This may surprise anyone whose only exposure to me has been through my generally art-related (and/or ditzy posts) on internet forums–not to mention, this blog–but my background is science.  For true!  An Hon. BSc and everything ;)  And from my time at university, where I dabbled in areas from neuroanatomy to insect biology, it became easy not only to lose the forest for the trees, but to lose the trees for leaf spiracles.   Things have a way of getting dreary.  Sometimes, even now, I wonder how I ended up there… but Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything reminded me :)A Short History is an account of the history of scientific discovery; and since science, really, describes our physical world, it really is a history of  everything as far as we know it: the origins of the universe, the nature of the atom, evolution through natural selection, and so on.  However, one large difference between this book and my university texts is that while the information is gathered from scientists, it’s  written by a layperson for laypeople.

How many people have been turned off of science because it’s boring?  Many, many and more many, I’m sure, and yet science, at its core, should be extremely interesting.  In his introduction, Bryson relates his own experience as a child, when he first opened a geology textbook and saw the common globe-with-a-wedge-cut-out, showing the layers of the Earth, and felt a sense of wonder:

Excited, I took the book home that night and opened it before dinner–an action that I expect prompted my mother to feel my forehead and ask if I was all right–and, starting with the first page, I read.

And here’s the thing.  It wasn’t exciting at all.  It wasn’t actually altogether comprehensible.  Above all, it didn’t answer any of the questions that the illustration stirred up in a normal enquiring mind: How did we end up with a sun in the middle of our planet and how do they know how hot it is?  And if it is burning away down there, why isn’t the ground under our feet hot to the touch? [...] And how do you know this?  How did you figure it out?

But the author was strangely silent on such details–indeed, silent on everything but anticlines, synclines, axial faults and the like.  It was as if he wanted to keep the good stuff secret by making all of it soberly unfathomable.

Hmm, sounds like my experiences with geology too ;)

Bryson addresses this problem by conveying how knowledge doesn’t just appear, it’s built upon discoveries; discoveries that are made sometimes through years of careful research and sometimes through serendipitous luck, but always by people.  Scientists, as you will learn, can be as petty or as high-minded as anyone, and by telling the stories behind them, Bryson adds that little bit of anecdotal spice that addressed my need for gossip ;)  Bryson’s writing itself is easy to read and engaging, and entertaining while still being informative.  You can feel his enthusiasm for the subject.

One drawback to the book is that I personally wished it could have gone into more detail, at times.  While I realize it’s not a textbook, sometimes Bryson would mention laws or details in passing that I would only vaguely remember, and it would have been very handy to have had some more heavy explanations in the footnotes, so things would feel less glossed over, and would explain more of the “how” Bryson speaks of.  Also, speaking as a project manager for a company that does scientific art, I think a few more diagrams would have helped at times, too ;)

However, those complaints are really about something the book is not trying to be.  As it is, A Short History of Nearly Everything can be taken as a fun starting point to further exploration; a spark to rekindle your  sense of wonder in the world that surrounds us, and the scientific curiosity that makes us strive to understand it.

(Cheers to CaptainBinky for the recommendation and book :D)