One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.
In A Walk in the Woods , Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country , he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest boo...
One of the world’s most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.
In A Walk in the Woods , Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country , he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the world’s most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining.
However, as Kolbert has pointed out when you are confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable climate "the last thing you'd want to do is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it." It has even been suggested, with more plausibility than would at first seem evident, that an ice age might actually be induced by a rise in temperature. The idea is that a slight warming would enhancec evapora...
2013-09-11 13:58:59
However, as Kolbert has pointed out when you are confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable climate "the last thing you'd want to do is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it." It has even been suggested, with more plausibility than would at first seem evident, that an ice age might actually be induced by a rise in temperature. The idea is that a slight warming would enhancec evaporation rates and increase cloud cover, leading in the higher latitudes to more persistent accumulations of snow. In fact, global warming could plausibly, if paradoxically, lead to powerful localized cooling in North America and northern Europe.引自第431页
I asked RIchard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there's someone ready to take his place. He chuckled rather heartily at my naivete. "I'm afraid it's not as if we have substitutes sitting on the bench somewhere waiting to be called in to play. When a specialist retires or, even more unfortunately, dies, that can bring a stop to things in that field, sometimes for a very long...
2013-09-06 15:49:29
I asked RIchard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there's someone ready to take his place.
He chuckled rather heartily at my naivete. "I'm afraid it's not as if we have substitutes sitting on the bench somewhere waiting to be called in to play. When a specialist retires or, even more unfortunately, dies, that can bring a stop to things in that field, sometimes for a very long while."
"And I suppose that's why you value someone who spends forty-two years studying a single species of plant, even if id doesn't produce anything terribly new?"
"Precisely," he said, "precisely." And he really seemed to mean it.引自第370页
We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life's dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes. The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billion years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to. Steph...
2013-09-05 13:46:00
We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life's dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes. The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billion years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to. Stephen Jay Gould expressed it succinctly in a well-known line: "Humans are here today because our particular line never fracured - never once at any of the billion points that could have erased us from history."引自第349页
"The history of life", wrote Gould, "is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity." Evolutionary sucess, it appeared, was a lottery.
2013-09-04 14:45:29
"The history of life", wrote Gould, "is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity." Evolutionary sucess, it appeared, was a lottery.引自第327页
A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet - apparently he had a square - in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care. In the second reg...
2013-08-20 17:52:22
A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet - apparently he had a square - in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care. In the second regard he was correct. The statue of Lavoisier-cum-Condorcet was allowed to remain in place for another half century until the Second World Was when, one morning, it was taken away and melted down for scrap.引自第101页
For a long time it was assumed that anything so miraculously energetic as radioactivity must be beneficial. For years, manufacturers of toothpaste and laxatives put radioactive thorium in their products, and at least until the late 1920s the Glen Springs Hotel in the Finger Lakes region of New York (and doubtless others as well) featured with pride the therapeutic effect of its "Radioactive min...
2013-08-20 17:57:05
For a long time it was assumed that anything so miraculously energetic as radioactivity must be beneficial. For years, manufacturers of toothpaste and laxatives put radioactive thorium in their products, and at least until the late 1920s the Glen Springs Hotel in the Finger Lakes region of New York (and doubtless others as well) featured with pride the therapeutic effect of its "Radioactive mineral springs." Radioactivity wasn't banned in consumer products until 1938. By this time it was much too late for Madame Curie, who died of leukemia in 1934. Radiation, in fact, is so pernicious and long lasting that even now her papers from the 1890s - even her cookbooks - are too dangerous to handle. Her lab books are kept in leadlined boxes, and those who wish to see them must don protective clothing.引自第111页
In fact,of course, the world was about to enter a century of science where many people wouldn't understand anything and none would understand everything.
2013-08-21 17:18:39
In fact,of course, the world was about to enter a century of science where many people wouldn't understand anything and none would understand everything.引自第119页
However, as Kolbert has pointed out when you are confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable climate "the last thing you'd want to do is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it." It has even been suggested, with more plausibility than would at first seem evident, that an ice age might actually be induced by a rise in temperature. The idea is that a slight warming would enhancec evapora...
2013-09-11 13:58:59
However, as Kolbert has pointed out when you are confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable climate "the last thing you'd want to do is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it." It has even been suggested, with more plausibility than would at first seem evident, that an ice age might actually be induced by a rise in temperature. The idea is that a slight warming would enhancec evaporation rates and increase cloud cover, leading in the higher latitudes to more persistent accumulations of snow. In fact, global warming could plausibly, if paradoxically, lead to powerful localized cooling in North America and northern Europe.引自第431页
I asked RIchard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there's someone ready to take his place. He chuckled rather heartily at my naivete. "I'm afraid it's not as if we have substitutes sitting on the bench somewhere waiting to be called in to play. When a specialist retires or, even more unfortunately, dies, that can bring a stop to things in that field, sometimes for a very long...
