![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neo_ultraThe book cover promised an engaging, light-hearted insight into the lives of famous scientists, but in fact it was so dry my eyeballs shrivelled.
There were some interesting facts, I quite liked the chapter about Niels Bohr and the story about the horseshoe he attached over his door, he seemed like an interesting person. But most of the time the stories the author told about the scientist didn’t really paint them in a good light or made them sympathetic.
And the author’s comments made things even worse, like the chapter about Einstein. The author described how Einstein just ditched his wife and sick children and moved to another country and went ‘we like Einstein so much and find him so relatable because of his little weaknesses’. But no, I didn’t find him likeable or relatable.
Maybe it was the author’s voice that mostly spoiled things for me because the author constantly insisted on bringing god into the picture, even placing the birth of Jesus on the historical timeline as if it was a historical fact. I imagine that for some of the medieval scientists religion was of importance, seeing as many of them could be executed if they didn’t dress their discoveries in religiously palatable guise. But later than that I don’t see the relevance most of the time, except maybe in Darwin’s case.
I also didn’t really care about all that scientific information. I wanted to know something about the people behind the science, not an explanation about how genetics works or what quantum mechanics is. Besides, the explanations were mostly so convoluted I didn’t get them anyway. So I guess Richard Feynman is some dude who did some important stuff, good for him, no idea what though.
Actually, that was kind of a thing in the book – the closer it came to our times, the more esoteric the discoveries seemed. Back in the days people discovered important basic things like gravity, nowadays it’s all stuff only scientists understand or care about. So why should we care about who did what if those things don't really affect our lives.
Well, I will at least know the names of some scientists I didn’t know before, modern science was not really covered in school. But on the whole, I didn’t particularly enjoy the book and the way it presented information.
There were some interesting facts, I quite liked the chapter about Niels Bohr and the story about the horseshoe he attached over his door, he seemed like an interesting person. But most of the time the stories the author told about the scientist didn’t really paint them in a good light or made them sympathetic.
And the author’s comments made things even worse, like the chapter about Einstein. The author described how Einstein just ditched his wife and sick children and moved to another country and went ‘we like Einstein so much and find him so relatable because of his little weaknesses’. But no, I didn’t find him likeable or relatable.
Maybe it was the author’s voice that mostly spoiled things for me because the author constantly insisted on bringing god into the picture, even placing the birth of Jesus on the historical timeline as if it was a historical fact. I imagine that for some of the medieval scientists religion was of importance, seeing as many of them could be executed if they didn’t dress their discoveries in religiously palatable guise. But later than that I don’t see the relevance most of the time, except maybe in Darwin’s case.
I also didn’t really care about all that scientific information. I wanted to know something about the people behind the science, not an explanation about how genetics works or what quantum mechanics is. Besides, the explanations were mostly so convoluted I didn’t get them anyway. So I guess Richard Feynman is some dude who did some important stuff, good for him, no idea what though.
Actually, that was kind of a thing in the book – the closer it came to our times, the more esoteric the discoveries seemed. Back in the days people discovered important basic things like gravity, nowadays it’s all stuff only scientists understand or care about. So why should we care about who did what if those things don't really affect our lives.
Well, I will at least know the names of some scientists I didn’t know before, modern science was not really covered in school. But on the whole, I didn’t particularly enjoy the book and the way it presented information.
