The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors

I wanted something like this to fill in some discoveries in science and technology while reading some of the fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries such as Austen,Gaskell,George Eliot and also some nonfiction from the period. This book covers much more of course and builds on discoveries as time progresses. It is easy and light reading nevertheless and the author gets kind of chatty with the reader especially when he is describing some of the life styles of the scientists. You don't expect to see this in a book on this subject. It is thorough as far as it goes and not technical.

This is an audaciously fascinating and well-constructed history of the study of natural science and the people who have developed it. Unfortunately, Gribbin's occasional metaphysical claims aren't exactly scientific or logical or even consistent with the history and the insights that he unveils (more on this later).

First exposited are Copernicus, Vesalius, Tycho, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Hooke, Newton, Halley, Linnaeus, and others who were trailblazing contributors to our understanding of the natural world-- in a sense that later scientists generally could not be. In terms of his general theory of relativity, Einstein would eventually be something of an exception, but after Newton's time the dynamic current and affinity to new insights and ideas was so set into motion that the contributions of Cavendish, Lyell, Darwin, Wallace, Mendel, Dalton, Thompson, Maxwell, Faraday, Rutherford, Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg and so many others, would almost certainly have been propounded by other of their contemporaries had they failed to do so. This does not diminish these individuals or the ideas that they proposed, it simply acknowledges the directions in which scientific thought was moving. Gribbin explains all this quite wonderfully. But this is not merely a repackaging of history; Gribbin (an astrophysicist and prolific science writer) is unusually good at reducing scientific concepts into explanations that should be easily grasped by the interested nonscientist.

I enjoyed the book immensely, but must point out the problem I alluded to earlier. Gribbin's opening salvo proves to be a non sequitur (Introduction, pg xvii): "The most important thing that science has taught us about our place in the Universe is that we are not special." Through the following 600 pages he references this dubious conclusion only a couple of times (briefly, as "our theme") before trying to work it into his concluding summaries. His strangely undisciplined `reasoning' for this metaphysical demand is both unworthy of 99.5% of his text, and easily rebutted from the actual science articulated in that 99.5%. Gribbin's [irrational] argument here is that humanity would have to be at the "center" of the universe-- in some brutally simplistic Euclidean sense-- if it were to be in any way special. Secondly, and equally illogical, is his assertion that the very largeness of space-time must inherently define sentient man (so physically small spatially relative to the cosmos) as non-special. By this `rationale', quarks and gluons must be `nothing special'! Actually, scores of intensely specific parameters (cumulatively know as the so-called anthropic cosmological principle) inform us, in very strongly quantitative and scientific terms, of a far more rational definition of `specialness' than Gribbin's oddly simplistic geometric centers (neither a star system nor a galaxy is habitable at its geometric center)! What makes this assertion so puzzling is that Gribbin knows better, but cannot resist an attempt to force an extra-scientific and strictly disputable philosophical bent onto his `conclusion'. He does know better, as he himself has described (both in this text and elsewhere, see `Cosmic Coincidences', which he co-authored with Martin Rees), that within our best and most current understandings an incredibly elaborate, large and specific cosmic table has been set in our honor, so to speak. In his own words, "Given the laws of physics that operate in our Universe, all those billions of stars and billions of light-years are necessary for our existence." CC, 1989, pg 14. If life requires sophisticated carbon macromolecules (it does), and if our current understanding is correct that such complex structures are not possible until sometime subsequent to the second generation of stars (this is the present understanding), and if such a scenario requires an incredibly specific vacuum state (it does), with a very special set of governing parameters (it does), then a very large and very special space-time (universe) is specifically requisite. To insist on a dismissive manner of looking upon all of this is not science, but is a rather quasi-religious philosophical materialism. I'd rather stand with the actual science than the artificial boxes that certain scientists feel compelled to force science into. Read again the listing of great scientists in the above paragraph ("Copernicus . . . Heisenberg"), not a single one of them would have endorsed Gribbin's conclusion that either life itself or sentient humanity is nothing special. Gribbin's arbitrary and nihilistic diktat ["our theme"] is a curious 20th century extra-scientific fad, pitched earnestly by Sagan and Weinberg, but merely what Schrodinger called a "prejudice of our time."

The author's unscientific sermonet is an unfortunate regression, but it happily constitutes a very small portion of the book. It is not his only misfire; his late mischaracterization of Kuhn's philosophy of science is constructed so simplistically as to be a mere argument of straw (this is not unusual, in fact miscasting Kuhn is a somewhat popular logical mistake; "revolutions" of thought do not require any strict non-linearity of thought, as a strangely popular straw version of Kuhn insists). However, while I have here focused largely on the book's relatively few problems, the book's merits easily dwarf its extra-scientific bungles. All things considered, Gribbin's dubious philosophical preaching constitutes less than 1 percent of the otherwise outstanding text. This reader has enjoyed few books as much.

