Customer Reviews

The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is very difficult for me to dislike a book like this. I am a big fan of scientific histories and this is a very good one. Gribbin takes us through the development of Western science from its roots in the Renaissance through modern threads of research. His prose is very readable and well organized even as he takes us through the major topics of physics, chemistry and biology.

One of the things that makes his book so readable is that he focuses a lot of his energy on the lives and personalities of the great scientists. Though we get a grounding in the theories, we get more about science as a human pursuit which is often forgotten in our technologically-swamped age. It is a nice approach through which we not only get to hear about the ones everybody knows--Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, etc.--but a number of names with which even a science teacher like myself is less familiar.

My main problem with this book is that Gribbin's prejudices show through loud and clear. He is clearly not a supporter of Thomas Kuhn's ideas of scientific revolution which I think have a certain validity and usefulness though Gribbin is correct in that science would progress even without revolutions; however, it would not likely have progressed in the way that Gribbin himself outlines so well. Gribbin also clearly has some problems with the really famous scientists like Einstein and, in particular, Newton. I'm not quite clear why Gribbin is so anti-Newton but his assertions that everything discovered by Newton and Einstein would have eventually been discovered by other scientists, while likely true, dismisses the fact that these genius certainly accelerated our understanding. In addition, in my view, men like Newton, Darwin and Einstein had a capability to see the big picture far beyond that of any of their contemporaries. They deserve the credit they usually receive and Gribbin's complaints often come off sounding like sour grapes from a less successful scientist.

Still, Gribbin makes no secret of his views and no apologies and I can appreciate that. He has done a great service with this book. Obviously, with all the ground he has to cover, even at 600+ pages he cannot go into much depth; however, he presents a fascinating story of the men and women who have done so much to shape our modern world. It is worth reading for any educated person.

I do want to point out that this is a very good book. I did give it five stars after all. It is a great book for getting a good view of several scientists and their contributions to the sciences and engineering from the late renaissance period to modern times.

The topic our kind author, John Gribbin, is tackling is very large and no one book can hope to cover the entire topic. Even, as is the case here, in a book of almost 700 pages. Gribbin has chosen to focus on the interplay among the scientists, mainly when he wants to segway from one scientist to another, and the social implications of their discoveries... including much on the political realties of the time. Especially in the case of Galileo Galilei, where the political issues can be as important as his scientific discoveries.

I would say that the great weakness to this approach is that he focus's a lot of those who invented things, and less on those who developed new ways of thinking about the world. He claims to be doing the later, and does do a good job of it at times, but he appears to ignore the implications of a quote from Galileo he likes to use a lot: "science is written in the language of mathematics". Gribbin almost totally ignores the contributions the people he covers made to mathematics, and pure mathematicians have trouble even getting a mention from him. For example, in discussing Newton he could have discussed Gottfried Leibnitz a little, but instead just mentions that Newton and him argued about who discovered Calculus as leaves it at that.

The second great weakness of this book is there is no quick introduction to the best of the Greek and Roman philosophers who did a lot of science. Aristotle was thought highly of for a lot of good reasons by people in the middle-ages, and he was right about a lot of things. It is easy, especially now-a-days, to think that the ancient Greeks sure missed the boat on a lot things. Aristotle gets mentioned, now and again, is passing, but I haven't even run across a mention of Archimedes (when discussing Newton and Calculus it would have been nice to point out that Archimedes came close to discovering it almost 2000 years before. Some think the only reason he missed was the faulting numeral system he had to work with), Pythagorus, or Euclid.

Hindsight is 20/20, and the Greeks and other ancients got most of the things correct, especially when you consider that they didn't have many of the tools that the later true scientists had access too.

Then there are the two great oversights among great scientists that I think would have site well into the mold he was using: Pasteur and Goddard. Not minor folks in the history of science.

Because he couldn't cover everything, I overlook these problems and still give it a high rating. People should know that their is a lot of ground to cover in science and the history of science and seek out more information on the topic. Especially since an informed populace is the requirement and basis for a democracy. People need to understand how science and true scientists work in order to have informed opinions about many of the issues facing society today.

Still a fine work and worthy of anybody library.

This is undoubtedly John Gribbin's best book, and only a real nit picker could object to the fact that it doesn't cover every single scientist who ever lived. Where Gribbin is so good is in weaving the story of scientists'lives together to tell a gripping story of how science as a whole has developed from the time of Copernicus to the beginning of the 21st century. The chapter about Benjamin Thomson aka Lord Rumford is particularly good, and Gribbin delights in telling you about the weirdness of many of his subjects, including Henry Cavendish who was the richest man in England, and a great scientist, but only ate boiled mutton. Even if you don't care about the science, this is still grsat history.

