The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
by Natalie Angier
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Book Summary Information
Author: Natalie AngierEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-03
ISBN: 0547053460
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
Book Review: Informative, but wearying
Summary: 4 Stars
As with the human DNA she so effectively extols, Angier's book has a portion of useful material, but a great deal of useless "junk". An accomplished writer, she spends more ink in demonstrating those skills than in imparting the information she hopes her readers will respect. Her own declared intention of presenting the "Basics of Science" isn't fulfilled. Nor does she explicitly explain what "The Canon" is. Instead, she portrays what science has achieved. The "Canon" is the understanding that science is a dynamic, incessant process. "Final answers" aren't to be found, nor expected. That's an admirable approach, and when she actually depicts what science has done, Angier presents it clearly. It's the dross between these points which weary the interested reader. Her frequent quips and laboured analogies add little or nothing to understanding the point. It's an open question whether the "average" reader will endure her flowery prose, sifting it out for the data so camouflaged.
After addressing the question of how science has fallen into disrepute in her country, Angier embarks on a quest to explain its value. She explains that "Thinking Scientifically" requires mental outreach, avoiding acceptance of status quo. "Mysteries" can be explained, which does not, as some hold, diminish either their beauty or value. Opinion has its place, but the reality of science is its reality. Moving through a description of "probabilities" and the scales of Nature, she addresses the "hard sciences" of chemistry and physics. Through them all, she attempts to "lighten the mood" with pithy comments and sometimes bizarre, sometimes arcane, illusions. Whoever is "Brian 'String Bean' Greene" when he's at home? What is the "Vin Diesel line of lawn tools"? That's not counting all the "New Yorkisms" peppering the narrative.
The chapters on evolutionary biology and cell mechanism are easily the best. In fact, they nearly redeem the book from her surfeit of puns and pithy asides. The biological topics are of great interest to her, and are the ones most needed by her audience. After all, it's not Edwin Hubble or Kip Thorne that US "creationists" attack, but Charles Darwin and the host of researchers supporting his "theory". Her discource on the difference between a "theory" and a "hypothesis" should be read in every schoolroom and from every pulpit in the US. That every cell in our bodies, except the mature red blood cells, all contain an exact copy of DNA that launched our lives, will come as a surprise to many. Angier carefully explains that DNA doesn't change, but some parts of it will do one task while other segments have different roles.
While she's adept at presenting what science has found in Nature, she skips entirely the process of how things are revealed. Although she wants her readers to understand why science is important and hopes to see more young people enter the various fields, nowhere does she suggest the amount of dedicated work involved. Geologists, she notes, are the most interdisciplinary, enjoying perilous climbs and pottering about in labs doing analytical chemical or radiometric work. Yet, how much work it takes to understand what the results mean remains obscured. Fossils are explained, but palaeontology as a discipline is not. Instead we are deluged with references to candy, cartoon characters and sitcoms. Even those are limited to US sources, leaving the book an empty promise to those outside that nation.
The book contains not a single illustration, whether of examples of scale, cell structure or geophysical diagram. It might be said that some topics might be more amenable to diagram than others, but that hardly justifies the exclusion of all. The entire book is words, a good many of them made up or transferred bodily and only mildly appropriately, from other places. It also avoids any reference to the cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology. She was wise in that omission - a good many harsh comments from the past would return to haunt her. That science, however, has as many implications for society as does the making of new proteins or how far we can see into the cosmos. Although a good book promoting recognition of science's value is needed, particularly in the US, this one hasn't quite done the job. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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