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WillowOne's Positions

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Overview

Bryson, a travel writer with no scientific training, set out to understand what science actually knows about the universe, the Earth, and life, and how it found out. The result covers cosmology, geology, chemistry, particle physics, palaeontology, and evolution, told mainly through the people who did the work: the feuds, the accidents, the credit stolen and the careers ruined. It is a history of discovery as much as a summary of the discoveries, and Bryson's recurring theme is how recently, and how precariously, most of it was worked out.

Notes

The book to give someone who thinks science is a list of facts. It shows that nearly every fact we now take for granted was once a contested claim, often a mocked one, that won on evidence. It is also a useful corrective to the idea that scientists are a priesthood: they are shown here as vain, wrong, lucky, and occasionally heroic, which is to say people, and the method works anyway. That is the point.

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