Marcus Tullius Cicero said, more or less, that a man who doesn’t know what happened before he was born, goes though life a child. I heard Charlie Munger bring this up in a speech once, and thought of how stupid I had been for not realising until I was told, how exactly right he was. I don’t want to be a walking encyclopedia, probably just more helpful at the local pub quiz; but I’m also more interested in numbers and science than historic dramas or warfare. So this was a good start.
There’s a lot about a lot in A Short History of Nearly Everything. It’s impressive that Bill Bryson went from someone who
“didn’t know anything, really” – Bill Bryson, 2003.
to writing such a comprehensive and far-reaching book that covers essentially all of the hard sciences in only three years of research. More impressive still, is that this book was written in 2003, and therefore is already sixteen years out of date and in the timeline of scientific discovery, that’s a long time.
Whilst the title is A Short History of Nearly Everything, the book falls short of covering anything outside of the realm of science. The book takes a flying start and talks about space, the size of the earth, the solar system, the universe and so on and goes on to cover the highlights and big discoveries of astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, paleontology and many, many more.
It’s mind boggling to think that there was a time in the not-so-distant past, that no one knew how old, heavy, or big the Earth was; the scale of the universe; even how many planets were in the solar system; that dinosaurs even existed, that DNA, atoms, cells, proteins and ice ages were even a thing. All of these discoveries and a whole lot more are in this book.
Not just covering the subjects themselves, the book also talks about some of the big hitters in science, the Newtons, Einsteins Darwins and Curies of history and also some of the lesser known and possibly more peculiar individuals. Henry Cavendish for example, was a brilliant English scientist suffering from “shyness bordering on disease”. When Cavendish attended parties it was always made clear that other guests were not to approach or even look at him. Despite this, in 1797 Cavendish was able to calculate the weight of the earth (six billion trillion metric tonnes) to an accuracy within about one percent of what we know it to be now. This was just one of his many accomplishments.
Bryson does a great job of breaking down even the most technical subjects – like quantum physics – into something that even a layperson such as I could comprehend. The same goes for everything else and I feel I’ve come away with a new appreciation for how lucky I am to be alive knowing that there were billions upon billions of things that had to happen in exactly the right way for billions of years just for me to be writing this sentence now, and for you to be reading it. No other book has given me such a sense of scale and an appreciation for just being here.
If science isn’t your thing, give this is a miss. If you have an interest in science, this is something you’ll want to read. The book covers many topics in science so there are undoubtedly bits that will send you to sleep: geology, rocks, tectonic plates, land formations etc did it for me, but I’m sure for some people it’ll get their rocks off (if you’ll pardon the pun). The only other downside is that there is so much information covering so many topics that it’s impossible to pick up even a small percentage in one read.
I’d give it a 599/647. My highest score yet! Though hardly an accolade with only two other books on there. More to come! If you want to read it yourself, get it here.
ljns 