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Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society Hardcover – November 2, 2010
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“Bryson is as amusing as ever….As a celebration of 350 years of modern science, [Seeing Further]it is a worthy tribute.”
—The Economist
In Seeing Further, New York Times bestseller Bill Bryson takes readers on a guided tour through the great discoveries, feuds, and personalities of modern science. Already a major bestseller in the UK, Seeing Further tells the fascinating story of science and the Royal Society with Bill Bryson’s trademark wit and intelligence, and contributions from a host of well known scientists and science fiction writers, including Richard Dawkins, Neal Stephenson, James Gleick, and Margret Atwood. It is a delightful literary treat from the acclaimed author who previous explored the current state of scientific knowledge in his phenomenally popular book, A Short History of Nearly Everything.
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMariner Books
- Publication dateNovember 2, 2010
- Dimensions6.75 x 1.27 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100061999768
- ISBN-13978-0061999765
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“Bill Bryson is as amusing as ever . . . As a celebration of modern science, Seeing Further is a worthy tribute.” — The Economist
“Traces the Royal Society’s unparalled contributions to science, celebrating not just the famous members like Isaac Newton but also the oddballs.” — Discover magazine (Hot Science)
“Bill Bryson exhibits a wealth of essays on the scientific discoveries and exploits of the Royal Society” — Vanity Fair
“A treasure trove for lovers of science and history. These pages brim with revolutionary discoveries.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune (A Best Book of the Year selection)
From the Back Cover
Edited and introduced by Bill Bryson, with original contributions from "a glittering array of scientific writing talent" (Sunday Observer) including Richard Dawkins, Margaret Atwood, Richard Holmes, Martin Rees, Richard Fortey, Steve Jones, James Gleick, and Neal Stephenson, among others, this incomparable book tells the spectacular story of science and the international Royal Society, from 1660 to the present. Seeing Further is also gorgeously illustrated with photographs, documents, and treasures from the Society's exclusive archives.
On a damp weeknight in November three hundred and fifty years ago, a dozen men gathered in London. After hearing an obscure twenty-eight-year-old named Christopher Wren lecture on the wonders of astronomy, his rapt audience was moved to create a society to promote the accumulation of useful—and fascinating—knowledge. At that, the Royal Society was born, and with it, modern science.
Since then, the Royal Society has pioneered global scientific exploration and discovery. Its members have split the atom, discovered the double helix and the electron, and given us the computer and the World Wide Web. Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, Joseph Banks, Humphry Davy, John Locke, Alexander Fleming, Stephen Hawking—all have been fellows. Bill Bryson's favorite fellow is the Reverend Thomas Bayes, a brilliant mathematician who devised Bayes' theorem. Its complexity meant that it had little practical use in Bayes' own lifetime, but today his theorem is used for weather forecasting, astrophysics, and even stock-market analysis. A milestone in mathematical history, it exists only because the Royal Society decided to preserve it—just in case.
Truly global in its outlook, the Royal Society now is credited with creating modern science. Seeing Further is an unprecedented celebration of its history and the power of ideas, bringing together the very best of science writing.
About the Author
Bill Bryson's bestselling books include One Summer, A Short History of Nearly Everything, At Home, A Walk in the Woods, Neither Here nor There, Made in America, and The Mother Tongue. He lives in England with his wife.
Product details
- Publisher : Mariner Books; 1st edition (November 2, 2010)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061999768
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061999765
- Item Weight : 2.03 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.75 x 1.27 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #390,530 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #186 in Science Essays & Commentary (Books)
- #307 in Natural History (Books)
- #1,222 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. Settled in England for many years, he moved to America with his wife and four children for a few years ,but has since returned to live in the UK. His bestselling travel books include The Lost Continent, Notes From a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods and Down Under. His acclaimed work of popular science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Aventis Prize and the Descartes Prize, and was the biggest selling non-fiction book of the decade in the UK.
Photography © Julian J
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Bill Bryson is the perfect person to have headed this project. As a general science writer Bryson is aware of how important science and the Royal Society has been to the development of modern society. Then there is the rather eclectic group of contributors that have each offered a discussion on the development of science. Authors include James Gleick, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Wertheim, Neal Stephenson, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Simon Schaffer, Richard Holmes, Richard Fortey, Richard Dawkins, Henry Petroski, Georgiana Ferry, Steve Jones, Philip Ball, Paul Davies, Ian Stewart, John D. Barrow, Oliver Morton, Maggie Gee, Stephen H. Schneider, Gregory Benford, and Martin Rees. I'd have to admit that Margaret Atwoods discussion of Jonathan Swift's Academy, and Richard Dawkins' Darwin's Five Bridges: The Way to Natural Selection is for me the highlight of the book. However, each and every chapter is eye opening and worthy of your time.
It is a difficult fact to get your head around that when the Royal Society was established in 1660 we knew so little of the causes of the physical phenomenon of our planet. Whether the topic was the causes of the tides or why summer was warmer than winter, mystery tended to shroud almost everything. The Royal Society created the scientific method thus allowing discoveries to be measured and duplicated and encouraged good scientific exploration. "Good" in this case is relative, meaning that it was better than what preceded it. "Good" by today's standard still left much to be desired.
