The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier

The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science Reviews

• 
  Chelsea

  Reading
  The Canon, A Chronology:
  
  Chapter One: "Oh, interesting. I'd never thought about it that way before. Ha ha, clever." *giggles*
  
  Chapter Two: "I had forgotten about that!" *feels superior for remembering the basics of probability* *chuckles at a drawn out word play*
  
  Chapter Three: "Huh, that's neat." (100th bad pun.) *crickets*
  
  Chapter Four: "I can't see the science for all of the terrible 'funny jokes'."
  
  Chapter Five: *feels the need to assault someone*
  
  Chapter Six: "YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY BE SERIOUS. WHO TOLD YOU TO WRITE LIKE THIS? HAVE YOU NO SELF RESPECT?"
  
  Chapter Seven: "YOU MADE THAT SCIENCE FACT UP SO YOU COULD FORCE THAT PUN. DON'T THINK I'M NOT ON TO YOU."
  
  Chapter Eight: *brain erases all previous scientific knowledge in self-defense, hoping to make the book end*
  
  Chelsea: *gives up, FINALLY*
  
  The science content was fascinating - broken down, but not dumbed down - and the scientists quoted were interesting and witty. The writing was atrocious, and made me want to stab people, starting with the author. The book gets an extra star for putting the very well done chapter on probability up front, so I could get through it before I began to hate the very existence of the universe for leading to the study of science and thus the writing of this book.
• 
  Joe

  Annoying is the fairest word I could come up with to describe The Canon after suffering through it for these past weeks. In fact, this is easily the most annoying book I've ever read, not because the science is poor or the topics contrived. In fact, the subject areas Angier chooses to describe are somewhat intuitive and logically ordered (for the most part).
  
  She just has this writing style that, well... it just makes me want to scream.
  
  "Peppers" isn't even the appropriate word. She sort of... "vomits" alliterative phrases into every possible nook and cranny of her work. Nine out of ten paragraphs (I said paragraphs, not pages or chapters) ends with an exhausting colloquialism, contrived personal experience or mixed metaphor. And ten out of ten of those literary devices is gunked up with painfully clunky alliteration, some of which doesn't even make sense.
  
  I don't think you understand how systemic it is though. Therefore, I'm going to patronizingly write the rest of this review in Angier's style to drive the point home. Here goes:
  
  My gut tells me the author thinks this syntactical tactic is either intellectually illustrative or seductively scholarly, like James Bond giving a Powerpoint presentation, but with slightly less ass slapping. It would be valuable if these stylistic stutters were better thought out or perhaps just better spread out across this accursed anthology. But they're not. They're uncomfortably packed together like the reliably rude commuters crammed onto the N train during my mundane morning migration to work.
  
  There is value in this book though, and that is the actual science. Unfortunately, it stands stoic and silent, drowned out by the ostensibly clever but officious and indefensible affectations we readers are brought to bear.
  
  To recapitulate my reticence and perhaps to highlight this haphazard heads-up: It's like a mighty mastodon masticated a healthy handful of diamonds and then defecated onto my lawn. Sure there are some gems in there, but I'd rather stay poor than fervently forage such feces.
  
  Don't read it.
• 
  Matthew

  I gave up on this one after about 100 pages. I hate not finishing books, but this one was so irritating it started to make me angry. Too often it seemed like the book was less about science than about showcasing Angier's insufferable cleverness. She couldn't seem to decide whether she wanted to be playfully incomprehensible in a Finnegan's Wakean way, or drolly incisive in a kind of Popish verse. The result was a bastard child caught somewhere between the two that had an annoying sing-song quality, a Dr. Seussical nonsensicall-ness that extended to making up words, a ludicrous love of alliteration (just like that last two clauses, in fact, but found in virtually every paragraph), and pop culture allusions so obscure that I spent more time on the semiotics than the science. For example, it took me a few minutes to puzzle out the connection between the Earth's core, soccer, and the name Wilson, until I finally realized she was referring to Castaway--some of the difficulty coming from the fact that Wilson was a volleyball, not a soccer ball--and by the time this all clicked together I had forgotten that the whole point of the weird connection was supposed to help explain atomic nuclei. This got to the point that I started to feel dumb, not because I couldn't understand the science, but because I couldn't parse her goddamn sentences. Anyway, if there's a main idea here, it's that the book blew.
• 
  Woodge

