The Science of Discworld (Discworld) [Import] [Paperback]

Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen Terry Pratchett (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Ebury Press,; 1st edition (June 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0091865158
• ISBN-13: 978-0091865153
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,449,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brief History of the World, November 16, 2002

By 

Sharon "sharon55552" (Israel) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Science of Discworld (Paperback)

We are watching the wizards of Unseen University watching an Earth-like planet be created. Sounds complicated? Not really...
A brief, yet in-depth (I don't know how that can work, but it does) explanation on how it is currently believed out world works is nothing short of miraculous, especially due to the clarity in which it is explained. Interlaced with a story about the wizards' experiments with their new toy planet, this book is completely riveting and highly informative.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compulsory textbook for undergraduate science students!!, March 19, 2002

By 

JJM Peters (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Science of Discworld (Discworld) (Paperback)

Apart from being a Pratchett fan, I'm an almost post graduate biology student interested in education en popularising science. Therefore, this book stands high on my list of best books ever. Apart from a very entertaining story featuring the ever-blundering wizards of U.U. (and Rincewind in the role of Professor of Unusual and Cruel Geography), this is really a very, very good science textbook.

The strength of the science book part (reviews on the story can be found aplenty on this page) is that it is for one thing very clearly structured, starting with the "birth" of the universe as we now perceive it and ending with a (maybe) over-the-top look into the future. But apart from this comprehensive structure, the science writing is also very clever. Many science books just state what is known, so only the dry facts. The authors of this book also give a framework, for example some history of how knowledge is obtained, a process that is mostly unknown to those who have not followed an academic science education.

But that's not all. Many times the authors start out by stating something that is known to everybody, giving the explanations we all learn in high school. And then they go about by showing us how exactly these high school explanation (or "lies-to-children" as they call them) are wrong, or at least a small part of the truth, giving a much more complicated image of how things work and even leaving things unexplained (because that's how it is in science, not all things can be explained satisfactorily). And that is, in my opinion, the strength of the book, a glimpse is given on how science is practised, how knowledge is gained and how things are always more complicated than you think they are.

I gave this book to a friend of mine who has had a long career in teaching (not only high-school teaching, but also teaching teachers-to-be how to teach) and he was also very enthusiastic about the book, because it really lets you wrestle with the various ideas and theories presented.

I myself have learned greatly from this book, not only from certain subjects that, being a biologist, are not part of your education (for example the physics involved in the biginning of the universe), but also about the more philosophical side of science (the chapter called "Things that aren't", which deals with how strange human thinking and perception sometimes work, is my all time favorite). This is why I very strongly recommend this book to all undergraduate science students (and really anyone involved in science or even remotely interested in it); they can profit greatly from reading this book. My only fear is that this book will, completely unjustified, disappear on the "Sci-fi and Fantasy" shelves in bookstores, and will not be found on the "Popular science" shelves where is really belongs!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars But I'm a Pratchett fan - really, July 14, 2005

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Science of Discworld (Paperback)

This is really two great books. The first is a wizard's experiment gone wrong at the Unseen University. A chain reaction in their squash court (sound familiar?) has released an unprecedented amount of thaumic energy. Before it could be channeled safely, it materializes a world, in fact a whole star system. But this world isn't a disc, it's round --

The second book is a witty, well informed scientific commentary on many things, but especially on the history of life on earth. (I only noticed one mis-step in the real science, a statement about the stability of a an oxygen isotope. They probably slid that error in to make nitpickers like me feel smug.)

The problem is, this is just one book, not two. Chapters alternate in odd-even pairs, Discworld fantasy and Ourworld fact. I probably should have read the book twice, all the odd chapters then all the even ones. As it was, I found my attention whipsawed between the two. The total was distractingly less than the sum of the parts.

It's clever, amusing and informative. The back-and-forth style just didn't work for me, though.

//wiredweird