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Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything examines what we now know about science, what we thought we knew, what we still don’t know, and how many times scientists have been way wrong before they’ve been sort of right.
QUESTION: Wait.
ANSWER: Okay.
QUESTION: So this guy Bryson, he says that scientists are frequently incorrect?
ANSWER: Yes. A lot of the time, scientists come up with a hypothesis (the world is flat, for example), and then a hundred years later somebody is like, “Hey, I think the world is actually ROUND.” And everyone else is like, “No way.” But then another hundred years go by and we fly into outer space, look down, and realize that the earth is more like a soccer ball than a frisbee.
QUESTION: So why read this book? Won’t everything in it be wrong soon?
ANSWER: Some of it. But for now, it’s right. And anyway, it’s interesting to see that even our best scientists get pretty confused sometimes, so that gives you an idea of just how awesome the universe is.
The universe really is awesome. For one thing, it’s huge. We can’t even see the end of it (which is supposedly infinity miles away). Our best space ship couldn’t come close to the edge of the universe. Believe me. If we could have traveled to the end of everything, we would have done it already…
GEORGE W. BUSH: Hey, Dick.
DICK CHENEY: What?
BUSH: Let’s build a space ship that would take us to the end of the universe.
CHENEY: I don’t think we can do that.
BUSH: Why not?
CHENEY: Because we don’t have a space ship that can travel infinity miles.
BUSH: Why not?
CHENEY: Because it would be impossible to build.
BUSH: Nuh-UH.
CHENEY: Yuh-huh.
BUSH: Nuh-uh. We could build a spaceship that goes infinity squared miles, which is further than infinity.
CHENEY: That’s ridiculous, Mr. President.
BUSH: Nuh-UH. I made a model of the ship already. Out of Leggos. Look. It’s the U.S.S. Millenial Infinity Squared.
CHENEY: That’s the same speedboat with wings that you built after you saw xXx and decided to design a remote control submarine that could attack Afghanistan.
…Clearly, many of us have stilted views of science.
This is why Bill Bryson wrote A Short History of Nearly Everything. As he writes in his introduction, the book is intended to be a kind of Science for Dummies: “The idea was to see if it isn’t possible to understand and appreciate – marvel at, enjoy even – the wonder and accomplishments of science at a level that isn’t too technical or demanding, but isn’t entirely superficial either.” In other words, the world is pretty fricking crazy, but he’s going to explain it in a way that’s easy to digest. Picture science as cucumbers, which don’t taste good, and picture Bryson’s book as a pickle jar that turns the cucumbers into something tasty – pickles.
To be honest, most of the science contained in A Short History was review for me (self-call), because I had learned it all in Astronomy 2 or Geology 1. For older readers who went to school when everyone thought it was okay to drink pesticides straight from the can, and when everyone believed that dolphins were fish, a lot of Bryson’s facts are probably new. What I enjoyed about A Short History was that Bryson explained things in ways that make you realize the largeness or the smallness or the complexity of things.
Take, for example, Bryson’s discussion of family ancestry. We don’t think about it often, but we’re pretty lucky to be here and we have a lot of people to thank. In a chapter entitled “The Stuff of Life” Bryson writes, “If your two parents hadn’t bonded just when they did – possibly to the second, possibly to the nanosecond – you wouldn’t be here. And if their parents hadn’t bonded in a precisely timely manner, you wouldn’t be here either. And if their parents hadn’t done likewise, and their parents before them, and so on, obviously and indefinitely, you wouldn’t be here.” So basically, if your grandfather hadn’t gotten drunk in a specific bar on a specific night and rolled around with a specific French prostitute, you wouldn’t exist.
But you’re more than just the sum of two grandfathers + two grandmothers + one father + one mother. Your genetics have been passed down for a long, long time, and for all we know, you might be part velociraptor (okay, you’re not, but you get the point). If you just want to talk about the lower branches of your family tree, the ones going back to the Civil War, your genetics are dependant upon 125 love-making sessions. According to Bryson, if you go back to the time when Shakespeare was making plays and the pilgrims were making Native Americans move off their land, you’re now looking at a familial lineage of 16,384 ancestors. Step back another twenty generations and you have 1,048,576 ancestors. Thirty generations, over a billion. Rewind to the Romans and we’re talking about ONE MILLION TRILLION people who have combined to make you who you are. In case you’re wondering, one million trillion people is way, WAY more than the number of people who have ever lived.
QUESTION: Does that mean that aliens came to Earth and had sex with my ancestors?
ANSWER: Doubtful.
As Bryson explains, “Clearly something has gone wrong with our math here. The answer, it may interest you to learn, is that your line is not pure. You couldn’t be here without a little incest – actually quite a lot of incest – albeit at a genetically discreet remove.” So yeah, at some point your family tree has some crossed branches, but no, those branches aren’t all in the Southern Appalachians. Bryson’s point is that you’re incredibly lucky to be on this planet; we’re ALL incredibly lucky.
But us being lucky is a new thing. For a long time there were no human beings, which was good because we weren’t around to clear-cut forests, but was bad because it was really hard to find a 7-Eleven when you wanted a Cheeseburger Big Bite Hot Dog at three thirty in the morning. Bryson brings us back to the birth of our planet and reminds us how new we are to the scene. (If you stretch your hands out to the sides and you’re right hand is the beginning of the planet and your left hand is the present, then a shaving off the fingernail from your left middle finger is how long humans have been around. However, if you let your fingernail grow past three inches, it begins to curl, which is disgusting.)
Of course, we could all be gone soon. There’s a volcano under Yellowstone Park – well, actually it’s all of Yellowstone Park – and it could blow ANY MINUTE. If that happened, it’s quite probable that everyone in the United States would be incinerated. So when you’re feeling stressed about work or family, just remember that the world could be over soon, which would render all your daily troubles inconsequential. (On second thought, thinking about Yellowstone when you’re stressed might not be a good idea. It might just add to your anxiety or instigate a crime spree that will be hard to explain to the authorities if the volcano doesn’t blow.)
These subjects are just a small sample from Bryson’s book. After all, he is writing about Nearly Everything. You’ll learn about evolution, the cosmos, quantum physics, and even the unfortunate extinction of a rare species of bird when the last two living specimens were shot almost simultaneously by bird-loving ornithologists who apparently wanted to study the corpses. Yes, the human race is that stupid sometimes.
Read A Short History because it’s interesting, it’s funny, and most of all, it will make you feel smart (self-call).
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