  Science is cool. I didn't think so back in high school but I like to think I've matured since then. Back then I evaded chemistry by taking an earth science course (Rocks for Jocks). Seems a shame because now I find that stuff very interesting. What Ms. Angier so ably and entertainingly covers in this slim -- under 300 pages -- volume is the scientific method, probabilities, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. You don't have to be a Ph.D. to understand it either. I only wish some of my teachers in high school had been as interesting as Ms. Angier. (In particular, my physics teacher in high school was a waste of meat.) I've read about several of these subjects before in some other entertaining books. Two that come to mind are Innumeracy by John Paulos and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I'd recommend all of these books as they complement each other and if you're interested in learning cool stuff and filling in a few gaps in your knowledge, these three books are excellent and a good place to start. And Ms. Angier has some fun turning a good phrase here and there. One passage that stood out was one in which she explains just what it means to be a scientific theory. It should be taught in school. The rigorous work and facts behind an established theory (like, say, evolution) makes a statement like "Of course, it's just a theory," sound especially obtuse.
• 
  Kate

  The subtitle" A whirligig tour of the beautiful basics of science, should have been my first clue, but i translated whirligig as more whirlwind and i bought the book. I assumed we would dash through the basic concepts of science, and through the race it would be a fun read for a topic I long to get my hands into again. But whirligig is actually a more accurate term for the spinning, circular prose, cliched phrases, lists of adjectives, and nonsensical metaphors plucked from thin air without bothering to establish a relationship to the topic. Reading the book was like watching a whirligig beetle dash in circles on the water, tossed about by its own wake and with no real direction or purpose. By way of example I give you this gem from page 134 ,
  
  "Perhaps nothing underscores carbon's chemical genius better than the breadth of its packaging options, from the dark, slippery, shavable format of graphite on one extreme, to fossilized starlight on the other- translucent, mesmeric, intransigent diamond, the hardest substance known, save for a human heart grown cold."
  
  Now, overlooking that this paragraph is one long rambling sentence, the author almost lost me when she described diamonds as fossilized starlight. The description struck me as overly fanciful, and if she had stopped there i would have given a nod to the poetry and continued to read. But the next part of the sentence offered me a long list of characteristics including the word mesmeric. In a book that is striving to be conversational, she chooses rather obscure and heady words to toss around. This gives me the feeling that while breaking down the science concepts into bite sized bits, she still wants to emphasize that she is a big, important writer. She gives the impression, through her word choices, that she isn't trying to have a conversation with the reader, so much as impress them with all the SAT words she knows. But even that is forgivable up to a point. She is very knowledgeable and I can trust she has done her homework and is writing accurately about her subject. However, then we come to the last part of the sentence, tacked on as if it were ashamed to even be a part of it. "Save for a human heart grown cold." made me stop reading, full stop. I couldn't get past it. Oh, eventually I did, but I had to take a break. There are many books and many pages in the world I want to read, and it is generally advisable for authors never to give readers an excuse to put down their book and pick up someone else's, because we may never pick their book up again.
  
  There was also this gem on page 119, "It is a cold, hard, tepid, flaccid, probabilistic truth." that was both an unnecessary list combined with terrible and nonsensical metaphors with an SAT word thrown in at the end that represents all I disagreed with about the writing style of this book.
  
