PD Smith

The magical mystery tour of science

31 March 2008 | Reviewing, Writing & Poetry | 8 comments

I’ve just reviewed The Canon: The Beau­ti­ful Basics of Sci­ence, by Natal­ie Ang­i­er for The Inde­pen­dent. Her rea­son for writ­ing The Canon is excel­lent: name­ly, that sci­ence is fun: “It’s fun the way rich ideas are fun, the way see­ing beneath the skin of some­thing is fun.” Ang­ier’s book is a very good sur­vey of the big ideas of sci­ence, although I did have a few prob­lems with her writ­ing style, as you’ll see from the review.

Ang­i­er writes with par­tic­u­lar enthu­si­asm about the “out­ra­geous mag­ic” of astron­o­my. Although physi­cists, biol­o­gists and chemists might have an image prob­lem in the pub­lic domain (think nukes, Franken­foods, and pes­ti­cides), astronomers are the “respon­si­ble eco-tourists” of sci­ence. They probe the infi­nite depths of the cos­mos from a dis­tance with their tele­scopes and ask the real­ly big ques­tions: Where do we come from? How did it all begin?

“We are star stuff, a part of the cos­mos,” one sci­en­tist tells her. “The spe­cif­ic atoms in every cell of your body, my body, my son’s body, the body of your pet cat, were cooked up inside mas­sive stars. To me, that is one of the most amaz­ing con­clu­sions in the his­to­ry of sci­ence, and I want every­body to know about it.”

At the week­end, the Guardian ran my review of Dan O’Neil­l’s excel­lent The Fire­crack­er Boys: H‑Bombs, Inu­pi­at Eski­mos, and the Roots of the Envi­ron­men­tal Move­ment, as well as The Tran­si­tion Hand­book: From Oil Depen­den­cy to Local Resilience, by Rob Hop­kins. Read those here.

8 comments so far:

  1. Gary William Murning | 31 March 2008

    I’ve only recent­ly (the past year or so) start­ed to “revis­it” sci­ence seri­ous­ly after years of “dis­trac­tions”. I’ve always had an inter­est, but it was a much neglect­ed area in my life. Now, I’m hooked — to such a degree that I’m hard­ly read­ing an fic­tion (apart from… yup, sci­ence fic­tion!)

    I can under­stand Ang­ier’s anger. The won­der of sci­ence (Dawk­in’s Unweav­ing the Rain­bow is my favourite expres­sion of this “won­der”, inci­den­tal­ly) is com­mu­ni­cat­ed so lit­tle these days, and often bad­ly. It’s depress­ing — espe­cial­ly so when super­sti­tion slips in to take its place.

    In spite of it’s flaws, it sounds like a valient attempt.

  2. PD Smith | 31 March 2008

    Yes, I’m all in favour of the won­der of sci­ence (although I do think Dawkins is a bit harsh on lit­er­ary writ­ers for not engag­ing suf­fi­cient­ly with sci­ence) and I want­ed to like this book… but I just thought she rather over-egged the pud­ding — to use a good old phrase.

    Don’t let me put you off though! Give it a whirl and let me know what you think…

  3. Michael | 01 April 2008

    Hi, I feel left out here, as she wrote this one only for non-sci­en­tists … I am a huu­u­uge fan of her ear­li­er book “Woman — an inti­mate geog­ra­phy” though. I think that this is one of the best sci­ence books I have ever read. I com­plete­ly agree with Glo­ria Steinem’s ver­dict “any­one liv­ing in or near a female body should read this book”.

    btw, I’ve added you to my blogroll at http://www.proseandpassion.com , so it will be eas­i­er to stop by every once in a while …

  4. PD Smith | 01 April 2008

    Hi Michael

    I’ve not read that one although I’ve heard it’s good. I should add it to my list…

  5. Gary William Murning | 02 April 2008

    Yes, well, as much as I admire Dawkins, he does get car­ried away at times, does­n’t he? Can’t help wish­ing I’d had him as a sci­ence teacher at school, though… Dawkins for biol­o­gy, Feyn­man for physics… now, who for chem­istry?

    I think I’ll prob­a­bly give it a miss actu­al­ly, Peter… I’m not over­fond of overegged pud­dings — and my read­ing list is already pret­ty unre­al­is­tic for a sin­gle life­time 😉

  6. PD Smith | 02 April 2008

    Yes, I agree com­plete­ly about your choice of sci­ence teach­ers. Actu­al­ly I had a very good chem­istry teacher and always liked the sub­ject (in con­trast to physics, I have to admit).

    How about Philip Ball as a chem­istry teacher? A real­ly excel­lent writer. His biog­ra­phy of Paracel­sus was superb. I believe he’s got more than one new book out this year… Have a look at his homuncu­lus blog.

  7. Gary William Murning | 03 April 2008

    Not famil­iar with Philip Ball — though homuncu­lus is now safe­ly tucked away in the sci­ence sec­tion of my fee­dread­er. The Self-made Tapes­try looks like a must-read, too, but, boy, it ain’t cheap! (I’ve still put it in my Ama­zon bas­ket, though 😉 )

    I’ll have to stop com­ing here. You’ll have me in the work­house yet lol

  8. PD Smith | 03 April 2008

    glad to be able to spread the word…