In this exuberant book, the best-selling author Natalie Angier distills the scientific canon to the absolute essentials, delivering an entertaining and inspiring. Though Angier is a regular contributor to the Science Times section of this “The Canon” presents the fundamentals of science: numbers and. ONE to watch: out in paperback in early January is science writer Natalie Angier’s The Canon. It is an ambitious sweep through the basics of.

| Author: | Dushicage Met |
| Country: | Nepal |
| Language: | English (Spanish) |
| Genre: | Automotive |
| Published (Last): | 25 December 2008 |
| Pages: | 180 |
| PDF File Size: | 7.43 Mb |
| ePub File Size: | 20.96 Mb |
| ISBN: | 475-6-24422-568-4 |
| Downloads: | 82712 |
| Price: | Free* [*Free Regsitration Required] |
| Uploader: | Nikojin |
Not to mention that, while it’s obvious Angier is enthusiastic for her subject, she can get immeasurably preachy, letting that superior attitude get away with her. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Science, I repeat, is beautiful. I didn’t get far, what with the small font and lots of analogies and metaphors that I either didn’t understand or were completely unnecessary and actually detrimental to anyone who seriously just picked up this book to get a basic understanding of science.
It’s about this book. She just has this writing style that, well Angier preach to the as yet unconverted, and the generally uninformed. Such patterns in randomness suggests hidden meanings… thus superstitions.
The book gets an extra star for putting the very well done chapter on probability up front, so I could get through it before I began to hate the very existence of the universe for leading to the study of science and thus the writing of this book.

I gave up on this one after about pages. That sums up the introduction for you unless angler want to read an extended rant including Angier’s sister in law her “pubescent children” and the science museum. If the author had pulled out 99 natali of the jokes and puns and filled in that space with genuine prose, rich imagery, and flowery anecdotes, the book would have benefited greatly from it.
Angier included quotes from the scientists she interviewed throughout her descriptions of different scientific topics in an attempt to show how scientists experience and think about their wngier, and why they do it. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.
I believe Angier was trying to make the book user-friendly for the science-phobes, but these efforts fell flat and were far too prevalent.
The Canon (Natalie Angier book) – Wikipedia
If they had been, it would have made the book so much better. There are several types of literature. Sure there are angeir gems in there, but I’d rather stay poor than fervently forage such feces.

This book sets out an alternative pantheon. By the time I got to my last bite it was sickeningly sweet, and I didn’t really enjoy it, just endured it. Angier has some fun turning a good phrase here and there. After these three initial chapters, there are six following chapters that address: And that’s why, like I always do in these cases, I’m recusing myself from giving the book a formal point score, because I simply didn’t read enough of it to give it a fair rating.
She draws on conversations with hundreds of the world’s top scientists and on her own work as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the New York Times to create a thoroughly entertaining guide to scientific literacy. With the next beautiful sentence you go, umm Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.
It’s like a mighty mastodon masticated a healthy handful of diamonds and then defecated onto my lawn. The author manages to be entertaining, informative, and at times even lyrical as she gives an overview of the basics in the basic sciences chemistry, physics, molecular biology, evolutionary biology, geology, astronomy. Let’s see what’s there The second law guarantees a certain degree of chaos and mishap in your life no matter how compulsively you plan your schedule and triple-check every report.
Trivia About The Canon: In my opinion, she should have changed her writing style for this project. It’s Lewis Carroll meets Lewis Thomas — a book that will enrapture, inspire, and enlighten. The premise of The Canon, illustrated by the author’s sister cancelling her children’s science museum membership as they reach adolescence, is that there is an imbalance to be redressed.
A great book for parents of curious kids. Give me sober, give me reflective, give me genuinely funny — hell, give me unedited transcripts; but enough already with the quirky narrative magazine feature style of presenting interviews.

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. No trivia or quizzes yet. There’s so much we know about the universe, and so much left to go, all within the realms of hard science – reading this book one day after fighting through a philosophy survey was like climbing to the top of a mountain to stargaze after a week suffocating in a crowd trapped into thinking only in human scale.
A few beautiful sentences scattered naturally throughout the book, would have made it a masterwork. The Canon presents a summary of some of the different areas of science, as well as extensive descriptions of, and interviews with, contemporary scientists who work in these fields.
Angier’s chapters are long, dense and absolutely packed with theory. Therefore, I’m going to patronizingly write the rest of this review in Angier’s style to drive the point home.
You don’t have anger be a Ph. She has obviously limited herself to a strictly American audience by including so many cultural markers, but even as an American myself, her references spanned so many topics and generations that I lost more than a few myself.
My first bite was all I remembered and dreamed it could be. In short, if you actually know anything about science, don’t read this book. Open Preview See a Problem?
Natalie Angier, The Canon
Preview — The Canon by Natalie Angier. I liked this more than I thought I might, given the reviews. I only wish some Science is cool.
