The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science
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A playful, passionate, ebullient guide to the science all around us by a Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author.Buckle up for a joy ride through physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. Drawing on conversations with hundreds of the world's top scientists and her own work as an award-winning science writer, Natalie Angier does the impossible: She makes science fascinating and seriously fun, even for those of us who, in Angier's words, "still can't tell the difference between a proton, a photon, and a moron."Most of the profound questions we will explore in our lives—evolution, global warming, stem cells—have to do with science. So do a lot of everyday things, like our ice cream melting and our coffee getting cold and our vacuum cleaner running (or not). What does our liver do when we eat a caramel? How does the horse demonstrate evolution at work? Are we really made of stardust? (Yes, we are.)In The Canon, Lewis Thomas meets Lewis Carroll in a book destined to become a modern classic—because it quenches our curiosity, sparks our interest in the world around us, reignites our childhood delight in discovering how things work, and instantly makes us smarter. The New York Times - Steven Pinker The Canon is never dull or obscure, and despite the distracting wordplay, most of Angier s explanations are anything but superficial. She conveys the real substance of field after field, without distortion or dumbing down, and often her sensual descriptions (of the interior of a cell, a star or the Earth, for instance) leave the reader with images both vivid and useful. The Canon is an excellent introduction (or refresher) to the beautiful basics of science, and I hope it is widely read. It could make the country smarter.
Introduction: Sisyphus Sings with a Ying 1Thinking Scientifically: An Out-of-Body Experience 18Probabilities: For Whom the Bell Curves 47Calibration: Playing with Scales 71Physics: And Nothing's Plenty for Me 87Chemistry: Fire, Ice, Spies, and Life 121Evolutionary Biology: The Theory of Every Body 147Molecular Biology: Cells and Whistles 183Geology: Imagining World Pieces 212Astronomy: Heavenly Creatures 235References 267Acknowledgments 280Index 282
