To Explain the World

The Discovery of Modern Science

De: Steven Weinberg

Narrado por: Tom Perkins

In this rich, irreverent, and compelling history, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg takes us across centuries, from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad and Oxford, from Plato's Academy and the Museum of Alexandria to the cathedral school of Chartres and the Royal Society of London. He shows that the scientists of ancient and medieval times not only did not understand what we understand about the world--they did not understand what there is to understand or how to understand it. Yet over the centuries, through the struggle to solve such mysteries as the curious backward movement of the planets and the rise and fall of the tides, the modern discipline of science eventually emerged. Weinberg examines the historic clashes and collaborations that happened along the way between science and the competing spheres of religion, technology, poetry, mathematics, and philosophy.

An illuminating exploration of the way we consider and analyze the world around us, To Explain the World is a sweeping, ambitious account of how difficult it was to discover the goals and methods of modern science and the impact this discovery had on human knowledge and development.

©2015 Steven Weinberg (P)2015 Tantor

Doesn't work on my computer

The book wouldnt play on my computer which was frustrating. I really liked the book, extremely informative. Cited sources and explained everything in great detail. Could have done without the jab to religion because I wanted someone else to listen to this but there's no way they would with that jab.

Interesting and illuminating

I really enjoyed this book and learned a lot. The author is a noted quantum physicist and knows what he's talking about.

A resounding "meh."

Would you try another book from Steven Weinberg and/or Tom Perkins?

Probably not.

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

The most interesting was his discussion was how Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes are over-rated.

What about Tom Perkins’s performance did you like?

It was fine, straight-forward, did the job.

Any additional comments?

When a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist says he wants to teach a history course, what is a poor provost to do? It’s only history, after all, and if history isn’t a field for dilettantes, what is? If letting him dabble is the price for keeping him, please, dabble away.

“Science” in the title is too broad. Weinberg is a physicist and physics is his main interest. There is also little history, if by “history” you mean the analysis of how human activities change over time. Instead, it is a series of mostly static scenes of “who believed what and when;” more sociology than history. When he does offer analysis, however, it’s from a physicist’s, not historian’s, perspective, and that makes it interesting. Historians have praised Bacon and Descartes, but Weinberg approaches their work from the point of view of “what did they actually contribute that furthered science,” and finds them lacking.

Unfortunately, there is not enough such debunking. For the general reader, there is too much math, too many epicycles, and entirely too many inverse proportions to the square of the distance. There is also not enough reworking of his class lecture notes into a more book-like, more flowing form. I give it a resounding “meh.”

geat book.

it's the book Cosmos producers should have made. it was like a companion book to the series.

A Slightly Longer History of Nearly Everything.

This crisp and challenging tour of the Who and How of our journey to and through the Scientific Revolution is a wonderful listen. Steven Weinberg gives fans of Bill Bryson's Short History a deeper dive into the papers and theories that led to the scientific method. Although the equations and tables require a relistening - he does not shy away from assuming the literate lay person can follow along well enough to grasp the essentials of each scientists process. A worthy book with a great reader.