Amazing Book!

While I read a lot of non-fiction, it’s been quite a while since I read anything that was ’science’ in the conventional sense, e.g. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, which I’ve not read. In case you’re interested, I used to read a lot of science books published by Mir, which was the publishing business (and perhaps the propaganda arm) of the estwhile Soviet Union; chemistry, particularly organic chemistry was a particular area of interest, followed by quantum physics - I goggled even as I wrote the last bit, because I still haven’t quite figured out the General Theory of Relativity, even after reading the book that this posting is about. :o)

With a title as provocative as A Short History Of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson cut himself enough rope to hang several generations of Brysons. And then delivers a book which is by far the best I’ve read in science writing - chock-a-block with facts, information, gossip, and trivia, delivered in a manner that will keep you giggling late into the night! And more important, leave you with a sense of awe, wonder, appreciation, gratitude, whatever… at the sheer magnificence of creation! Why bother with Genesis, when creation itself is magnificent enough to worship for its own sake!!

Some samples for your reading pleasure - and then go out, buy the book…. and read it.

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and curiously obliging manner to create you. It’s an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, co-operative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally under appreciated state known as existence.

Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don’t actually care about you - indeed, they don’t even know you are there. They don’t even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single rigid impulse: to keep you you.

The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting - fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes into view, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will close you down, then silently disassemble and go off to be other things. And that’s it for you.

Still, you may rejoice that it happens at all. Generally speaking in the universe it doesn’t, so far as we can tell. This is decidedly odd because the atoms that so liberally and congenially flock together to form living things on earth are exactly the same atoms that decline to do it elsewhere. Whatever else it may be, at the level of chemistry, life is fantastically mundane: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, a little calcium, a light dusting of other very ordinary elements - nothing that you wouldn’t find in any ordinary pharmacy - and that’s all you need. The only thing special about the atoms that make you is that they make you. That is, of course, the miracle of life.

How’s that for the beginning of a book??!

And this one’s such a complete treat:

In particular, he (Lord Kelvin) elaborated the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A discussion of these laws would be a book in itself, but I offer here this crisp summation by the chemist P W Atkins, just to provide a sense of them: ‘There are four Laws. The third of them, the Second Law, was recognized first.; the first, the Zeroth Law, was formulated last; the First Law was second; the Third Law might not even be a law in the same sense as the others.’ In briefest terms, the second law states that a little energy is always wasted. You can’t have a perpetual motion device because no matter how efficiant, it will always lose energy and eventually run down. The first law says that you can’t create energy and the third that you can’t reduce temperatures to absolute zero; there will always be some residual warmth. As Dennis Overbye notes, the three principal laws are sometimes expressed jocularly as (1) you can’t win, (2) you can’t break even, and (3) you can’t get out of the game.

Hmmmm, I’ve had so much fun re-reading portions to post here, that I’m going to post some more bits to re-read even more. Till then, check out Amazon.