An enlightening, enriching reading experience. Gives an elemental grounding in the 'life' and 'science' of scientists, the fountainheads who lent their shoulders for modern science and technology to rise tall.
As Isaac Asimov says,
"No one can really feel at home in the modern world and judge the nature of its problems -and the possible solutions to these problems - unless one has some intelligent notion of what science is up to."
John Gribbin's tome fills this need. It spans the most vibrant and athletic phase in the efflorescence of scientific thought, one that saw science breaking free from the vice-like grip of philosophers, mystics, religious orthodoxy and superstition to arrive at experimentally validated universal truths and laws governing natural phenomena.
The pace of progress in the period covered by the book is breathtaking. In 450 years to close of 20th century we moved from an erroneous faith in earth-centric universe to Big Bang and mapping the human genome. In the hundred years of 19th century number of scientists increased a hundred times- from 1000 in 1800 to 100000 in 1900, doubling every 15 year. Naturally inventions and discoveries too spurted alongside.
Gribbin tells this fascinating story most engrossingly, truly capturing the scintillating rapidity of sweeping changes in ideation , the explosive effervescence of scientific temper, and the lives of men behind this unfolding drama. He spares us the abstruse scientific concepts, jargons and the mathematical rigmarole that deter uninitiated from scientific literature. The attempt is to proselytize , entice the lay into the ways of science.
So he tells "about the people who made science and how they made it." The focus is on scientists struggling to balance turmoils of life with an insatiable want " for the pleasure of finding things out". The characters come alive and loom large in near propinquity.
The painstakingly tortuous scientific method of arriving at a true understanding of bewitching nature is bared. It took millennia to demonstrate that human life is no different from any other on earth though the evidence stared at us all the while ; only in the 19th century were Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace able to conclusively establish that given plenty of time human beings could emerge out of amoebas through the process of evolution by natural selection.
Gribbin demystifies science and lets the reader on to its enmeshing nature that keeps enfolding past 'truths' within new-found broader truths. For example, Einstein's theory of Relativity embraces the older Newton's laws of motion as a corollary.
The narrative style is languid, moving at a leisurely pace that allows readers time to assimilate, as if abiding by Gribbin's axiom that scientific progress proceeds incrementally, step-by- step , not in revolutionary jumps. The author exemplifies his stance with copious anecdotal references throughout the book.
By any reckoning the text isn't a telegraphic record , rather it is a beguiling fleshing out of pioneers with their trail blazing insights fluidly concatenated with other ongoing scientific developments. In fact, two biographies merge in a single stream- of the scientist, and of science. Gribbin populates his tome with scientists coming from all walks of life - the poor, the rich, dukes ,earls, aristocrats and nobles turned amateurs, advisers and physicians to kings and queens, and scientists wielding political power. All made significant contributions.
Above all, Gribbin de-haloes, de- pedestalises them. That's what makes the book such a pleasurable read. Geniuses they may well be, but they show up as neither 'devas' nor 'danavas" but just 'aam aadmis' with the inevitable baggage of human frailties and foibles. There is the philandering Hooke fornicating with his maidservants not even sparing his live-in 15 year old niece ; there is Newton who only 'knows' men ; there is Boltzmann who cannot live to see his work go abegging and hangs himself ; there is Cavendish, 'the wisest among the rich' desiring no more than 'just a leg of mutton' on his dinner plate 365 days a year. And there is Ray who needs to be a subsizar, 'servant' student ,to a rich 'master' student cleaning even the 'master's chamber pots to pay his way through university education.
Interspersed with occasional flashes of pure scientific brilliance is competitive envy, hate, upmanship and vindictiveness, and other shades of sordid greyness that bedevil personal relationships at the peer level. The irascible, arrogant and spiteful Newton held back publication of his epic 'Optick' for thirty years waiting for Hooke to die. Earlier, Hooke had accused him of stealing credit for discovery of fringes. He published it within a year of Hooke's death without giving him any credit. Also ensuring that Hooke's portrait in the gallery of the Royal Society got mysteriously lost.
From the times when "for three shillings a meal included a choice of nine dishes of meat, poultry or fish, two fruit pies ,plum pudding, butter and cheese ,and wine ,porter or lemonade.", and science a gentlemanly pursuit that let a 'Generalist' scientist like Newton to wear many hats- from alchemy to optics to gravity to Master of the Royal Mint- the book takes us to science being made by 'professional' scientists in efficiently organised research laboratories.
While Lord Kelvin ,and Michelson six years before him , were rudely disabused of their belief that physics would henceforth be limited to finding truths in the sixth decimal place, they were not so wayward in one respect - history of science will never again be a pageant of colorful, luminescent, idiosyncratic , fiercely individualistic and domineering personages notching up birdies on the golf course of science. No Newton will sit under trees brooding over falling apples or an Einstein quibble 'God does not play Dice'.Why ?
Today, Science lies sequestered in ivory towers of research institutes and embedded in unfathomably complex gadgetry, super duper computing, data crunching and analysing contraptions ,and incomprehensible terminology. The scientists within are no less brilliant but stay mostly aloof and unheard. They have made life much , much easier for all of us but they lack the flamboyance, dash and versatility of the founding fathers. Science flourishes but the 'thrill' of 'making' it lies interred.
Gribbin has done well to preserve their memory in his history of 'The Scientists'. Who knows there may be no further history to write if Francis Fukuyama's dire prognosis 'History itself might be at an end' fructifies. So savour what Gribbin has so engagingly compiled.
PS : In the 'dark ages' it was commonly held that a magnet got deactivated by rubbing it with garlic. Into 21st century we hear from a corner of India that layering the back of a mobile set with cow dung eliminates all its harmful radiation. Do hope that when history of science in 21st century is written it does not record- Science and Superstition continued as bed fellows !