Seeing Further is written for the general public and even the most "unscientific" of us will have no problem making sense of what is read.
Well written and containing a section devoted to further reading, Seeing Further is a fun and inspiring read.
I give it five stars after reading the whole book.
Peace to all.
The intro is by Bryson, but not anything particularly witty.
But, I'd purchased the book, I like sciency stuff and was interested in learning more about the Royal Society, so I persevered.
And, ultimately, I'm glad I did. It's a nice updated on the current state of science in the world. There are discussions of String Theory as well as updates on evolution concepts. There are interesting discussions of dead scientists as well as living ones. All the various vignettes are written by scientists and/or science writers, therefore the quality of the various stories vary depending upon whether the writer is more writer or more scientist.
All in all it's a worthwhile science book. But it isn't a Bryson book by any means.
Someone has argued that a poor review solely based on the formatting of the book is inadequate. However good the point may be, I still would not recommend a book, whether paperback or Kindle, to a friend if the organization of it were bad. This book is poorly formatted, and given the dramatically increasing number of people using Kindle, I think the two stars I am giving this book are relevant.
The content is great. Fascinating as usual with Bryson, though most of it obviously has not been written by himself but by 21 different scholars.
But the KINDLE formatting make reading it a slightly annoying experience. As mentioned previously, not only have the illustrations been completely omitted, but their captions have been left behind right in the text. Really?
Kindle books are outrageously expensive, sometimes more than plain, good old paperbacks. Don't get me wrong, I love the Kindle. But if we're going to pay so much for a book (that we can't sell, exchange or return) the least we can expect from Amazon is to provide quality stuff.
EDIT: Amazon sent out an email informing me that there was a free update available for this book!!! It downloaded in a few seconds and all the pictures are now available! So I now there are no reasons whatsoever for not buying this great read!
As usual, great Amazon customer service.
Disappointed I have to say. If you are looking into the paperback, you should go for it though.
Top reviews from other countries
"I would like to thank the other reviewers of this book for avoiding me temptation to buy, Kindle being more expensive than hardcopy is clear sign to avoid. Bryson's 'Nearly History' reminds of a tag for Horatio Alger Jnr " most influential junk ever published" but left clear 'space' for writer who understood science to do better and this surely is not that book. - Crosbie Smith would do much better. The most successful 'quacks' were ''half educated but appearing fully educated to the uneducated'', this sums up Bryson on science; CP Snow opined the same of academics.
From 'Our Final Century it was obvious for lay audiences that Sir Martin wrote best on the subjects only freshly brought to his enquiring intellect by selected experts. I would like to see Rees, Cox or especially Dawkins teaching economics, they would be 'wildly' successful because their trained minds would challenge the subject's conventional wisdom. What would be totally absorbing would be for Bryson to write a 'Short History of Economic Thought' to see just how prejudiced his conclusions. I once bet a professor dazzled by eminence that I could get Sir Martin to reply to an email - I sent him one asking him to recommended his own book so easily won my beer; his reply included "I am not an economist" as excuse for not understanding why the Royal Swedish Academy of Science embraced Economics while his Royal Society did not? Actually both are wrong, one for rewarding what is not science and the other for not endorsing what is science - see F. Soddy 1912. What governs the 'invisible hand' and the speed of the economic process? One cannot expect economists to understand if they have not been handed the appropriate physical science as by a Herbert Spencer style classification of the sciences.
Georgescue Roegen's 'master-piece' is arguably the best science history primer, brilliant but seriously tough even for those with some scientific grounding; it would be wonderful if Crosbie Smith was prepared to emulate for the more general market. One reviewer suggested that Bryson himself had written his 'History', I imagine an open plan "Book Factory" with 'mass-production' authors trawling the internet for half-knowledge, while maybe Bill endorses unspecified sponsors as Michael Jordan endorses Nike. Sample Bryson science: 'to illustrate how many stars there are in a galaxy I had a astra-physicist calculate how many peas would fit into the Albert Hall". A more modest philosopher would ask his children to count the number of peas in a litre jug while telephoning the Albert Hall to ask the ventillation engineer its internal volume and multiply. The 'insider' question is which sponsor did Bryson edorse in promoting Willard Gibbs? Did Gibbs meet Boltzman in 1871? If so that changed the world?
To avoid misleading, Sir Martin's book is 'lovely' as amongst scattered 'pearls', he displays the naivity so common and loved in the highest intellects. Curiously Sir Martin praises futurist Freeman Dyson for promoting "out of the Box" thinking, apparently forgetting that all science prior to the 20th century was formatted from "outside the box" and idee led from Britain in the 19th C, just that we called it Natural Philosophy; a separate science the loss of which is so undervalued in education.
American science is German science and so in Bryson's first history he omitted what Crosbie Smith termed the 'Science of Energy', British science that led the industrial revolution and built America. But scientists prefer theoretical science as much as engineers prefer practical science, so I guess Bryson in his history of science left out the science that invented the modern world and built his country? Right? I sure ain't payig to find out.








