The history of human advancement (A Brief History of Science - Thomas Crump)

Member Name: markos9

Product:	A Brief History of Science - Thomas Crump
Date:	01/05/09 (144 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Comprehensive and readable.

Disadvantages: Some knowledge of science would be helpful for the later chapters.

I have a real weakness for popular science books. I have a science background, and a real thirst for knowledge. Recently, as I get older, I've started to become more interested in history. This book combines my two interests, science and history, in an engaging and informative way.

To give this book its full title "A Brief History of Science As seen through the development of scientific instruments" helps to understand its aim. The book is a history of human advancement which has been made possible through the use of technology.

The book chronicles the development of technology, from its earliest beginnings, the discovery of fire, right up to the present day and the awesome Large Hadron Collider. Each discovery is given its own chapter or section. The story of the discovery is told in a very readable manner.

The development of technology is inherently fascinating, showing the advancement of the human race in small steps, with the occasional large leap, but a poor writer could make this boring. Thomas Crump is not such a writer. He engages the reader's attention with each topic, describing the lead up to each discovery, together with its impact on society, in quite a gripping manner.

The famous story of John Harrison's development of a nautical chronometer is a good example. A prize of £20,000 was offered to anyone who could solve the problem of how to build a clock accurate enough to help read a ship's longitude and so aid accurate navigation (the pendulums of the current clocks clearly had problems operating on a rolling deck!).

Harrison took up the challenge and eventually succeeded and his story is told in a mere four pages, but the author manages to get across the painstaking work that the clock maker went through. Harrison's perfectionist nature made him refine his 'H1' design, through to H4, despite succeeding with his first design!

The book is predominantly a history book. As such, a detailed knowledge of science is unnecessary to enjoy reading it. The one exception to this is the later chapters where advancements in physics are being described. Here some unavoidable scientific notation is used and an understanding of this would help. Even here, however, the reader can just ignore the science and concentrate on the story.

Inevitably, the stories of scientific development focus on the sometimes eccentric characters who worked diligently to discover and make advances in science. The author makes some of these characters 'come to life' on the pages of his book. The inventor of the famous burner of the same name, Robert Bunsen, is one such character.

The author tells Bunsen's tale from when, as a precocious student, he overturned his school desk after a joke made at his expense by a teacher (surely risking a painful 'correction', as a result).

Bunsen was responsible for many advancements in science such as an advanced zinc-carbon battery, and an accurate balance. He was an incautious inventor, however, experimentation with cyanide left him near death for several days, and he was nearly blinded in explosions twice!

The history of technology is the history of the development of the human race and, as such, is relevant to us all. Crump has managed, in a mere 425 pages, to describe this development in a way that should interest anyone with a desire to understand how the human race ascended from burning a hunk of meat on borrowed lightning, to harnessing the power of the atom to both heat and destroy ourselves.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I found the author's writing style drew me in to the tale he wove from antiquity to the modern age. Anyone wanting to understand how and why humankind has developed technology could do worse than read this book. Readers who are interested in history will also, I'm sure enjoy this, too. Highly recommended.

Amazon is current selling this book for £7.99 in paperback.

Summary: An excellent account of humanity's technological development