Flipped through this tome of a book that tells the stories surrounding the emergence of all the main sciences -- astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. Bryson's style is easy to read and generous with anecdotes.
Like the anecdote of the French man Le Gentil who waited an extra 8 years to observe the transit of Venus as he could not take accurate readings the first time, being held up in his schedule and caught on a rocky boat. 8 years later, his patient attempt was foiled by cloud cover for the exact duration of the transit. And so he packed up his things and returned to France, only to find that he had been declared dead in his absence, his wife having re-married and his possessions re-distributed. Poor guy!
Or the story of the Swedish guy who believed that gold could be distilled from urine and kept bats and bats of urine in his basement. He discovered phosphorus instead when the urine would spontaneously combust in contact with air. Due to the attention Sweden gave to this new element, they are still one of the largest match making centres in the world today.
Or the story of the bed-ridden inventor who invented a system of pulleys to help him manoeuvre in his bed, but ended up strangling in the ropes; or the story of the two men who accidentally and ignorantly discovered the static the universe was emitting since the beginning of time and so won nobel prizes; or the story of the discovery and subsequent loss of the first dinosaur bone in Iowa, USA.
If I learnt anything at all, it is that our quest for knowledge has been riddled by many lucky breaks.
Posted
on Friday, May 20, 2005 at 10:28 AM.
:)
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