Fairly late in this history of science, John Gribbon quotes Arthur Holmes (who developed Alfred Wegoner's continental drift theory) on the secret of writing a successful science textbook. You must "think of the most stupid student you have ever had and then think how you would explain the subject to him" (451).

Most readers wouldn't like being compared with that student. But we can probably agree that clarity of style is desireable in most science writing. James Hutton, the father of modern geology, had a writing style that was "largely impenetrable" (314), which delayed acceptance of his ideas. The biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamark also "had an abysmal literary style" (337).

The Compte de Buffon and Pierre Simon Laplace had clear (if somewhat flamboyant) styles. Robert Hooke, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein had clear, plain styles. They generally do a good job of explaining difficult ideas to the general reader. Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, William Harvey, and Erasmus Darwin get fairly good marks, though their old fashioned styles might be a little difficult for some modern readers. Isaac Newton gets a mixed review. His _Principia Mathematica_ is fairly technical, but his _Opticks_ is a model of clarity.

And what about Gribbon himself? Well, I wouldn't say that his work is aimed at that proverbial stupid student. You will appreciate his history better if you have already read a bit of science. But his writing is clear, relaxed, and lucid. Mathematical formulas are kept to a minimum. And there is that dry, British wit that enlivens the text:

In 1818, [Humphry] Davy became a baronet, and in 1820 he was elected President of the Royal Society, where he took great delight in all the ceremonial attached to the post and became such a snob that was the only Fellow to oppose the election of Faraday to the Royal. (366)

My primary disagreement with Gribbon is over his treatment of Isaac Newton. I will grant that Newton was not a saintly person, but I believe that it is overstating the case to call him "a nasty piece of work" (178) or to argue that by some standards he might be considered insane. Among Gribbon's attacks on Newton is the suggestion that he may have been a homosexual. While there is no evidence of any consumation of physical relationships "there is no evidence that they weren't" (178). Newton's oft-quoted line about standing on the shoulders of Giants is interpreted as a sly snub of Robert Hooke's short stature. Newton's promotion while a student at Cambridge was "lucky (or cunning)" (178). Gribbon seems to be straining a bit in this section.

Gribbon is similarly rather stern with Giordano Bruno. He characterizes Bruno as a rabble-rouser and troublemaker who was burned at the stake as much for religious heresy as for his scientific ideas. Gribbon is here quite correct... But my sympathies still do not lie with the Inquisition.

For most of the book, I find that Gribbon's treatment is sound.Not surprisingly, he gives full attention to giants like Copenicus, Tycho, Galileo, Harvey, Newton, Darwin, Antoine Lavoisier, Michael Faraday, and Einstein. But the real value of the book is the detailed treatment of lesser known figures like Leonard Digges (inventor of the telescope), William Gibert, Robert Hooke, Edmond Halley, John Ray, Francis Willughby, and Thomas Young. Where a scientist like Benjamin Thomson (Count Rumford) has led a colorful and flamboyant life, Gribbon has had the wit to give it a bit of extra attention.

In a coda, Gribbon sums up his basic philosophy: "I reject the Kuhnian idea of 'revolutions' in science, and see the development of the subject in essentially incremental, step-by-step terms" (614). I fully agree with this position as I do with Gribbon's assertion that "the two keys to scientific progress... are the personal touch and building gradually on what has gone before" (614). In case you haven't already guessed from my rating, I greatly recommend this book. It is one of the best general history of science books to appear in a great many years.

OK, let's get this out of the way first off, this book is great. It is written very fluently, and it provides a great starter for those who are just getting into science. No, he doesn't cover all of the minor details, but how could he when the book covers everything from Copernicus to modern day science in only 600 pages?
He does go into detail about the major shifts in science, like Darwin's Theory of Evolution and the Rules of Thermodynamics, but the rest he mentions and describes. This method works wonderfully, and this book proves to be a great way to do research. Got an essay on Thomas Young? Well, with this book you can read about him in a couple of pages and find other things that you could look up that you previously had not known about. I highly recommend this book.

After purchasing this book I quickly perused it and rashly thought I would not like it. The author makes short shrift of the biological sciences, he neglects German science, and he does not cover anthropology at all (except for, by implication, Darwin). But a few weeks later I picked it up again and became immersed in what, by any measure, is a fascinating and delightful narrative. I've read a good deal of literature in the history of science, and I don't think I've encountered anything in the field so cogently written and eminently readable. He undertook a breathtaking sweep of history here, with a lot to cover, and to structure the narrative around biography to make it more interesting is an ingenious idea. His understanding of the progress of scientific theory is solid; contrary to what one reviewer notes, there was no Greek or Roman science! Science has its roots in the European Renaissance, but really doesn't arise until afterwards, and Gribbin notes this explicitly in his text (hence the reason for not including them). Indeed, one could say that what distinguishes the Medieval/Renaissance world from ours is science. Also, Gribbin understands that the scientific method is born out of the interaction between theory, experiment, and observation, between deduction and empirical analysis/testing.