Brief History of Science Book

John Gribbin's aim in A Brief History of Science is to show how science can satisfy our appetite for wonder and feed our imagination. He exhorts us to "just study what is, and you'll find that it already is far more uplifting than anything you could imagine needing". Well designed and imaginatively illustrated, this outline history of science is written by a number of British and American academic scientists and science writers with a good track record of popularising science for the general reader. Among the contributors, familiar names are Richard Dawkins (Oxford University) who writes the general introduction, Peter Ward (University of Washington) who covers earth sciences, Ian Stewart (Warwick University) mathematics and John Gribbin (ex-editor at the New Scientist) physics. Other subjects are astronomy, chemistry, and biology. This is very much the classic departmentalisation of science subjects and might not seem very inclusive compared with even the names of science departments in a modern university. However, it is appropriate for the secondary school/interested adult level at which it is pitched. The history within each field is treated chronologically and summarised at the end of each chapter and the scientists who made the important breakthroughs also feature. The illustrations are a mixture of visual "crowd pullers" and informative simple diagrams. There is a brief glossary and index but a guide to further reading would have been useful. Overall, this attractively presented and written brief outline of the history of science does fulfil Gribbin's ambition to uplift the reader. --Douglas PalmerRead More