"No one can really feel at home in the modern world and judge the nature of its problems -and the possible solutions to these problems - unless one has some intelligent notion of what science is up to."
John Gribbin's tome fills this need. It spans the most vibrant and athletic phase in the efflorescence of scientific thought, one that saw science breaking free from the vice-like grip of philosophers, mystics, religious orthodoxy and superstition to arrive at experimentally validated universal truths and laws governing natural phenomena.
The pace of progress in the period covered by the book is breathtaking. In 450 years to close of 20th century we moved from an erroneous faith in earth-centric universe to Big Bang and mapping the human genome. In the hundred years of 19th century number of scientists increased a hundred times- from 1000 in 1800 to 100000 in 1900, doubling every 15 year. Naturally inventions and discoveries too spurted alongside.
Gribbin tells this fascinating story most engrossingly, truly capturing the scintillating rapidity of sweeping changes in ideation , the explosive effervescence of scientific temper, and the lives of men behind this unfolding drama. He spares us the abstruse scientific concepts, jargons and the mathematical rigmarole that deter uninitiated from scientific literature. The attempt is to proselytize , entice the lay into the ways of science.
So he tells "about the people who made science and how they made it." The focus is on scientists struggling to balance turmoils of life with an insatiable want " for the pleasure of finding things out". The characters come alive and loom large in near propinquity.
The painstakingly tortuous scientific method of arriving at a true understanding of bewitching nature is bared. It took millennia to demonstrate that human life is no different from any other on earth though the evidence stared at us all the while ; only in the 19th century were Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace able to conclusively establish that given plenty of time human beings could emerge out of amoebas through the process of evolution by natural selection.
Gribbin demystifies science and lets the reader on to its enmeshing nature that keeps enfolding past 'truths' within new-found broader truths. For example, Einstein's theory of Relativity embraces the older Newton's laws of motion as a corollary.
The narrative style is languid, moving at a leisurely pace that allows readers time to assimilate, as if abiding by Gribbin's axiom that scientific progress proceeds incrementally, step-by- step , not in revolutionary jumps. The author exemplifies his stance with copious anecdotal references throughout the book.
By any reckoning the text isn't a telegraphic record , rather it is a beguiling fleshing out of pioneers with their trail blazing insights fluidly concatenated with other ongoing scientific developments. In fact, two biographies merge in a single stream- of the scientist, and of science. Gribbin populates his tome with scientists coming from all walks of life - the poor, the rich, dukes ,earls, aristocrats and nobles turned amateurs, advisers and physicians to kings and queens, and scientists wielding political power. All made significant contributions.
Above all, Gribbin de-haloes, de- pedestalises them. That's what makes the book such a pleasurable read. Geniuses they may well be, but they show up as neither 'devas' nor 'danavas" but just 'aam aadmis' with the inevitable baggage of human frailties and foibles. There is the philandering Hooke fornicating with his maidservants not even sparing his live-in 15 year old niece ; there is Newton who only 'knows' men ; there is Boltzmann who cannot live to see his work go abegging and hangs himself ; there is Cavendish, 'the wisest among the rich' desiring no more than 'just a leg of mutton' on his dinner plate 365 days a year. And there is Ray who needs to be a subsizar, 'servant' student ,to a rich 'master' student cleaning even the 'master's chamber pots to pay his way through university education.
Interspersed with occasional flashes of pure scientific brilliance is competitive envy, hate, upmanship and vindictiveness, and other shades of sordid greyness that bedevil personal relationships at the peer level. The irascible, arrogant and spiteful Newton held back publication of his epic 'Optick' for thirty years waiting for Hooke to die. Earlier, Hooke had accused him of stealing credit for discovery of fringes. He published it within a year of Hooke's death without giving him any credit. Also ensuring that Hooke's portrait in the gallery of the Royal Society got mysteriously lost.
From the times when "for three shillings a meal included a choice of nine dishes of meat, poultry or fish, two fruit pies ,plum pudding, butter and cheese ,and wine ,porter or lemonade.", and science a gentlemanly pursuit that let a 'Generalist' scientist like Newton to wear many hats- from alchemy to optics to gravity to Master of the Royal Mint- the book takes us to science being made by 'professional' scientists in efficiently organised research laboratories.
While Lord Kelvin ,and Michelson six years before him , were rudely disabused of their belief that physics would henceforth be limited to finding truths in the sixth decimal place, they were not so wayward in one respect - history of science will never again be a pageant of colorful, luminescent, idiosyncratic , fiercely individualistic and domineering personages notching up birdies on the golf course of science. No Newton will sit under trees brooding over falling apples or an Einstein quibble 'God does not play Dice'.Why ?
Today, Science lies sequestered in ivory towers of research institutes and embedded in unfathomably complex gadgetry, super duper computing, data crunching and analysing contraptions ,and incomprehensible terminology. The scientists within are no less brilliant but stay mostly aloof and unheard. They have made life much , much easier for all of us but they lack the flamboyance, dash and versatility of the founding fathers. Science flourishes but the 'thrill' of 'making' it lies interred.
Gribbin has done well to preserve their memory in his history of 'The Scientists'. Who knows there may be no further history to write if Francis Fukuyama's dire prognosis 'History itself might be at an end' fructifies. So savour what Gribbin has so engagingly compiled.
PS : In the 'dark ages' it was commonly held that a magnet got deactivated by rubbing it with garlic. Into 21st century we hear from a corner of India that layering the back of a mobile set with cow dung eliminates all its harmful radiation. Do hope that when history of science in 21st century is written it does not record- Science and Superstition continued as bed fellows !
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