  The prose is also littered with popular cultural references to try and draw parallels between the cool things everyone knows and the cool things Natalie Angier wants us to know about science. The problem was that while i understood the science concepts just fine, I often got stumped on the cultural reference that was supposed to make it clearer. (PBS broadcasts of Suze Orman?) The chapters were so littered with random metaphors and references that I found them to be distracting rather than further illuminating of her point. She likens chemical bonds to James Bond, referencing several actors who played the character out of context from the original comparison, which then drags the metaphor in fits and starts along for five or six pages. She talks about incompetent sewing in home ec, likens polarized molecules to Mickey mouse, and mentions how the grand canyon was made in the most convoluted way possible:
  
  "Give polarized water molecules about 6 million years, and they'll squeeze blood read beauty from stone, chipping 6,000 feet deep and 277 miles wide into Arizona's northern plateau, through limestone and sandstone and iron-rich shale, to scoop out a canyon the whole world can call Grand." pg 131
  
  All of these widely disparate cultural references, packed into a chapter and overlaid with the long running James Bond allegory made me feel like a Whirligig indeed. She has obviously limited herself to a strictly American audience by including so many cultural markers, but even as an American myself, her references spanned so many topics and generations that I lost more than a few myself.
  
  Scattered amidst the whirling prose were solid facts, truly witty quotes from scientists, and interesting ideas. The problem became there were so many bugs littering the surface, it was impossible to find the gems underneath.
  
• 
  Jason Pettus

  (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally here.)
  
  The more I learn about the history of science, the more I realize why it has such a precarious, semi-mystical reputation with so much of the general public by now; because when the modern "scientific process" was first formed in the 1600s, the first few generations of "scientists" were starting almost from scratch, meaning that the average member of the public could go out and replicate the experiments these people were doing, and understand for themselves what science is and why it's so important. (Indeed, it was this activity that got us both the terms "gentleman scientist" and "dilettante," descriptions you hardly ever hear applied to members of the general public anymore.) But as we all know by now, the collective body of scientific knowledge we now have actually grows exponentially, not in a linear fashion; and that means, for example, that 400 years after the subject was invented, most working scientists anymore are forced to devote their entire adult lives to studying and understanding everything that came before them in their field's history, leaving their current work looking in the eyes of most laypeople like incomprehensible gibberish. How nice would it be, then, to have a simple yet smart guide to just the basics of science all over again, the building blocks of each field first discovered back during the Renaissance and Enlightenment by the exact proto-scientists just mentioned, the same material covered in school during childhood but in this case written expressly for grown-ups.
  
  Well, that's exactly what The Canon is supposed to be, the newest book by Pulitzer winner and New York Times columnist Natalie Angier, in which she approached a whole series of scientists and asked them, "What are the four or five most basic things about your profession that you wish the general public all knew?" But unfortunately I wasn't able to actually get through much of The Canon, because it's sadly written in a style that I simply can't stand, the "quirky narrative magazine feature journalism" style -- you know, where every interview has to start with a description of what the person is wearing, and some funny metaquote from the beginning of the interview about the ground rules of the interview ("The first thing," Prince said to me as we sat down at the cafe, "is no questions about the baby"), and is just filled with inane psychoanalysis and personal observations by the quirky journalist in question, all of it infused with what's supposed to be a jokey sense of humor but is more often snide little passive-aggressive statements of jealousy concerning the people being interviewed.
  
  I can't freaking stand this style of journalism; and unfortunately the entirety of The Canon is written in this style, meaning I could barely make it through chapter one before quickly giving up altogether. And that's why, like I always do in these cases, I'm recusing myself from giving the book a formal 10-point score, because I simply didn't read enough of it to give it a fair rating. Sigh. Dear journalism industry: Please stop teaching generation after generation of young impressionable students to write this way, and certainly please stop handing them Pulitzer f-cking Prizes when they do. Give me sober, give me reflective, give me genuinely funny -- hell, give me unedited transcripts; but enough already with the quirky narrative magazine feature style of presenting interviews. Seriously, enough.
  
