a different way to look at the lack of local reality in quantum physics.
Oxford alumni
World famous physicist Professor Tim Palmer (Wolfson, 1974) discusses his life’s work, distilled into a remarkable book aimed at the general public
Climate etc.
Tim Palmer’s new book has just been published: “The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World”
This book is a physics-intellectual feast. Must read.
Nature
Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks.
Anyone intrigued by the uncertainty of weather forecasts will appreciate this important, if complicated, book. Physicist Tim Palmer has spent much of his career researching ensemble prediction — using many models with varying initial conditions, rather than a single model.
kirkus
An exploration of the amorphous concept of uncertainty, “an essential part of the human condition.”
Uncertainty is another name for chaos, a fascinating concept largely unknown until the 1950s. Palmer, a professor of physics at Oxford, works hard to explain it to lay readers. He begins with Newton’s law of gravity, which can predict the Earth-sun orbit precisely into the distant future but only works with two gravitating bodies.
Non-Fiction Reviews
In The Primacy of Doubt Tim Palmer provides an interesting, sometimes debatable (but still interesting) journey through aspects of chaos theory as it applies to climate change, the CoVID pandemic and predicting financial crashes. It then goes on to fly some heavy duty kites, including that aspects of quantum theory may actually be chaotic and from that, speculate as to the possible the nature of the Universe.
MAA
Mathematical Association of America
The writing style is on the "serious" side of popular science exposition, clear and well-written throughout, with the usual amount of topic history attached.
As to content, the centrepiece of this book is the discussion of weather forecasting (Chapter 5) and climate modeling (Chapter 6). These are exemplars of valuable clear and interesting exposition by an expert.
Publishers weekly
Physicist Palmer delivers a challenging but rewarding look at how uncertainty helps scientists make sense of the world. Much of the work draws on “the science of chaos,” which Palmer writes has “impacted... almost all branches of science: not only astronomy, meteorology, and ecology, but chemistry, engineering, biology, and social science.”