A Short History of Nearly Everything

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BILL BRYSON *A Short History of Nearly Everything A uthor of A Walk in the Woods and In a Sunburned Country Bryson also marvels at how scientists learn the things they know, and he wonders why so much science writing depicts the history of scientific discovery as abstract, dull, and technical. Bryson explains that his motivation for writing this book arose from his realization that he knows very little science himself, because he found most science textbooks boring and inaccessible during his education. His aim is to see if it’s possible to write science in a way that makes the reader marvel at the history of life on Earth and to become more curious about the task of scientific inquiry.

In Part 5, “The Stuff of Life,” Bryson explains that knowledge about deep oceans and the atmosphere at high altitudes is limited to testimonies from a handful of adventurous deep-sea divers and experimental balloon fliers until the 1950s. Since then, scientists have learned about Earth’s layered atmosphere and that ocean life is far more abundant and diverse than anyone previously assumed. Bryson worries that routinely dumping toxic waste into the oceans (like many nations do) is irreparably damaging a large part of the delicately-balanced ecosystem that keeps humans alive. Bryson also highlights that humans can’t survive for long in deep water or high altitudes—we are essentially “ground hugging beings” who can only thrive in a small sliver of Earth’s environment. ginning as October 26. At least one book o f note spells his name "Usher." The m at­ ter is interestingly surveyed in Stephen Jay Gould’s E ight L ittle P iggies. Started reading this one with "the lads" after finishing "The Littlest Prince" in late August of last year. We read about two or three of the short articles regarding some unique aspect of the history and development of our civilization, planet, solar system, galaxy and universe. We generally read this book once or twice a week just before their bedtime to keep their awesome, developing minds focused on the wonders found in the world of science and discovery. It is a great balance to the Bible and/or Sunday school training their young minds are getting. I highly recommend this as "bedtime reading" to anyone over six or seven but under twelve years of age; teens may find the information a bit too simple or uninteresting. The next transit will be on June 8, 2004, with a second in 2012. There were none in the twentieth century.Therefore, in general the content of the book can be viewed as US-Eurocentric, which in return presents the reader with a short-sighted view of the history of science, all wrapped up in an ambiguous title. Also remember the lessons of Thomas Midgley – avoid doing harm. Who was Thomas Midgley? Perhaps you need to read this book. In fact, you might want to keep it in your library. Happy readings.

Bryson looks at chemistry next. He praises Mendeleyev’s elegant design for the periodic table (and Mendeleyev’s mother for hitchhiking 4,000 miles across Russia to make sure her son got an education). He also emphasizes Marie Curie’s singular achievement as the only person in history to win Nobel Prizes in Physics (for her work on radioactivity) and Chemistry (for her discovery of new elements including polonium).

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cent"]/ and the rather endearingly vague Oligocene ("but a little recent"]. Lyell originally intended to employ "-synchronous" for his endings, giving us such crunchy designations as Meiosynchronous and Pleiosynchronous. The Reverend William Whewell, an influential man, objected on etymo­ logical grounds and suggested instead an "-eous" pattern, producing Meioneous, Pleioneous, and so on. The "-cene" terminations were thus something o f a compromise. Nowadays, and speaking veiy generally, geological time is divided first into four great chunks known as eras: Precambrian, Paleozoic (from the Greek meaning "old life"], Mesozoic ("middle life"], and Cenozoic ("recent life"]. These four eras are further divided into anywhere from a dozen to twenty subgroups, usually called periods though sometimes known as sys­ tems. Most o f these are also reasonably well known: Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic, Silurian, and so on* Then come Lyell's epochs-the Pleistocene, Miocene, and so on-which apply only to the most recent (but paleontologically busy] sixty-five mil­ lion years, and finally we have a mass o f finer subdivisions known as stages or ages. Most o f these are named, nearly always awkwardly, after places: Ulinoian, D esm oinesian, C roixian, Kim m eridgian, and so on in like vein. Al­ together, according to John McPhee, these number in the "tens o f dozens." Fortunately, unless you take up geology as a career, you are unlikely ever to hear any o f them again. Further confusing the matter is that the stages or ages in North Amer­ ica have different names from the stages in Europe and often only roughly intersect in time. Thus the North American Cincinnatian stage mostly cor­ responds with the Ashgillian stage in Europe, plus a tiny bit o f the slightly earlier Caradocian stage. Also, all this changes from textbook to textbook and from person to person, so that some authorities describe seven recent epochs, while oth­ a wild underestimate, but a radical notion nonetheless, and Buffon found himself threatened with excommunication for expressing it A practical man, he apologized at once for his thoughtless heresy, then cheerfully re­ peated the assertions throughout his subsequent writings. By the middle o f the nineteenth centuiy most learned people thought the Earth was at least a few million years old, perhaps even some tens o f millions o f years old, but probably not more than that So it came as a sur­ prise when, in 1859 in On the Origin o f Species, Charles Darwin announced that the geological processes that created the Weald, an area o f southern England stretching across Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, had taken, by his cal­ culations, 306,662,400 years to complete. The assertion was remarkable partly for being so arrestingly specific but even more for flying in the face o f accepted wisdom about the age o f the Earth.* It proved so contentious that Darwin withdrew it from the third edition o f the book. The problem at its heart remained, however. Darwin and his geological friends needed the Earth to be old, but no one could figure out a way to make it so. In the article concerning global warming, Bryson paints a picture that we really don't know if the Earth is warming up and if so, what is causing it. The fact that Mother Nature sends out hundred's of billions of tons of carbon dioxide via volcanoes and dead and decaying flora and fauna was an interesting fact I had neither heard nor considered before now. The net effect including humanities' contribution however is tipping the balance in favor of the global warming argument. Good for science, but very BAD for us.