  Out of 10: N/A
• 
  Aimee

  I am reading this book slowly. It has some great ideas and I love the premise of laying out in simple, brief terms the basic tenets of science, but the writing style drives me crazy, and not in a good way.
  
  She uses similes and "cleverly" written conversational comments and she doesn't stop, there are 1-5 on every single page. These phrases have no value, they don't help illustrate or clarify a concept; they just comes across as oh-so-clever. That's okay once in a while, and I understand the desire to liven up what could be written in a very dull way, but it's a constant stream and you just want to put your hands on her shoulders, look her in the eye, and with a gentle tone tell her to stop trying so hard and if that doesn't work, scream "knock it off!!!"
  
  Here are five examples from a randomly selected page, pg 170: "...grow tall like aspiring totem poles..." Not just totem pole, but aspiring. Okay, whatever, but then one sentence later, "If you bought a euphorbia and nicknamed it Saguaro, your aunt from Tucson might not see any cause to correct you." What? "...the echidna looks like a Muppet." Does it? "...a stomach as rugged as a cement mixer..." am I reading a book written for children? "...through the guiding hand and cracking cat-o'-nine whip of natural selection..." STOP!
  
  Just a few more, I have to share. I randomly open the book again. This time to page 143. Let's see what's there...
  
  "If you combine sodium and chlorine, poof, they'll react instantaneously, heatedly: Sodom meets Gomorrah, and we're left with a pillar of salt." Ack! Then when she writes something useful like explaining that cells generate trace amounts of alcohol when burning energy and that's why a locker room can smell like a pub, I instinctively roll my eyes, but then realize that the that was actually useful information tucked away between all the clutter.
  
  Whew. Needed to get that off my chest. Overall though, I encourage and applaud her work as science basics need to be written about and read, and I'm sure some people love her writing style. It might just be me who feels bitchy after reading a few pages.
• 
  Kaylee

  Perhaps I hated this book because I have a science background. Perhaps I despised being talked to like a second grader because I actually know how to "think scientifically". And perhaps I loathed every second of my multiple tries at reading this because I'm no fun.
  
  But really, science background or not, this book is written like a kids book -- except with "witty" phrases every damn sentence instead of illustrations. I might not have had as much of a problem with it had I felt like she intended to dumb down everything, but she explicitly said she feels that the problem with science being "uninteresting" is that people gloss over many topics to make them more palatable.
  
  While not glossing over them, she certainly didn't give any depth. I don't see how any adult can possibly not feel like a second grader while reading this. Science is interesting only if you have an interest in it -- creating an interest is a worthy goal, and my kudos to her for trying. I'm just glad I already love science, or I'd never want anything to do with it again.
• 
  Marie desJardins

  I was really looking forward to reading this book, which purports to be a layperson's introduction to all things beautiful in science. But I can't imagine any layperson ever actually reading it. It's unbelievably long and dull -- the first chapter is 17 small-type pages about how people should like science more than they do, and makes the same points over and over again. The second chapter is 29 small-type pages about how science is cool. But it just meanders from point to point, with no particular organizational structure, and it very quickly becomes boring and tedious.
  
  I really only skimmed the rest of the book, because by this time I'd realized that this was really not an introduction to anything; it was more of a collection of random musings about random science-related topics. The chapter on Probability gives a few interesting examples of how probability theory, applied correctly, can lead to some nonintuitive results. Well, that's interesting, yes, but so what? The book doesn't go much of anywhere with it.
  
  Basically, I just thought this was a big disappointment: I can't imagine anybody who's not already really interested in science struggling their way through it (and those people are supposedly the intended audience); and somebody who's already interested and knows something about science isn't likely to learn much.
• 
  Dale

  The Canon is exactly what its subtitle says: a tour of the basics of science. Natalie Angier is a science writer; that is, a writer who is a knowledgeable observer of science and who is able to get scientists to explain things in terms the rest of us might understand. Her writing style is very light, loaded with enthusiasm, and a bit chatty at times. At first I found the chattiness to be slightly off-putting, but when I got to the chapters on material that I didn't know much about (molecular biology and chemistry), the light-hearted distractions were actually helpful in keeping me focused on the main points.
  
