elderberrywine (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
elderberrywine) wrote2005-06-01 09:40 am
elderberrywine) wrote2005-06-01 09:40 am
Non-LOTR, nay, non-fiction rec.
I don't know if y'all have heard of Bill Bryson, but most of his books (best known - A Walk in the Woods) are travel books. But he has also written a sort of overview of science - wait! don't run away! - that is one of the funniest books I've read in forever, plus actually using a rather unique, albeit somewhat skewed, perspective on it all. No math or previous science background required here, folks. For a taste, check this out:
In his introduction, he explains being captivated by an illustration in his fifth grade science text that showed the earth with a wedge-shaped hunk cut out to show the various layers. And as he explains, "I clearly remember being transfixed. I suspect, in honesty, my initial interest was based on a private image of streams of unsuspecting motorists in the American plains states plunging over the edge of a sudden 4,000-mile-high cliff running between Central America and the North Pole", but when he tried to learn more, he found that science texts tended to be deadly dull, as if there was "a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting".
So he decided to write the book he did. What I especially love about it is that it covers the histories of the various sciences and how discoveries in one field ignited advancements in others; not treating the sciences as stand-alone subjects. And most of it is about the wildly eccentric group of people who figured these things out, often accidentally, and how their frequently bizarre personalities and feuds actually affected what we know today.
For example, there was poor James Hutton, the first man, in 1795, to really get a handle on the forces that shape the Earth, and the resulting conclusion of how old the Earth actually is. But unfortunately, although a lovely man, he "was, as one biographer observed with an all but audible sigh, 'almost entirely devoid of rhetorical accomplishments'. Nearly every line he penned was an invitation to slumber." And then quotes him, totally proving his point. Alas, although "encouraged by his friends to expand his theory, in the touching hope that he might somehow stumble into clarity in a more expansive format, Hutton spent the next ten years preparing his magnum opus, which was published in two volumes in 1795. Together, the two volumes ran to nearly a thousand pages, and were, remarkably, worse than even his most pessimistic friends had feared. So, unfortunately, although he single-handedly invented geology, it was nearly fifty years until people figured out enough of what he had been getting at and put it together with the dinosaur bones that were starting to crop up, and bingo! You have paleontology.
And then consider the case of the poor Swedish chemist, Karl Scheele, discoverer of many of the most important elements (nitrogen, oxygen, etc.) and compounds (such as ammonia and glycerin), but little known or credited today, since he had the unfortunate habit of tasting a little of the stuff he worked with. He died at the age of 43, "found dead at his workbench surrounded by an array of toxic chemicals, any one of which could have accounted for the stunned and terminal look on his face."
Ahahaha! I love this book.
In his introduction, he explains being captivated by an illustration in his fifth grade science text that showed the earth with a wedge-shaped hunk cut out to show the various layers. And as he explains, "I clearly remember being transfixed. I suspect, in honesty, my initial interest was based on a private image of streams of unsuspecting motorists in the American plains states plunging over the edge of a sudden 4,000-mile-high cliff running between Central America and the North Pole", but when he tried to learn more, he found that science texts tended to be deadly dull, as if there was "a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting".
So he decided to write the book he did. What I especially love about it is that it covers the histories of the various sciences and how discoveries in one field ignited advancements in others; not treating the sciences as stand-alone subjects. And most of it is about the wildly eccentric group of people who figured these things out, often accidentally, and how their frequently bizarre personalities and feuds actually affected what we know today.
For example, there was poor James Hutton, the first man, in 1795, to really get a handle on the forces that shape the Earth, and the resulting conclusion of how old the Earth actually is. But unfortunately, although a lovely man, he "was, as one biographer observed with an all but audible sigh, 'almost entirely devoid of rhetorical accomplishments'. Nearly every line he penned was an invitation to slumber." And then quotes him, totally proving his point. Alas, although "encouraged by his friends to expand his theory, in the touching hope that he might somehow stumble into clarity in a more expansive format, Hutton spent the next ten years preparing his magnum opus, which was published in two volumes in 1795. Together, the two volumes ran to nearly a thousand pages, and were, remarkably, worse than even his most pessimistic friends had feared. So, unfortunately, although he single-handedly invented geology, it was nearly fifty years until people figured out enough of what he had been getting at and put it together with the dinosaur bones that were starting to crop up, and bingo! You have paleontology.
And then consider the case of the poor Swedish chemist, Karl Scheele, discoverer of many of the most important elements (nitrogen, oxygen, etc.) and compounds (such as ammonia and glycerin), but little known or credited today, since he had the unfortunate habit of tasting a little of the stuff he worked with. He died at the age of 43, "found dead at his workbench surrounded by an array of toxic chemicals, any one of which could have accounted for the stunned and terminal look on his face."
Ahahaha! I love this book.
no subject
no subject
no subject
These are some very funny passages and it sounds like a great book.
>>And most of it is about the wildly eccentric group of people who figured these things out, often accidentally, and how their frequently bizarre personalities and feuds actually affected what we know today.>>
This is the most wonderful truth of life, how important discoveries actually happen. Thank you.
*p.s.* I'll be calling you soon.
no subject
*Good!*