Skip to main content

Accidental - Tim James ***

Tim James' writing style is a bit like going to see a comedian who only tells one-liners. Initially it's amazing and highly entertaining, but eventually it can get a touch wearing. Having said that, thanks to the sheer variety of the content, James manages to keep the reader interested, and the short entries (not one liners, but mostly two to three pages), which feel as if they are coming at you at breakneck speed, make it decidedly moreish.

James is writing about unintentional scientific breakthroughs, which he divides into clumsiness; misfortunes - where things went wrong for the desired outcome, but then achieved something different (a fair number of these are medical); surprises, where results are unexpected; and eurekas, where a major breakthrough is caused by an apparently insignificant observation or comment.

The topics are wide ranging - everything from guncotton to the telephone, Super Soakers (oddly in the 'major breakthrough' Eureka section) to superglue. It's not all inventions, either (though somehow these feel the most appealing) - there are longer pieces, for example, on electromagnetic waves, from Newton's rainbow to gamma rays, and on the Belyayev silver fox experiment with its significance for views on adaption and genetics. And the icing on the cake is that most of the pieces include entertaining stories that bring the accidental discovery alive.

I did genuinely enjoy reading this book, but it has two flaws, the bigger of which pulled it down from 4 to 3 stars for me. The smaller one is that in his mad rush, James can give insufficient detail. For example, he tells of a student called George Dantzig who arrived late at a maths lecture, copied down what he thought was the homework from the blackboard and duly solved the problem, only to discover that it was 'one of the most difficult unsolved mathematical problems in history'. Only we're never told anything about the problem itself. In reality there were two problems, both in statistics, neither of which were key unsolved mathematical problems - and it would have been nice to have had a little detail. (James doesn't mention the obvious inspiration here for Good Will Hunting either.)

The bigger issue is that there's quite a lot that is inaccurate (to be fair to James, the exaggeration mentioned above came from Dantzig's obituary, but there are better sources). A couple of examples. In the story of penicillin - an essential for a book like this - we are told that Fleming made use of Penicillium rubrum, while a few years later a better alternative was discover in the US: 'the bacteria Penicillium rubrum'. Leaving aside the obvious fact that a bacterium is not a mould, neither mould was actually Penicillium rubrum (admittedly Fleming's was initially mistaken for this) - and they obviously weren't the same species or there wouldn't be much point

Later on we learn about the Eadweard Muybridge's development of moving pictures - this story is littered with errors. James connects everything from Muybridge changing his name (originally Edward Muggeridge) to his development of moving pictures to a disastrous accident where he suffered a head injury. In fact, Muybridge started changing his name long before the accident and his ideas were not based on 'time slowing down in the accident' but a combination of existing toys like the zoetrope, and his blossoming career as a photographer. He was also not acquitted on a murder charge, as James says, on the grounds of brain damage - this approach was tried and failed. His defence lawyer changed tack, and Muybridge was acquitted because his actions were considered the correct response to adultery by a jury. Finally we are told that moving pictures work by persistence of vision, a Victorian explanation that has long proved incorrect. (Perhaps James should have read this book.)

These and other errors are unfortunate, because this is a genuinely fun book that keeps up the interest in its frantic pace. If you can live with not everything being exactly accurate, though, it's well worth the read.

Hardback:   
Kindle 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...