  There are chapters on scientific method, the scale of things, basic physics, chemistry, molecular biology, geology, and astronomy. I found that the less I knew about a subject the more I enjoyed the material. So the chemistry and molecular biology chapters really stood out. I had not really learned anything new about cellular biology since high school (except for inferred 'facts' from reading newspaper and magazine articles about new drugs or new viruses). So I found the chapter on molecular biology especially interesting. She devotes many pages to the busy activity inside every cell, ranging from protein synthesis to cell division to communication with other cells. This is really interesting stuff.
  
  Highly recommended.
• 
  Ryan

  My compulsion with finishing a text once I've started it us the only reason I made it to the final page of The Canon. Angier gets a C for effort - many interesting topics are considered and there were a number of thought-provoking passages. Two things made The Canon a tough read for me. First, Angier cannot go more than two paragraphs without throwing in some want-to-be-clever non sequitur. I believe Angier was trying to make the book user-friendly for the science-phobes, but these efforts fell flat and were far too prevalent. Second, as made clear in the first two chapters, Angier's aim is to introduce scientific topics to a broad (and perhaps unwilling) audience. She then takes every attempt to disparage the use of mathematics in science - which seems to contradict her higher purpose. Overall, a lackluster book that did not meet its own expectations.
• 
  Heather Browning

  I liked this more than I thought I might, given the reviews. The writing style was occasionally annoying but quite readable and often entertaining. My real issue was the lack of structure - the chapters seemed to wind through an unmarked path and the writing style meant this journey took a lot longer than perhaps it needed to. As someone familiar with science, it wasn't an issue, I could provide my own signposts, but I think it would be a major barrier to someone hoping to learn. Overall, I can't see this book succeeding in its aim of introducing science to people previously unfamiliar, as it was far to long and dense and I think it would be quite overwhelming.
• 
  Genia Lukin

  You know the joke that goes "sip, don't gulp"?
  
  It's about this book.
  
  It's only possible to read it without annoyance in very, very small pieces. I found myself reading a half a chapter - a chapter at most - every day, but no more. Go further, and the alcoholic intoxication induced by severe overdose of puns and jokes gave me vertigo.
  
  It's not that the jokes are all bad; no, some of them are moderately clever, many of them made me at least smile. I am quite benevolent towards puns. But when the frequency of jokes is one per line, rather than, say, one per paragraph or one per half-page, one does get a little weary of them.
  
  But, really, this is not my biggest quibble with the book. I confess, I expected something entirely different under the name "The Canon". I was eagerly awaiting the exploration of the scientific canon in its literary sense; what great works form the foundations of a modern scientific education? What sort of texts every scientist must have read? What great works define our understanding of the world?
  
  Instead, I got a 'science for beginners'. And that is a pity, because other books, more focused, do a much better job of enlightening beginners as to the basics of what each science does and is. However, we are sorely lacking in books that are intended for the middle levels; those of us who do understand what a quark is, how an electron cloud forms, how old the universe is, but are not professional astronomers, chemists or microbiologists.
  
  Since I do have something of a scientific background, and I did not flunk my high school chemistry, I found the book rather tedious, and sometimes more than a little dull - amid all the jokes, that is.
  
  Not to mention that, while it's obvious Angier is enthusiastic for her subject, she can get immeasurably preachy, letting that superior attitude get away with her. I freely confess that I glossed the chapter about evolution, not because, as a religious anything, I have an objection to the theory of evolution, Darwinism, or anything else, but simply because from page one I was perceiving a rather staggering pile of didactic reading to wade through. By all means, could we focus on the basics of science, and leave the hammering of morals for some other book?
  