This is the book to buy for that teenager who loves the humanities, religion, literature but is AFRAID of science. Astrophysicist John Gribbin writes superbly about the great developments of Western Science from Copernicus to Einstein or Mendel, Darwin, and Watson and Crick. He truly has a gift for explaining the basics of science without burying the reader in mathematics or technical language. The strategy is to explain scientific advances through the lives of the great men who pushed the limits of scientific advances...such as the race to discover the spiral helix structure of DNA or the thought experiments of Farady and Einstein.

As an engineer, this book explained the history of discovery of most of the topics that were brushed upon during my engineering undergraduate degree.

The author gives a detailed history of the key discoveries that scientists have made (including those not often recognized) and the key discoveries that were passed from scientist to scientist to allow them to stand upon each others shoulders to find the next discovery.

This is not a detailed science book, but it is an excellent history book that goes into enough technical detail for this engineer without getting into equations and derivations.

I recommend this book for those truly interested in the story of how the laws of science were discovered and how past scientists have helped us to get where we are today.

I found this book very enlightening. Considering the enormity of the task Gribbin cut out for himself, I was impressed by the achievement. The right amount of information, both personal and scientific, was presented for each scientist. I especially liked the section headings that helped me find my way around when refering to something written earlier. I never got lost in the sea of names and events that usually mark a book of this type. Gribbin's style is highly readable.

I am a science teacher and will be using this in class.

After purchasing this book I quickly perused it and rashly thought I would not like it. The author makes short shrift of the biological sciences, he neglects German science, and he does not cover anthropology at all (except for, by implication, Darwin). But a few weeks later I picked it up again and became immersed in what, by any measure, is a fascinating and delightful narrative. I've read a good deal of literature in the history of science, and I don't think I've encountered anything in the field so cogently written and eminently readable. He undertook a breathtaking sweep of history here, with a lot to cover, and to structure the narrative around biography to make it more interesting is an ingenious idea. His understanding of the progress of scientific theory is solid; contrary to what one reviewer notes, there was no Greek or Roman science! Science has its roots in the European Renaissance, but really doesn't arise until afterwards, and Gribbin notes this explicitly in his text (hence the reason for not including them). Indeed, one could say that what distinguishes the Medieval/Renaissance world from ours is science. Also, Gribbin understands that the scientific method is born out of the interaction between theory, experiment, and observation, between deduction and empirical analysis/testing.

If you expect this book to illuminate the lives of natural philosophers and scientists; to detail their idiosyncracies, oddities, obsessions, and personalities; to explore the politics and prevailing social and religious winds of their day -- then this book will be a joy for you to read, and you will delight in its pages.

If you expect this book to describe the thinking of these intellectual forefathers and -mothers of ours; to sort through their theories and how they arrived at them; to paint a big picture of the history of science that enables you to see the overarching themes and trends -- then this book, sadly, will be a disappointment.

There is no doubt that Gribbin has written a tale that is grand in scope, expansive in nature, and overall exciting, enthralling and even downright juicy (who would have thought that the lives of natural philosophers and scientists were filled with such scandal and self-indulgence?). However, one should approach this book with the knowledge that it is more about quirks than quarks, more about natural passions than natural laws, and more about the history of scientific personalities than the history of scientific thought.

Wayne Booth (The Company We Keep) describes a good author as a friend. Well, John Gribbin is definitely a friend. While I do not agree with his mild and barely mentioned aethism, his love of science is heartfelt as he brings it to life through individual human beings.

This is not a dull science book. It has no formulas or math except to explain scientific laws as simply as possible. Neither is it a "science for dummies" either. Instead, this book is best read by the fireside. It is top quality literature which is insightful and deep while retaining the human element all the way through. Given its inexpensive price, this book is a winner all around.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves stories. I would especially recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of scientific ideas and the people who advanced them. This book is also useful material for college courses in science, history or literature.

Five centuries or so of history of science in a single volume: that is an accomplishment. The author seems to prefer some scientists instead of others and gives more details for those that he probably likes the most and overlooks others. So the coverage is not equal. Having said that, he puts the scientific discoveries in context and makes the all story an interesting discovery in itself. The main thesis is that discoveries are not accidental and the scientist does not live in a vaccum but instead it is a slow process that builds on previous scientists and discoveries. What is not about: it's not a history of medicine, nor a history of machines. Physics (and a little bit of chemistry) and biology seem to be his main subjects (physics definetively more than biology). He keeps the subject very simple and sometimes for the sake of simplicity he omits some details about the scientific discovery itself for which explanations are not provided: for instance, the general theory of relativity or the Kepler's 3 laws are left for further readings. All in all, it is a beautiful book that I sincerely recommend to the reader.