Publisher's Weekly Review
Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything) presents a remarkable collection of essays celebrating the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society of London and its many contributions to science. Society members have included such illustrious names as Darwin, Newton, Leibniz, and Francis Bacon, to name a few. The volume's 23 contributors are both uniformly excellent and remarkable for their diversity. For example, novelist Margaret Atwood writes a very personal piece about the image of the scientist and its sometime appearance as the "mad scientist." Science historian Paul Davies writes about the effects on Western society of the realization that we are not the center of the universe. Biologist Richard Dawkins opines about the revolutionary nature of Darwin's discoveries, and science fiction writer Gregory Benford contemplates the meaning of time. The wide array of scientific disciplines, including genetics, climate change, physics, and engineering, are each placed in a fresh and thought-provoking social and historical context. Bryson's name will bring readers in, but the real reward is fine writers writing about serious science in an accessible, good-natured style. It is a worthy celebration of the Royal Society. Color illus. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
A Festschrift for the 350th anniversary of Britain's Royal Society, this abundantly illustrated volume is not an institutional history. Rather, its 22 contributors address aspects of the scientific enterprise that a brain trust once headed by Isaac Newton has advanced so much. Several authors dwell on distinctions between theory and experiment, or between pure versus applied science. Another group tackles science's perennial challenge of communicating to the public. Newton biographer James Gleick amusingly describes the Royal Society's original journal as a cross between Physical Review and Ripley's Believe It or Not; scientist Stephen Schneider and apocalypse-novelist Maggie Gee relate their efforts to focus attention on climate change; and science historian Simon Schaffer recounts a 1781 Royal Society controversy about Franklin's lightning rod to suggest how the public should react when scientists disagree. A volume that enlists novelist Margaret Atwood to expatiate on fiction's stock character of the mad scientist has something for everyone; that this one also showcases such popular scientist-authors as Martin Rees, Richard Dawkins, Richard Fortey, and Paul Davies ensures it will make a splash in the new-books display.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
Seeing Further features contributions from 22 scientists and science writers who appreciate the fundamental scientific discoveries and practical applications achieved by past and present members of the Royal Society. Its British members have been the first to formulate the laws of motion (I. Newton); to measure certain properties of gases (R. Boyle); to express the complete laws of electromagnetism (J. Maxwell); to discover the electron (J. J. Thompson); to invent Boolean logic, the basis of digital computer logic (G. Boole); to use X-rays to determine crystal structure (W. H. and W. L. Bragg); and to model the double helix (F. Crick with J. Watson, an American). The stories told are riveting and represent some of the great history of how the Royal Society helped shape modern science since its origin 350 years ago, when 28-year-old Christopher Wren lectured on the wonders of astronomy and stimulated the creation of a society to promote useful knowledge. Global in outlook, this society has demonstrated the power of its ideas to shape modern thinking and actions. The portraits, the illustrations and photos, the brief bibliography, and the index help the reader and the researcher immensely. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. F. Potter formerly, University of California, Irvine
Kirkus Review
The Royal Society has been incubating and disseminating scientific illumination for 350 years, as Bryson (Shakespeare: The World as Stage, 2007, etc.) and his fellow contributors gracefully attest."The Royal Society has been doing interesting and heroic things...since 1660," writes the author, and it is alive and well, still fulfilling its self-ordained mission "to assist and promote the accumulation of useful knowledge." Or even just potentially useful knowledge, like Thomas Bayes' theorem of inverse probabilities, which had no practical application at its creation but looked promising; the Society published and preserved it, much to the future gratitude of astrophysicists and stock-market analysts. The Society invented scientific publishing and peer review and demanded clarity in scientific expression, and it brought together great minds in a cosmopolitan milieu blind to class. A revolutionary institution, then, encouraging further revolutions, such as the seditions of Darwin ("Before Darwin," writes Richard Dawkins, "it took a philosopher of the caliber of David Hume to rumble the illogic of 'if a thing looks designed it must have been designed' ") and the metaphysics of Leibniz, whom Neal Stephenson notes "practised an ecumenicism that in a lesser mind would strike us as suspicious or even craven." These essays from a gathering of bell-clear writers and thinkersincluding, among others, Richard Fortey, Margaret Atwood and Martin Reescover a swath of the Society's activities, from the mass appeal of ballooning to the rarefied precincts where mathematical rationalists duke it out with experimental empiricists. Throughout the book runs a sharp humanism, typified by the crystallographers, writes Georgina Ferry, with their interlocking stories about collegiality and women in science.Premium vest-pocket histories of science.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Science advances so quickly that many of its institutions flourish briefly then become obsolete. Not so Britain's Royal Society, soon to celebrate its 350th birthday. By its mission, "the promoting of experimental philosophy," the Society's members essentially invented the scientific method. Bryson, an American known for his generalist approach to science writing, is an unusual choice to edit this semischolarly and at times quaint anthology. The eclectic roster of contributors includes such renowned figures as science journalist James Gleick on the founding of the Society, novelist Margaret Atwood writing about Jonathan Swift, historian Richard Holmes on the late 18th-century ballooning craze, the evolutionary biologist and social critic Richard Dawkins discussing how Darwin arrived at his theories, engineer Henry Petroski looking at the great structures of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and others whose names fans of popular science will recognize. The collection climaxes in a speculative essay by Sir Martin Rees, the Society's president, on the next 50 years. VERDICT This is a commemorative, collector's item with world-class contributors, worth acquiring for that reason alone. Its most ardent readers will be science history buffs.-Gregg Sapp, Evergreen State Coll., Olympia, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
