Since reading about this book on Wired I've been torn. Yes, I think there is a place for food research. I think researching how food reacts to certain forces and chemical changes is a noble pursuit. Calling this a cook book, or really anything to do with cuisine is where it destroys credibility. To believe that chefs or cooks will be able to preform extremely complicated, multi-stage applications, using expensive and in some cases experimental machinery, raises the ire of anyone with common sense. No, I haven't read the book. It's defenders say there's more to it than that. Maybe there is, but every review I've read says it advocates an obsessive sensibility, unreproducible in almost any real kitchen. Where does art begin and craft leave off? That's a hard question. I've always had a problem with people taking something we all must do, like eating, and making it something where all but the very elite can participate in it. I question the morality of charging over $250 for dinner. Yet, if we follow the Modernist Cuisine, we should have more of it. Chefs should be creating food that no one but the super-rich can afford. So yes to food science, no to taking a craft and turning it into the unreachable. No to the obsessive perfectionists who move what we should all be doing into the realm of the gods. Yes to knowing the principles, and cooking from the heart.