The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science [Hardcover]

 

 

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As with the human DNA she so effectively extols, Angier's book has a portion of useful material, but a great deal of useless "junk". An accomplished writer, she spends more ink in demonstrating those skills than in imparting the information she hopes her readers will respect. Her own declared intention of presenting the "Basics of Science" isn't fulfilled. Nor does she explicitly explain what "The Canon" is. Instead, she portrays what science has achieved. The "Canon" is the understanding that science is a dynamic, incessant process. "Final answers" aren't to be found, nor expected. That's an admirable approach, and when she actually depicts what science has done, Angier presents it clearly. It's the dross between these points which weary the interested reader. Her frequent quips and laboured analogies add little or nothing to understanding the point. It's an open question whether the "average" reader will endure her flowery prose, sifting it out for the data so camouflaged.

After addressing the question of how science has fallen into disrepute in her country, Angier embarks on a quest to explain its value. She explains that "Thinking Scientifically" requires mental outreach, avoiding acceptance of status quo. "Mysteries" can be explained, which does not, as some hold, diminish either their beauty or value. Opinion has its place, but the reality of science is its reality. Moving through a description of "probabilities" and the scales of Nature, she addresses the "hard sciences" of chemistry and physics. Through them all, she attempts to "lighten the mood" with pithy comments and sometimes bizarre, sometimes arcane, illusions. Whoever is "Brian 'String Bean' Greene" when he's at home? What is the "Vin Diesel line of lawn tools"? That's not counting all the "New Yorkisms" peppering the narrative.

The chapters on evolutionary biology and cell mechanism are easily the best. In fact, they nearly redeem the book from her surfeit of puns and pithy asides. The biological topics are of great interest to her, and are the ones most needed by her audience. After all, it's not Edwin Hubble or Kip Thorne that US "creationists" attack, but Charles Darwin and the host of researchers supporting his "theory". Her discource on the difference between a "theory" and a "hypothesis" should be read in every schoolroom and from every pulpit in the US. That every cell in our bodies, except the mature red blood cells, all contain an exact copy of DNA that launched our lives, will come as a surprise to many. Angier carefully explains that DNA doesn't change, but some parts of it will do one task while other segments have different roles.

While she's adept at presenting what science has found in Nature, she skips entirely the process of how things are revealed. Although she wants her readers to understand why science is important and hopes to see more young people enter the various fields, nowhere does she suggest the amount of dedicated work involved. Geologists, she notes, are the most interdisciplinary, enjoying perilous climbs and pottering about in labs doing analytical chemical or radiometric work. Yet, how much work it takes to understand what the results mean remains obscured. Fossils are explained, but palaeontology as a discipline is not. Instead we are deluged with references to candy, cartoon characters and sitcoms. Even those are limited to US sources, leaving the book an empty promise to those outside that nation.

The book contains not a single illustration, whether of examples of scale, cell structure or geophysical diagram. It might be said that some topics might be more amenable to diagram than others, but that hardly justifies the exclusion of all. The entire book is words, a good many of them made up or transferred bodily and only mildly appropriately, from other places. It also avoids any reference to the cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology. She was wise in that omission - a good many harsh comments from the past would return to haunt her. That science, however, has as many implications for society as does the making of new proteins or how far we can see into the cosmos. Although a good book promoting recognition of science's value is needed, particularly in the US, this one hasn't quite done the job. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

If you wanted to learn a little bit about all aspects of science in 264 pages, what would you want to learn? Becoming healthier, wealthier, and wiser would appeal to quite a few people. But Ms. Natalie Angier doesn't have those subjects on her list. She's clearly fascinated by how everything relates to everything else and enjoys making it simpler to grasp all of those connections. If you want to know about how an electron ultimately affects the supply of water on Earth, this is the book for you. She's great on that kind of connection.

If you find most science writing too dry, you may find her offbeat puns and humorous lists to your liking. Certainly, the style makes the book less dense and easier to digest . . . with one exception: I had to look up more new adjectives to understand this book than in any novel I've read in the last 10 years.

Although I haven't taken many science courses (high school chemistry and college geology are my academic credentials), I do read popular science books. I found that The Canon was considerably more elementary than even my modest knowledge level. I suspect this book is most valuable for those who did poorly in science in high school, took science-for-poets courses after that, and haven't read anything about science since then. And what will this new-found knowledge allow you to do? I believe the main value of the book will be to explain basic phenomena to children without sounding like an idiot.

Why don't I find the book more relevant for other purposes? Pretty much every topic that interests me in the areas of chemistry and geology (where I have some knowledge) isn't addressed in this book. Here are a few examples of what's missing: Adjusting soil acidity to get the right results in lawn and garden; what the future holds for oil and gas production at costs somewhat near today's level; what to look for in imbibing minerals in order to be healthier; and what chemicals to avoid exposure to that are often found around the house, car, and yard.

So what is this book? It's a survey course in the basics. Hopefully, if you make it through a section about a science that now sounds more interesting, you'll go on to read a book with more focus on what interests you and be able to appreciate the book more because you know the basics.

I found that the basics, however, often weren't the basics. The geology section is more about planetary formation than about geology. That's okay as a way to describe some aspects of geology, but I'm not really interested in planetary formation.

The book's style seems sprightly at first, and later seemed forced and unnecessarily bright. It was like having dinner with someone who feels compelled to tell you a new joke every three minutes: It's too much style.

But if you really don't know a proton from a black hole, The Canon will fill in what you don't know pretty quickly.

I suspect that this book will need to be updated fairly frequently, and I hope that future editions will provide more variety in application for the knowledge and expository style.

While I find science absolutely fascinating, and the author likely really knows her stuff, this book just didn't keep my interest. The chapter on biology was probably the best, but still mediocre.

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