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decembera's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
dee9401's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this book, especially after reading Singh's work on the history and proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Singh is the perfect lay writer of science and science history. His prose flows quickly and he selects wonderful examples that explain more obscure topics. His books, and writers like him, should be assigned reading in high schools, and even middle schools, to expose kids to the wonders of science that often come across as boring and useless in typical science classes. These types of work would be a great boast to STEM, and even the arts (STEAM), showing the importance, beauty and value of writing, communicating, and philosophizing.
I guess people would assume I'd give this five stars. If I didn't know about the Big Bang and physics, I most likely would have. My rating is more a mark of how I felt about the book. It was too beginner, even though I'm certainly not a scientist. I've read a bunch and have taken several high school & college physics and astronomy classes. So, when Singh was talking about physics, the text seemed to move too slowly. Now, if I wasn't familiar with the topic, it would have been perfect. But, to be honest, I did learn some interesting physics in the book, e.g. the actual cause of redshift is related to the stretching of spacetime rather than a doppler shift effect (p. 270), how to create carbon from helium within a star (pp. 390-396), and that lithium and boron were produced around the same time helium was being created out of hydrogen (p. 398).
As for the history of science, this is where Singh excels beyond most. I loved the history, the little tidbits, the emotions and the battles behind the theories, equations and discoveries. There were so many intriguing things from the ancient world to today. I wish there had been more of these, but the book probably would have been twice as long! (The author mentions that in a Q&A appended to my edition, noting that his first draft had lots of neat items and it was about 1,000 pages long!). I'm also sad that the excitement of the public in response to these types of scientific discoveries seems to be fading, especially in the West and very especially in the US. Most people just don't seem to think science or the larger world is as exciting as spectator violence or reality TV.
I hope that writers like Singh can help put excitement and interest back in peoples' minds, and more importantly, their hearts. This is what captured me as a small boy and it has carried me to today. The wonder of a small child is something to try to grasp for each day.
I guess people would assume I'd give this five stars. If I didn't know about the Big Bang and physics, I most likely would have. My rating is more a mark of how I felt about the book. It was too beginner, even though I'm certainly not a scientist. I've read a bunch and have taken several high school & college physics and astronomy classes. So, when Singh was talking about physics, the text seemed to move too slowly. Now, if I wasn't familiar with the topic, it would have been perfect. But, to be honest, I did learn some interesting physics in the book, e.g. the actual cause of redshift is related to the stretching of spacetime rather than a doppler shift effect (p. 270), how to create carbon from helium within a star (pp. 390-396), and that lithium and boron were produced around the same time helium was being created out of hydrogen (p. 398).
As for the history of science, this is where Singh excels beyond most. I loved the history, the little tidbits, the emotions and the battles behind the theories, equations and discoveries. There were so many intriguing things from the ancient world to today. I wish there had been more of these, but the book probably would have been twice as long! (The author mentions that in a Q&A appended to my edition, noting that his first draft had lots of neat items and it was about 1,000 pages long!). I'm also sad that the excitement of the public in response to these types of scientific discoveries seems to be fading, especially in the West and very especially in the US. Most people just don't seem to think science or the larger world is as exciting as spectator violence or reality TV.
I hope that writers like Singh can help put excitement and interest back in peoples' minds, and more importantly, their hearts. This is what captured me as a small boy and it has carried me to today. The wonder of a small child is something to try to grasp for each day.
leosaumure's review against another edition
5.0
I love Simon Singh's work, and although I knew a lot of the material when it comes to cosmology, I still learned a great deal about the history of it. I've always liked the stories of how we got here from there.
beets_enjoyer's review against another edition
4.0
Having enjoyed the author's documentary about Fermat's last theorem, I was prepared to enjoy this book. It did not disappoint.
Singh's background is in particle physics, which I think comes through particularly well in this book. He has an obvious deep respect for the intellects and achievements of the scientists he profiles, probably stemming in no small part from his sophisticated understanding of the problems they had to solve. Even more spectacularly, he is able to make the scientific method into a sort of character onto itself. He celebrates the slow, messy process of discovery like only a true scientist can. If you let your average Ivy League hack loose on material like this, the result would be a mess. In Singh's hands, it is magical.
The book has a great narrative structure, presenting our understanding of the cosmos as a sort of jigsaw puzzle which is gradually revised, filled in and completed by generations of astronomers. Household names like Galileo, Einstein, Lemaître and Hubble are given long treatments, but so are characters that were largely forgotten once the novelty of their discoveries passed. The end result feels fair to all involved, even those who argued in favor of theories that were later proved wrong. I was particularly intrigued with how the geocentric model, which feels so obviously wrong to us today, actually made a lot sense given what the ancients knew about the world, and was initially able to make more correct predictions about planetary motions than the early heliocentric models.
Singh does stumble, if infrequently. I understand that in order to make the Big Bang cosmology understandable the reader needs to understand phenomena like Doppler shift and stellar parallax. However, in this book the analogies used to explain these things are sometimes very clumsy and non-intuitive. A sentence would often start with "Imagine a such and such with a so and so radius sitting in a blah blah blah..." and by the next line I would be completely lost. There are also some equations and math in the book, all of which I was able to understand easily, but whose inclusion felt unnecessarily pedantic.
But these are minor quibbles. Altogether this is a fun read and a great introduction to the topic. Better, I think, than A Brief History of Time, even if the two books differ somewhat in scope. Recommended.
Singh's background is in particle physics, which I think comes through particularly well in this book. He has an obvious deep respect for the intellects and achievements of the scientists he profiles, probably stemming in no small part from his sophisticated understanding of the problems they had to solve. Even more spectacularly, he is able to make the scientific method into a sort of character onto itself. He celebrates the slow, messy process of discovery like only a true scientist can. If you let your average Ivy League hack loose on material like this, the result would be a mess. In Singh's hands, it is magical.
The book has a great narrative structure, presenting our understanding of the cosmos as a sort of jigsaw puzzle which is gradually revised, filled in and completed by generations of astronomers. Household names like Galileo, Einstein, Lemaître and Hubble are given long treatments, but so are characters that were largely forgotten once the novelty of their discoveries passed. The end result feels fair to all involved, even those who argued in favor of theories that were later proved wrong. I was particularly intrigued with how the geocentric model, which feels so obviously wrong to us today, actually made a lot sense given what the ancients knew about the world, and was initially able to make more correct predictions about planetary motions than the early heliocentric models.
Singh does stumble, if infrequently. I understand that in order to make the Big Bang cosmology understandable the reader needs to understand phenomena like Doppler shift and stellar parallax. However, in this book the analogies used to explain these things are sometimes very clumsy and non-intuitive. A sentence would often start with "Imagine a such and such with a so and so radius sitting in a blah blah blah..." and by the next line I would be completely lost. There are also some equations and math in the book, all of which I was able to understand easily, but whose inclusion felt unnecessarily pedantic.
But these are minor quibbles. Altogether this is a fun read and a great introduction to the topic. Better, I think, than A Brief History of Time, even if the two books differ somewhat in scope. Recommended.
randomprogrammer's review against another edition
5.0
Loved it. This book doesn't just cover the theory as it stands today. It works it's way up from ancient times, leading the reader on a delightful journey through the scientific methods and discoveries of 3000 years. The finer details of the latest research are now doubtless out of date, but you can look those up on google.
michael_k's review against another edition
3.0
Very beautifully and clearly explained. It is a very peasant reading as it focuses on the people that make science and the development of their ideas into theories and experiments.