2009; 360 pages. Full Title : On Giants’ Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their
Discoveries, from Archimedes to DNA.
New Author? : No. Genre : Non-Fiction, Science, Mathematics, Science History; Biography. Overall Rating : 9*/10.
I think it’s fair to label Melvyn Bragg a
polymath. Wikipedia lists him as being a
broadcaster, a scriptwriter, an interviewer, a presenter, and a novelist. He’s won 18 prestigious awards in these
various areas, and his published writings include novels, non-fiction books,
children’s books, and screenplays.
My
friends in England tell me he’s a well-known TV personality; his career began in 1961, and continues even into the present, Mr. Bragg now being 78
years old. I know of him from reading
one of his non-fiction books back in 2016, titled “The
Adventure of English” which is reviewed here.
As
brilliant as he is, you’d think he’d be a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon
or something. But in the introduction to
this book, he confesses that he avoided anything even close to science throughout
his schooling.
But there came a day when he wondered if he was missing out on something
by eschewing all things scientific.
After all, you never see an unhappy chemist, a math whiz who hates doing differential equations, or a physicist who’d rather be driving a truck.
So
he made it a point to look into a history and culture of Science. He contacted some of the most eminent
present-day scientists, and quizzed them to find out what made them tick. He aired a series of programs on British
radio, with the interviews and the feedback he received. From there, he chose his personal top dozen scientists of all time, and asked his newly-befriended scientific peers what
they thought of his choices.
And then he wrote On Giants’ Shoulders
so he could share his discoveries with the rest of us.
What’s To Like...
Melvyn Bragg’s list of his 12 "greatest-ever" scientists, along with his sobriquets, is:
01.) Archimedes (287-212 BC) “The first Scientist”
02.) Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) “The
Columbus of the Stars”
03.) Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) “Standing
on the Shoulders of Giants”
04.) Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1797) “The
Revolution does not need Scientists”
05.) Michael Faraday (1791-1867) “The Great
Experimenter”
06.) Charles Darwin (1809-1882) “The
Conservative Revolutionary”
07.) Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) “The
Man who discovered Chaos by Accident”
08.) Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) “Science or
Art?”
09.) Marie Curie (1867-1934) “A Woman’s
Place is in the Lab”
10.) Albert Einstein (1879-1955) “The first
Celebrity Scientist”
11. & 12.) Francis Crick (1914- ) &
James Watson (1928- ) “The Meaning of Life”
There’s
also an introduction, where Bragg discloses that the book’s overall motif will
be “Science
for the non-scientist”, plus an “afterword” final chapter, in which
the author and his science friends contemplate what might happen in the next hundred years of
science. For the record, since I am a
chemist by profession, I’ve heard of all of the people on Bragg’s list, except
#7 (“Chaos
Theory”), #11, and #12 (“DNA”).
This
is not a science textbook. Bragg has no
intentions of teaching you how to replicate DNA, or the physics behind the theory of
Multiverses. Instead, he focuses on the
impact each scientist’s work had on the world they lived in, and discusses with
his colleagues questions like: a.) What
if said scientist had not made his major discovery?, b.)
What kind of drive did that scientist have that led him to his
breakthrough?, and c.) Upon whose shoulders was that scientist
standing in order to make his discovery?
Both the
author and his contemporary scientist friends refrain from gushing over these
twelve greats, and I liked that.
Einstein is called “lazy” by some, since he never bothered to prove any
of his groundbreaking theories. He
merely wrote them down and left it to others to do the verifying. Galileo’s famous trial by the Inquisition was
not a “Science vs. Religion” issue, the Church was mad that he trashed the
biblical “the Sun revolves around the Earth” theory while admitting he couldn’t disprove it. Lavoisier, guillotined
during the French Revolution, lost his head because he was a hated tax
collector for the King, not because he was part of the nobility. Darwin never once used the term “Evolution”
in his writings; and the term “scientist” didn’t come into use until the 1830’s.
On
Giants’ Shoulders is written in English, not American, so you have plural maths, are educated in the sixth form (I still don’t know what that means),
are sceptical, have fervour, and might contract leukaemia. Melvyn Bragg starts each chapter with a page-long
timeline for each scientist, along with a portrait. Those extras were really neat. Finally, despite the “heaviness” of the subject matter,
I found the book to be a fast read.
Kewlest New Word ...
Fatuous (adj.)
: Silly and pointless.
Others : Synoptic
(adj.).
Excerpts...
Faraday did not
invent the electric motor. Faraday did
not invent the electric light bulb.
Faraday did not invent any particular technology and in fact Faraday
himself would have been most horrified most probably at the imputation that he
was a mere inventor. As far as Faraday
is concerned, he is a discoverer of great natural philosophical
principles. He is certainly not going to
be engaged in the rather sordid business of inventing, which is something that
craftsmen or entrepreneurs or people who are not gentlemen do. (pg. 145)
We are told that
the universe came into existence about fifteen billion years ago with the Big
Bang. On our earth, for most of the four
thousand million years it has been in existence, there was no living creature
or thing. If we equate the age of the
earth to a twenty-four-hour day, the first signs of life appear after the
twenty-third hour and human beings emerge in the last few minutes before
midnight.
The analogy of
the clock is often used. It seems to me
to carry a fatal pessimism. For when
midnight strikes – is that not the Apocalypse, the end of everything? Why could our few minutes not be the first of
another fifteen billion year adventure? (pg.
360)
We are better at predicting
events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether
it will rain on Aunty’s garden party three Sundays from now. (pg. 187)
I can't think of anything to quibble about in On Giants’ Shoulders, but if you’re not of a
scientific mentality, and/or don’t want to be, then reading chapter after chapter
about mostly dead mathematicians,
physicists, astronomers, and chemists might get tedious. Ditto if you were looking for someone who can
make learning about Quantum Physics so easy a caveman can comprehend it.
OTOH,
there are some very interesting “speculative” questions about science posed,
that are worthy to be thought
about. Such as:
If the (ancient) Greeks hadn’t invented science, would it
have ever happened at all? (pg. 16)
If we razed the planet clean and started again, would
Homo Sapiens inevitably turn up, or would it be purely a matter of chance? (pg.
176)
9 Stars.
On Giants’ Shoulders
is my second Melvyn Bragg book, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both of them. I haven’t ventured into his fiction books
yet, but I'm now tempted to go out and try to find one, just to see if he is equally
adept when making things up.
