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Chargement... The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors (2003)par John Gribbin
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Overview books are tricky, and most fail. Many things have happened, y'know? And a book that includes a great deal of them often turns into...well, into a list of things that have happened. This is why all textbooks suck. So one has to pick and choose, and the choice necessarily creates a perspective. You've picked up these select threads, which leaves you inevitably with that picture. And the trick in writing a good overview book is to end up with a picture that's interesting, compelling, and most of all, coherent. I only read 100 pages of Gribbin's book and then set it down, because I have this complicated reading schedule and it called for these 100 pages and then something else. I'll come back to the rest later, when it arrives on my mental syllabus. But so far, I think Gribbin is picking the right threads. I like the line he draws from William Gilbert, of whom I'd never heard, to Galileo. It was neat; I liked learning about Gilbert, and I liked his take on Galileo. He's fussy about who he chooses to mention, and how much, and in relation to whom else, and it's working for me. I look forward to getting back to this. I even have hopes of bumping it up to five stars when it's all over. aucune critique | ajouter une critique
This tells the story of the people who have made science, and of the times in which they lived and worked. Gribbin begins with Copernicus, during the Renaissance, when science replaced mysticism as a means of explaining the workings of the world, and he continues through the centuries, creating an unbroken genealogy of not only the greatest but also the more obscure names of Western science, a dot-to-dot line linking amateur to genius, and accidental discovery to brilliant deduction. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)509.22Natural sciences and mathematics General Science History, geographic treatment, biography Biography History of Science -- general worksClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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John Gribbin is a man of many parts. Trained in astrophysics under Fred Hoyle, Gribbin is almost as prolific a writer as Isaac Asimov. Most of his work has been science writing, but he has also done novels, children’s books, and biographies. He and a colleague wrongly predicted that the position of the planets would cause an earthquake in the San Andreas Fault in the 1980s, but they both disavowed their work early, Gribbin calling it “too clever by half.” The Scientists is a readable history of science from Copernicus to black holes and string theory. Unsurprisingly, it is heavy on astrophysics, but it also deals with chemistry, geology, and evolution. The major figures are shown to be men with diverse, fully rounded personalities. He argues that Robert Hooke deserves more credit than he gets and Newton perhaps less. He points out instances where seminal thinkers were ignored because someone else published first. In general, he says, the progress of science has been evolutionary in its development, not revolutionary. If you like works by Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, you will probably like The Scientists as well. 4 stars. ( )