I'm incredulous of the amount of research Bryson put into this book. He really took the time to go above and beyond toward realms of thought and inquiry far outreaching his scope as an author. I can't help but appreciate the immensity of this work. Bryson does a "good" job of scaring the hell out of you by showing just how precarious our daily existence really is. I probably shouldn't say this, but it puts such problems as global climate change into context when you read how an eruption of the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park would wipe out most of the life on earth in a painfully slow manner; especially when Bryson describes how this eruption is overdue by 30, 000 years by historical average. Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be! and all was light. —Alexander Pope When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at the height of a hundredth millions of a centimeter. Throw away those yoga mats, your ARE already levitating without knowing it.In 1781 Herschel became the first person in the m odem era to discover a planet He wanted to call it George, after the British monarch, but was overruled. Instead it became Uranus. AT JUST THE time that Heniy Cavendish was completing his experiments in London/ four hundred miles away in Edinburgh another kind o f con­ cluding moment was about to take place with the death o f James Hutton. This was bad news for Hutton, o f course, but good news for science as it cleared the way for a man named John Playfair to rewrite Hutton’s work without fear o f embarrassment Hutton was by all accounts a man o f the keenest insights and liveliest conversation, a delight in company, and without rival when it came to un­ derstanding the mysterious slow processes that shaped the Earth. Unfor­ tunately, it was beyond him to set down his notions in a form that anyone could begin to understand. He was, as one biographer observed with an all but audible sigh, "almost entirely innocent o f rhetorical accomplishments." Nearly every line he penned was an invitation to slumber. Here he is in his 1795 masterwork, A Theory o f the Earth w ith Proofs and Illustrations, dis­ cussing ... something: The world which we inhabit is composed o f the materials, not o f the earth which was the immediate predecessor o f the present, but

Bryson's book is very entertaining and informative. The illustrations are fun, if not terribly useful in helping to understand the text. There's a fair bit of repetition, which is good. Some of the info is given in s El autor lo explica todo de forma muy amena, se te hará fácil de entender aunque no domines el tema del que te habla. Lo cuenta todo de una forma interesante y a veces con toques de humor. Está bien que mezcle hechos importantes, con anécdotas curiosas y a veces irrelevantes que hacen la lectura más entretenida. No esperes que profundice al 100% en todos los temas, pero algunos los desarolla bastante. The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary: "I don't intend to pub­ lish. I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God." "Don't you think God knows the facts?" Bethe asked. "Yes," said Szilard. "He knows the facts, but He does not know took an active interest in geology, which in 1802 was not a large number. That, however, was about to change. And how. podremos predecirlo, ni saberlo (así que te jodes) XD. Es una puñetera casualidad que sigas vivo :)Properly called the Opik-Oort doud, it is named for the Estonian astronomer Ernst Opik, who hypothesized its existence in 1932, and for the Dutch astronomer Jan O o rt who refined the calculations eighteen years later. Although virtually all books find a space ibr him, there is a striking variability in the details associated with Ussher. Some books say he made his pronouncement in 1650, others in 1654, still others in 1664. Many cite the date o f Earth’s reputed be­