Science for nonscientists

Sometimes the world just isn't ready for a good idea.

Bill Bryson,  A Short History of Nearly Everything

Reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, his 2003 history of science for readers who don't know beans about science, one gets the idea that the world isn't ready for a good idea not sometimes but rather most of the time. The science establishment was reluctant to accept the big bang theory, continental drift, evolution, the theory of relativity and just about every other major discovery in science you might think of. Scientists, like just about everyone else in the world, are slow to welcome change.

Those who propose new scientific theories often don't live long enough to see their theories accepted, and even then somebody else often gets the credit for them. Bryson does much to right some of these wrongs.

Much of his book is dated now. More than 15 years after its first publication, scientists have explored much deeper into the oceans and much farther into space than they had in 2003, to cite just two examples. But history books should be read more for what they say about the past than what they say about the present, and here the author excels even now.

The book covers just about every field of science you might think of, from astronomy to zoology, and does so with easy transitions from one to another. A background in any of these fields proves unnecessary to grasp what Bryson writes or to enjoy his narrative. As readers of his other books know well, he has gift for explaining things in a way that makes reading seem more like entertainment than work.

Again and again Bryson returns to what has been called the Goldilocks effect. That is, everything has been just right for life on Earth and for human existence. Not too close to the sun nor too far away. The right kind of orbit, the right kind of atmosphere, the right circumstances at just the right time. We are overdue for another ice age, he writes, and overdue for another catastrophic explosion of the Yellowstone volcano. You name it, we have been very fortunate, even blessed. Yet even in 2003 Bryson warned of negative human influences on the planet's climate and the survival of species. Such warnings have not been dated by the passage of time.

Reading A Short History of Nearly Everything proved to be a very good idea, even if it did take me a decade and a half to get around to it.