Earlier this month I wrote about James Lovelock’s The Revenge of Gaia. In it, he calls for the creation of a guidebook to science:
What we need is a book of knowledge written so well as to constitute literature in its own right. Something for anyone interested in the state of the Earth and of us – a manual for living well and for survival.The quality of its writing must be such that it would serve for pleasure, for devotional reading, as a source of facts and even as a primary school text. It would range from simple things such as how to light a fire, to our place in the solar system and the universe. It would be a primer of philosophy and science – it would provide a top-down look at the Earth and us. It would explain the natural selection of all living things, and give the key facts of medicine, including the circulation of the blood, the role of the organs. The discovery that bacteria and viruses caused infection diseases is relatively recent; imagine the consequences if such knowledge was lost.
Coincidentally, I came across a book published in May this year that sounded as though it might fit the bill, at least partially. That book is The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier. The publisher’s blurb sounded promising, too:
The Canon is vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time – from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it’s for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or what electricity is. Angier’s sparkling prose and memorable metaphors bring the science to life, reigniting our own childhood delight in discovering how the world works.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought too, so I bought a copy.
But, oh, what a disappointment I am finding this book to be. Admittedly, I am not yet quite halfway through, but so far it is proving a real struggle to keep going. The problem is Angier’s style of writing which I find irritating quite beyond belief. The publisher might think she has "sparkling prose and memorable metaphors", but I feel as though I am constantly being bludgeoned over the head by the author’s clever-clever remarks and witticisms (well, she thinks they’re witty) and metaphors that, far from being memorable in a good way, make me go WTF?
And when I say "constantly bludgeoned over the head", I do mean constantly. Hardly a sentence goes by without Angier wanting to slip something in. For example:
…Georg Simon Ohm, a German physicist who determined the relationship between voltage, current , and resistance in an electrical current, and who is rumoured to have practiced yogic meditation when he thought nobody was around.From Ohm we get ohm, the unit used to measure resistance in an electrical circuit or device. And though no one expects you to master the nuances of units or their namesakes (except to remember who the real watt’s Watt was and what that Watt was not), the ohm is a good place to start talking about the electricity coursing through your cords, and what it says about all of us.
That’s a fairly typical example of her prose, which strikes me as being far too precious for its own good. I feel as though I’m drowning in warm maple syrup. Against all this constant barrage of wordplay, the actual science is getting lost. Angier clearly loves science, as do I, but in her desire to convey the attraction she has had the effect, at least for this reader, of making me want to turn my back on this book. I’m sorry, I did want to like this book, but I only give it half a star out of five. Lovelock’s guidebook to science needs another author to tackle it.
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