  The moderate drizzle of moralisms doesn't focus on that chapter alone. It's less pervasive, but not at all nonexistent.
  
  It wasn't all bad, though. The chapter on geology I found moderately entertaining, geology being the 'weakest' of my sciences. even there, though, I thought she missed her mark as an author when she went away from plate tectonics to talk about the formation and propagation of life.
  
  In short, if you actually know anything about science, don't read this book. Pick up something else, let the good Ms. Angier preach to the as yet unconverted, and the generally uninformed.
• 
  Shawn

  I am torn...
  I enjoyed the ideas in this book (though I really didn't learn anything new) and in general I liked that the author worked to make the science approachable. The author obviously loves language and finds ways to bring pop culture references in to help non-scientifically minded readers understanding. I do think that this will in the longer term give the book a "dated" feel and someday make it unreadable by younger audiences.
  The problem I had was that at times the author seemed to be more focused on finding cute ways to say things than on the ideas themselves. The biggest reason for this seemed to be to avoid scaring any unwary readers with "math" or "hard" science. The best example of this comes right at the end when the author talks about the Drake equation. Rather than just give the equation and tell what the variables mean (to me a wonderful way to understand how astronomy intersects historical sciences), the author mentions, almost off-handedly, a few of the variables and then only really explains the last one.
  In all, a good way to bring the science fearful into a basic understanding that could be nurtured into interest or even love. However, probably not a book for someone who has seen their way through less flowery, more information dense tomes.
• 
  Sajjad thaier

  علي الاعتراف اني قد خرجت من هذا الكتب بمشاعر مختلطة بين الملل وخيبة الامل والفائدة ومتعة في بعض المواضع .
  
  الكتاب كان من المفروض ان يكون تبسيط للعلوم المنبوذة والتي ينظر الاخرون اليها بريبة وفخامة . كما لو ان العلم حكر على الاشخاص المختارين فقط ولايمكن لاي شخص الولوج فيه .
  
  فلذلك قامت الكاتبة بالالتقاء بعدة علماء بمختلف المجالات لكي يبسطوا العلوم للعامة . واختارت من العلوم :
  الفيزياء ,الكيمياء, البيولوجيا التطورية ,البيولوجية الجزيئية, الجيولوجيا و علم الفلك . مسوبقة بفصول في التفكير العلمي والاحتمالات والمعايرة . وهذه الفصول الثلاث برئيي تحوي فائدة تتجاوز الفصول العلمي الستة بمراحل .
  
  وقامت الكاتبة بشرح وافي لكل تخصص بصورة منفردة . وهو ما سبب نوع من الملل فهي خصصت تقريبا50 صفحة لكل فصل . 50 صفحة بدون فاصل مجرد شرح فهي تحاول تلخيص علم كامل في هذه الصفحات بدون تقسيم للموضوع بدون تبويب المواضيع وبدون تلخيص للافكار. بل تنتقل بالافكار بصورة مستمرة هي وروح دعابتها التي وضعت دعابات في الكتاب اكثر من المعلومات العلمية . حتى احيانا لم يمكنني التفريق بين الحقيقة والمزاح.
  
  اما من حيث المحتوى العلمي . ففي المقدمة قالت انها ستحاول ان تلخص هذه العلوم . لكن هذا ليس ما قامت به. ففي الفيزياء تكلمت فقط عن تركيب الذرات وميكانيكا الكم والكهرباء ثم الانتروبيا . بدون ذكر اقسام الفيزياء الاخرى ولو بشكل هامشي .
  
  وفي فصل التطور تحدثت انها تريد اثبات التطور واتت بمجموعة ادلة وكانت من قبيل : التطور حقيقة كالجاذبية . اجمع العلماء على صحة التطور . وبقت تكرر هذا الكلام مرارا وتكررا . والدليل الوحيد الذي يعتد به الذي ذكرته هو موضوع السجل الاحفوري الذي يبين زيادة تعقيد الكائنات بمرور الزمن .
  