2013-09-06 15:49:29
I asked RIchard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there's someone ready to take his place.
He chuckled rather heartily at my naivete. "I'm afraid it's not as if we have substitutes sitting on the bench somewhere waiting to be called in to play. When a specialist retires or, even more unfortunately, dies, that can bring a stop to things in that field, sometimes for a very long while."
"And I suppose that's why you value someone who spends forty-two years studying a single species of plant, even if id doesn't produce anything terribly new?"
"Precisely," he said, "precisely." And he really seemed to mean it.引自第370页
We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life's dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes. The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billion years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to. Steph...
2013-09-05 13:46:00
We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life's dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes. The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billion years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to. Stephen Jay Gould expressed it succinctly in a well-known line: "Humans are here today because our particular line never fracured - never once at any of the billion points that could have erased us from history."引自第349页
"The history of life", wrote Gould, "is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity." Evolutionary sucess, it appeared, was a lottery.
2013-09-04 14:45:29
"The history of life", wrote Gould, "is a story of massive removal followed by differentiation within a few surviving stocks, not the conventional tale of steadily increasing excellence, complexity, and diversity." Evolutionary sucess, it appeared, was a lottery.引自第327页
0 有用 等等等等 2014-06-29 03:23:22
宇宙物理讲的最好。恐龙地理岩石很无聊。科学家轶事过多..少数有意思
0 有用 pluskid 2021-03-24 12:11:30
天文地理物理化学生物等等各个学科大串烧,重要的是都通过“测量地球的半径、估算地球的年龄、推演物种演化关系”等话题很好地串到了一起(虽然有个别地方过度还是有点牵强),可以想象如果是小时候的自己看到这样的书一定会爱不释手,比起什么大百科全书来说是好太多了。缺点是有些地方八卦的分量太重了,理论或者知识本身被发现者的发现过程甚至是不太相关的个人轶事所盖过了,就有点本末倒置了。但作为轻松科普读物整体还是非常... 天文地理物理化学生物等等各个学科大串烧,重要的是都通过“测量地球的半径、估算地球的年龄、推演物种演化关系”等话题很好地串到了一起(虽然有个别地方过度还是有点牵强),可以想象如果是小时候的自己看到这样的书一定会爱不释手,比起什么大百科全书来说是好太多了。缺点是有些地方八卦的分量太重了,理论或者知识本身被发现者的发现过程甚至是不太相关的个人轶事所盖过了,就有点本末倒置了。但作为轻松科普读物整体还是非常不错的。 (展开)
0 有用 撒拖 2014-05-03 10:19:17
当小说读完了 虽然其实可能根本没读懂...但是读起来还是很开心的 就像【不造你说的是啥但听上去是个笑话 所以我就笑了】那种感觉……
0 有用 昨夜闲潭梦落花 2018-06-01 21:20:01
挺会打比方; 内容和行文都过分追求趣味性。 名为科普,实是猎奇。 讲相对论的地方,我好像有点理解了。 "万物"简史,出场的英国人是不是有点太多了? 有些地方,文风造作。
0 有用 抹茶秀根 2014-07-29 19:00:11
蓝思值1190L。479之后的note部分就不读了。本身对这方面没什么兴趣的人,比如我,读起来很累吧。但是也那么坚持下来了(~\(≧▽≦)/~自己一个 【另外想说的是我亚马逊100买了第二天就降价70不到 恨!。。】(第七)
0 有用 小小的屁孩 2022-03-15 22:30:36
想下单了
0 有用 skylark 2021-03-26 17:17:26
留着读给麦麦听!
0 有用 pluskid 2021-03-24 12:11:30
天文地理物理化学生物等等各个学科大串烧,重要的是都通过“测量地球的半径、估算地球的年龄、推演物种演化关系”等话题很好地串到了一起(虽然有个别地方过度还是有点牵强),可以想象如果是小时候的自己看到这样的书一定会爱不释手,比起什么大百科全书来说是好太多了。缺点是有些地方八卦的分量太重了,理论或者知识本身被发现者的发现过程甚至是不太相关的个人轶事所盖过了,就有点本末倒置了。但作为轻松科普读物整体还是非常... 天文地理物理化学生物等等各个学科大串烧,重要的是都通过“测量地球的半径、估算地球的年龄、推演物种演化关系”等话题很好地串到了一起(虽然有个别地方过度还是有点牵强),可以想象如果是小时候的自己看到这样的书一定会爱不释手,比起什么大百科全书来说是好太多了。缺点是有些地方八卦的分量太重了,理论或者知识本身被发现者的发现过程甚至是不太相关的个人轶事所盖过了,就有点本末倒置了。但作为轻松科普读物整体还是非常不错的。 (展开)
0 有用 hipresario 2020-11-28 14:59:58
Skimmed in year end
1 有用 读书看电影 2019-03-27 09:35:31
It is very rare for me to read the same book twice. Love it so much and hope it can help with my teaching. 温故知新 依旧爱不释手