Skip to main content

The Big Ideas in Science - Jon Evans ***

The starting point of a review like this has to be to congratulate the author on his achievement, Jon Evans, because getting all of science into one relatively short book is a massive (and thankless) task. Although inevitably the result is a fairly hectic dash through the material, with limited space for subtleness, Evans manages to make the experience readable and has a light touch that is effective without becoming too simplistic.

 There is only one reason this book doesn't get four stars - it's not the quality of the writing but rather the selection of the contents. Of course, there is bound to be plenty of stuff missed out - how else could you get all of science into 269 pages? But the balance is strangely skewed. Chemistry is pretty much omitted, though aspects of chemistry occur under other headings. But for me, the real problem is that physics is really under-represented. It's interesting to use Jim Al-Khalili's recent excellent physics summary title The World According to Physics as a guide. Al-Khalili rightly identifies three pillars of physics: relativity, quantum theory and thermodynamics. In Evans' book, quantum theory gets two pages (in a section labelled 'When Science Goes Bad'), thermodynamics gets three lines and there is no mention of relativity at all. That's like doing biology without mentioning genetics.

 If we overlook this oddity, many other topics get good coverage. The book starts with cosmology, astronomy, the beginnings of life and evolution. We then get plenty on DNA and genetics, cell biology, the immune system and the nervous system. Then there's a whole section on Earth science - geology and weather get an impressive 45 pages (which is why that physics and chemistry gap is so depressing). The final three sections are less science per se as meta-science, including some of the most interesting material on, for example, technology and materials (particularly graphene and nanomaterials), fraud in science, climate change (including why some doubt it) and future science and technology (mostly technology). We do get some physics in the technology section with subsections on energy and waves - but that doesn't make up for lacking those three pillars.

 It's not that there's anything much wrong with anything that's here - it's just that there are 50 to 100 pages missing. Okay, there is the occasional error, but every book has one or two - and it's particularly difficult when trying to cover everything. The one that stood out to me was that LUCA (the 'last universal common ancestor') is described as 'the very first life form' - in fact that 'last' bit means it's the most recent lifeform that is ancestor to all of us, not the very first. I'd also comment on the cover, which is decidedly mean to the author - his name doesn't appear on the spine at all, and you really have to search for it on the front.

 All in all, Evans has done an admirable job in what's here. I just wish there had been a bit more. It makes the subtitle somewhat ironic.
Paperback:    
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more