The History of Science (Audiobook)

This set presents readers in grades six and up with information surveying the study of science through the ages. Each volume discusses a specific time period, region, or area of science. Arrangement is, for the most part, chronological. Volumes 1 through 6 cover science history beginning with the ancient Egyptians and ending with the eighteenth century. There is good coverage of the science of Islam, and volume 3 is devoted to science in China, India, Mesoamerica, and other regions. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are treated in two volumes each, one covering physical sciences and the other covering life sciences.

Each volume contains 20 well-written topic entries, each covering a region, a branch of science, or a significant concept, discovery, or development. These entries range in length from two to five pages and contain numerous charts, graphs, and illustrations in an appealing layout. Brief biographical outlines for various scientific figures are included where appropriate. Words underlined in the text are defined in the volume-specific glossary. Each volume also contains a table of contents, a time line for the period being covered, resources for further study, and a set index.

A comprehensive glossary, pronunciation guides, cross-references, and volume-specific indexes would have made the set more accessible. Still, these volumes provide a general introduction to many topics in a single source and would appeal to students and browsers alike. Public and school libraries needing science history reference materials for the middle-school level and up will find this purchase suitable.RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Library Binding edition.
Review
If, broadly speaking, science can be summed up as the intellectual quest for knowledge, it's hard to put a precise date on humanity's first scientific achievement - though we may deduce from the remains left in paleolithic burial chambers that people were speculating about the mysteries of life and death tens of thousands of years ago. For practical purposes, apart from brief references to Stonehenge and the 20,000-year-old cave paintings of southern Europe, Whitfield's four-part history starts with the invention of writing (Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics) a mere 5,000 years ago. 'It is no accident that the pyramids, the greatest physical symbols of ancient civilisation, belong to the age of the discovery of mathematics and writing.' This is Whitfield's fourth and easily his most ambitious audio history. He took a leisurely eight hours to stroll through English poetry and sprinted through the French revolution and Darwin for Naxos's single-CD 'In a Nutshell' series, but the story of western science at 1,000 years per hour is a tall order. It doesn't quite work out like that, of course. It's bottom-heavy, parts three and four covering respectively the 19th-century machine age and a spectacular list of 20th-century scientific and technological milestones - quantum physics, the big bang, DNA, genetic engineering and the internet account for half the book. Impressed as I am by E=mc2, as a non-scientist I can relate more to the physics taught by Empedocles of Sicily circa 450BC. All matter, he reckoned, was composed of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, which, mingled in varying proportions, produced all the substances of the universe and were in turn governed by the two greatest forces, love and strife. Listening to this made me ruefully aware of my ignorance. I had no idea that the Venerable Bede fixed the dating of Easter or that having to calculate the exact direction of Mecca and when to pray ensured that Islam had the best mathematicians and astronomers, or that the first steam engines of the industrial revolution required the output of an entire iron foundry to make and a coal mine to run. Who said boffins were boring? - Sue Arnold, The Guardian