Just finished reading Bill Bryson's wonderful book, A Brief History of Nearly Everything. Experience, in brief, has been humbling.
A Brief History of Nearly Everything tells, well, a brief history of nearly everything. The author explains history of the most of the major sciences such as Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, Paleontology, Oceanography, Biology, etc. in a very simple laymen's language since the dawn of the time until now. Journey of universe, earth, humanity and sciences, and discovery of what we know and how did we find them, from the biggest bang to 21st century penned in these 500 pages of gripping and amazing story! An unmatchable read. Truly.
My thoughts before starting the book were that perhaps book will introduce history of earth and life in a matter of fact manner, but Bill has dealt with variety of subjects from perspective of various scientists, researchers, discoverers and inventors making story not only pedantic but also heart touching. And in the end, the vastness of everything, and the significance of whole universe, and utter insignificance of our presence is unnerving. A little disappointing perhaps, for humans have always desired to find the purpose of life, which we are told in no explicit terms, is nothing. Nothing at all. We are here result of fluke of chance, and we will be just one of billions of billions of species in history of everything. We do not matter. Nada. No purpose. Except, perhaps, to propagate.
The book starts with the beginning of time at the Big Bang, and the formation of matter and universe and galaxies and earth. The narrative is not chronological, mostly because explorations in many branches of science move in parallel, but yet coherent and simple enough. Special feature of the narrative is not the order of things as they happened, but as they were discovered to have happened, interspersed with eccentricities of the people and societies then. The author recounts the history of geology and paleontology, biology and life, evolution and expansion of universe, and nearly everything and how it intervenes with everything else. We are led into old times into mind of those great thinkers, the hardships and jubilations they faced, the triumphs and defeats of mankind, and pretty and ugly face of human nature.
We learn that science is immensely difficult job. Much more than one can ever imagine. Much more than I ever though of. Much more than one is led to believe in this day or age. People spend their lifetime, literally, for doing something that will be disputed, ignored or even refuted as soon as they complete. They are hampered by political fallouts of wars and research funding, by fellow zealous scientists, by prevalent social views and stigma, and by their family. Many die unnoticed, unaccounted, ignored and discredited even for their best gift to mankind and sciences. Many rise from utter penury simply by their strong will, many are unimaginably brilliant to have thought of what they did then and many are utterly adventurous hardly caring for their own life in face of their curiosity! All we know is due to hard work of those, many of which we do not know even to thank for, and many we just simply cannot, ever. It would be injustice to pick one out of numerous examples in the book, but for sake of making a point, in one case a researcher spent 20 years calculating tables explaining motion of earth around the sun for occurrences of ice ages, which, by modern computers can be completed in less than 20 minutes.
The author quotes one of the scientists that scientific discoveries follow three-stage process. First, they are denied of being true. Second, they are denied of being important. And third, they are credited to wrong person. A profound and very true statement. After reading, we realize that so much talented minds are lost because of utter carelessness of fellow human beings, that so much advancement has been hampered by religious zealots and dogmatic society, including, fellow scientists.
One the simple yet effective technique adopted by the author to make the readers realize the unimaginable dimensions of the world is to compare it with ordinary matter. By repeated comparison of atoms/bacteria with a cricket ball or universe with United States area, unimaginable vastness of the beyond and meaningless smallness of atomic world dawns on us.
Though opinions of evolution vs. Intelligent Design are aplenty. After reading this book, one can refute ID option by its very postulate. World is utterly complex place, and anything like what we have to happen by itself, perhaps is ridiculously absurd. However, to have like what we have to be designed intentionally by superior being is even more ridiculously absurd. If you trusts the depths of the oceans, expansion of the universe, black matter, innumerable bacterial life which is omnipresent and omnipotent (at least, when combined), and utter meaningless (to us, and in fact to everything) and complexity of everything (for example, quarks, or DNA), then one can only question the intelligence of the designing entity. I am sure you would agree, that is if you are proponents of ID "theory", that world could have been designed trillionth time simpler than what it is now, and it would make sense to do so, if you were to contemplate designing something of similar nature now. One may argue that humans cannot fathom the depths and intentions of the God, yet still, even when I am staunch theist, I would have to question the sanity and intelligence of the God, if He/She indeed did design something like this.
All in all, an wonderful read which raises millions of unsolved problems, for answers to which we have to wait for science to progress sufficiently forward, which, unfortunately, may not happen within our lifetime. After all, when history of everything, and progress of science from 1600 AD until now is compressed into a 500 page book and read within less than a day, brain is overwhelmed by the amount of information and eagerly seeks answer to unfinished queries, which, alas, will not be answered in next 50 pages, as it has been so far.
