Publication
William Morrow (2010), 512 p.
Collections
Description
As editor of "Seeing Further," Bryson has rounded up an extraordinary roster of scientists who write and writers who know science in order to celebrate 350 years of the Royal Society, Britain's scientific national academy. The contributors include Margaret Atwood, Steve Jones, Richard Dawkins, James Gleick, Richard Holmes, and Neal Stephenson, among many others, on subjects ranging from metaphysics to nuclear physics, from the threatened endtimes of flu and climate change to our evolving ideas about the nature of time itself, from the hidden mathematics that rule the universe to the cosmological principle that guides "Star Trek."
User reviews
LibraryThing member reannon
Collection of essays about science celebrating the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society. Authors include scientists, science and science fiction authors. Topics span all sciences and technology, and from the easily accessible to the difficult.
LibraryThing member SwitchKnitter
Seeing Further wanders all over science as we know it, with everything eventually tying back into the Royal Society. Margaret Atwood wrote a piece on the view of scientists in pop culture, tracing back to the satirizing of the Royal Society in Gulliver's Travels. There are essays on Darwin,
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crystallography, space-time, and climate change, among others. It was an enjoyable read, and it really gave me a broad appreciation for what the Royal Society does and influences. Show Less
LibraryThing member paulmorriss
Although edited by Bill Bryson there are a number of authors contributing chapters. The style and quality of the articles varies greatly, but there were a few I enjoyed.
LibraryThing member MiaCulpa
Sadly, "Seeing further" just wasn't as interesting as I expected it to be. There are certainly some engaging entries (Bill Bryson's inroduction and Margaret Atwood's article referencing "Gulliver's Travels to name just two) but there are also too many entries ranging from the dull to the outright
Obviously, there are many people out there more intelligent than me (no doubt including you) and will understand more of the denser science ideas at play here and will get a lot more out of it than me.
And in closing, a shout out to Margaret Attwood for including the sentence (about "Gulliver's Travels"):
"The edition I read was not a child's version, of the kind that dwells on the cute little people and the funny giant people and the talking horses, but dodges any mention of nipples and urination, and downplays the excrement."
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incomprehensible (Margaret Wertheim's article, for example, had me regularly squinting to determine what on earth she was driving at - in my library book copy someone has underlined "futile" in Wertheim's piece, which sums up my attempts to make heads and tails of her article).Obviously, there are many people out there more intelligent than me (no doubt including you) and will understand more of the denser science ideas at play here and will get a lot more out of it than me.
And in closing, a shout out to Margaret Attwood for including the sentence (about "Gulliver's Travels"):
"The edition I read was not a child's version, of the kind that dwells on the cute little people and the funny giant people and the talking horses, but dodges any mention of nipples and urination, and downplays the excrement."
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LibraryThing member danoomistmatiste
This is one immense tome that would interest all the science buffs out there.
LibraryThing member DLMorrese
From Bill Bryson's introduction:
The Royal Society...invented scientific publishing and peer review. It made English the primary language of scientific discourse, in place of Latin. It systematised experimentation. It promoted - indeed insisted upon - clarity of expression in place of high-flown
This is not a straightforward history of the Royal Society, as I expected when I picked it up. It's a collection of articles by various notables on sundry subjects of scientific and philosophical interest. As with any collection of writing by different people, I found some of the subjects more interesting and some of the writing more to my taste than others.
The Royal Society...invented scientific publishing and peer review. It made English the primary language of scientific discourse, in place of Latin. It systematised experimentation. It promoted - indeed insisted upon - clarity of expression in place of high-flown
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rhetoric. It brought together the best thinking from all over the world. It created modern science.This is not a straightforward history of the Royal Society, as I expected when I picked it up. It's a collection of articles by various notables on sundry subjects of scientific and philosophical interest. As with any collection of writing by different people, I found some of the subjects more interesting and some of the writing more to my taste than others.
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LibraryThing member JBD1
A mostly-very-good collection of essays to mark the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society. The contributions by James Gleick, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes, Richard Fortey, and Neal Stephenson were those I liked best.
LibraryThing member Schmerguls
5706. Seeing Further The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society, edited by Bill Bryson (read 14 Sep 2020) This 490 page book contains 22 essays by mostly British scholars, on various aspects of science, past and present. I nearly always finish a book I start but almost
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quit when early on I read an essay which was hard to understand. But the next essay was comprehensible and interesting so I kept reading and finished the book. I will not claim I comprehended all the concepts discussed but there was enough fascinating that I think I got something from the book. Lots of things to think about. Show Less
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
9780061999765
Physical description
512 p.; 6.75 inches
Pages
512