  اما بقية الفصول فكانت مبهمة بالنسبة لي ما عدا علم الفلك . ولا يمكنني الحكم بسوء الكاتبة في الفصول الباقية لاني لم اطلع على هذه العلوم من قبل .
  
  لكن رغم السلبيات في الاسلوب والفكاهة السمجة .علي الاعتراف انه كان كتاب مفيد بالنسبة لي كثيرا وخصوصا في فصل الاحتمالات
• 
  Shirley

  My inner science nerd felt confused (the chapter on physics), nostalgic (molecular/cell biology), and downright fascinated and amazed (geology and astronomy) (but never bored) as I traversed through the whirligig tour. This book was great learning/review on the beautiful basics of science bundled with a rather random, charming, and accessible writing style. Although she apparently interviewed hundreds of eminent scientists for this book, Angier's appreciation of what the average layperson would find interesting shines especially in her details revealing the scale of things. (It apparently rained for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years straight to create the Earth's oceans!) Overall a fun and informative read.
• 
  John Kaufmann

  It was hard to give this two stars. The author gets the science right, and tells it in an lively, interesting way. But the reason I gave it only two stars was because it beats a dead horse. She gives an example of something, but not to leave anything to the imagination, she gives another example to illustrate her point, then another. All correct. All interesting. But enough already. Move on to the next topic.
• 
  Katie

  Very cool book. Everything you ever wanted to know about all kinds of scientific stuff -- from the names and sizes of the tiniest of particles, to the way static electricty really works. A great book for parents of curious kids. If only science teachers at my high school had been as engaging as this writer.
• 
  Lee

  There was some interesting science in here, but for me the book was ruined by her very annoying writing style, which made it a real chore. If you're looking for a concise introduction to general science, with some wit thrown in, then I'd say avoid this book altogether; Bill Bryson did it so much better in A Short History of Nearly Everything.
• 
  Joseph Muhsen

  أقترح أن يكون هذا الكتاب من الكتب الأولى في مكتبات المدارس والجامعات سواء أكانت علمية أم غيرها؛ لأنه كالشعر يصف العلم ويتغزل بزواياه (مبادئه).
  اذا كنت من محبي نسبية آينشتاين فقم بجولتك الزمكانية في مبادئ العلم- وإن كنت من معجبي الداروينية فاحزم امتعتك مع التأريخ التطوري للعلم.
  
  
• 
  عمر الحمادي

  كتاب رائع في أساسيات العلوم ... ينبغي أن يكون موجوداً في كل مكتبة منزلية لكي يكون مـعلماً شخصياً لشباب المستقبل... فلعله يكون دافعاً لهم لدخول عالم العلوم الطبيعية
• 
  Jamie Smith

  There is a lot of good information in this book, basic science clearly described. No technical knowledge is assumed, and no math is required, so it is easy to follow, and it has the added benefit of explaining recent developments in the areas it covers. There are chapters on probability, calibration, physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, geology, and astronomy. As a well known, Pulitzer Prize winning science writer, Natalie Angier was able to get access to leading scientists and researchers from top universities, who answered questions, explained what was going on in their fields, and made an effort to communicate what they would like non-specialists to know.
  
  Chapters usually start with a bit of human interest (an old journalist trick) as a narrative hook to ease the reader to the topic. For instance, the chapter on molecular biology starts with a discussion of the author’s nightly tooth brushing and flossing routine and uses it as a jumping off point for a discussion of bacteria. It then moves on to cells, and then to their inner workings: the nucleus, mitochondria, DNA, protein synthesis, and replication. The description of how enzymes unzip specific sections of a cell’s DNA to read the code for the specific protein needed at that moment is very good, just in-depth enough to give the general reader a sense of the wondrous complexity that is going on constantly within the trillions of cells that make up a person. There are plenty of moments like that in the book, the kind that make you say, “Wow, I didn’t know that – how interesting!”
  
  So, if it is a good introduction to modern science for the general reader, with lots of information provided by some of the leading specialists in their fields, why does this book have so many negative reviews? It is the writing style, which, in an attempt to be conversational and lighthearted, devolves into an endless series of puns, bad jokes, and cultural references. It just goes on and on. At first it seems odd, then distracting, then seriously annoying. Who writes like that, at least who outside of smart-alecky teenage contributors to high school newspapers? I found myself saying, “Please stop. Just stop. Stick with the subject at hand; it needs no puerile humor to make it interesting.”
  
  The book did have editors, I checked: Amanda and Jayne (last names not given, probably to protect their reputations). What were they thinking when they allowed the manuscript to be published like this? They should have wrestled the computer from the Angier’s hands and not allowed her to touch the keyboard again until she was safely back on her meds.
  
  The science content of this book is interesting and accessible, and there are many things to help a reader better understand the world around us. The strange and annoying writing style, however, made me wish it had been a better book.
• 
  William Schram

  Brilliant. Science writer and popularizer extraordinaire Natalie Angier writes scintillating passages on the glories of science. The uninitiated have misconceptions about what science does.
  
  Science is not unchanging; it is a mindset. Science is a way of seeing the world and making sense of it. People deride scientific ideas calling them theories when they don't fit their narrative. A scientific theory is a hypothesis that has undergone scrutiny on several levels. Gravity is a theory, but you don't find people denying that it exists. It just means that it fits all of our data and survived our prodding and poking.
  
  To elaborate on that matter, Aristotle said heavy things fall to earth, but I don't remember his specific reasoning. Galileo presented his findings on how objects fall but didn't have a mechanism to explain why. Isaac Newton proposed that gravity was a force that drew massive objects to one another. Newton provided equations, and if I recall, Kepler used data from Tycho Brahe to describe planetary orbits. That is all well and good; the equations all agreed that this planet should be here. However, a problem started with Mercury's orbit. You may search for the specifics, but Mercury moved unusually. Albert Einstein suggested the General Theory of Relativity supersede the Newtonian paradigm, and the theory worked perfectly.
  
  Angier's writing is both clear and concise. Although she indulges in some alliteration, I don't mind. The problem is that people are stubborn. The evidence is out there for countless numbers of things. Evolution is the biggest one I can think of, but many people deny events without looking at the evidence. Flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, inventors of "perpetual motion machines," and more populate the internet. It gives people a sounding board for their insane ideas.
  
  In any case, the people who need to read this book will disregard it as nonsense and try to find loopholes. The people who trust science and understand that cell phones, cars, vaccines, and more came from the minds of incredible individuals wielding science like a bludgeon don't need to read this.
  
  Thanks for reading my review, and see you next time.
• 
  Elazar

  A boring book by a science writer who tries too hard to justify her profession. I wasn't able to finish a single full chapter.
• 
  uwu

  يا بخت اللي مبايضها حديد بجد، احا على الإزعاج يا ناتالي خلاص عرفنا إنك ذكية نيك يلعن كسم ال scienticism والإحساس بالفوقية والحاجة لحشر تجارب شخصية محدش مهتم بيها.
  يا ربي، محدش يقرأ الخرا ده.
• 
  Suzanne

  Smart, fun, friendly book about the sciences, with a separate chapter for each: statistics, geology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, etc. Clears up a lot of bunk, and would be useful as a refresher to get a handle on each subject.
• 
  Jimbo

  I had learned or heard about over 90% of the topics in the book, but it was a great refresher. I understand all those ideas better now, and I can express them to others better too.
  
  This is a perfect science book for the masses. I do have a science background, but the ideas are simple without being dumbed down.
  
  Or if you're looking for useful analogies to help you teach others, this is a great source.