Review:The Science of Discworld

Thanks to return reviewer Janice Wright for the following review of Terry Prachett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen's effort The Science of Discworld. The book's a fun attempt to explain the science behind Prachett's incredibly funny world, Discworld. For those of you who haven't read Prachett, I am ashamed for you. Click below for more information. The Science of Discworld author Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen & Terry Pratchett pages 311 publisher Ebury Press (Random House) rating 8/10 reviewer Janice Wright ISBN summary A combination of fact and fantasy from masters of both investigates how the magic of "narrativium" informs the science of our world and worlds beyond.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, the Discworld moves through space on the back of four giant elephants who are in turn standing on the carapace of Great A'Tuin, the interstellar turtle. The Discworld is inhabited by all manner of creatures: trolls, dwarves, elves, a number of varieties of undead, and people - some of whom are wizards.

Our story starts with the wizards (and the wizzard), who for reasons that you will discover when you read the book, begin a project to study (that's wizard for "play with") The Roundworld. It starts to go wrong almost immediately. No matter how hard they try to get the planets to form nice, proper disc shapes, they keep getting spheres, globes, or balls. And they can't find a giant space turtle anywhere. It's obvious that the world they've created isn't a proper world at all. Or is it?

Throughout this wonderful mix of hard science and funny fantasy, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (professors of biology and physics respectively, and co-authors of Figments of Reality and The Collapse of Chaos) step in every other chapter to explain the things that are confusing the wizards. Why are the planets round? Why do they insist on travelling around the sun in predictable ellipses. Yes, it's because of gravity, every schoolchild knows that. But what, exactly is gravity?

Via the wizards' assumptions about how a world should work and Jack & Ian's delightful prose, we are taken back to the basics of the science we learned in school and then forgot, secure in the knowledge that we "understood" how our world works. As the scientists explain, this is partly because most of the science we learn in school is what they have dubbed "lies-to-children". "Lies-to-children" are the stock of vast (untrue) over-simplifications that make science easier to teach, and easier to learn. And, most of the time "lies-to-children" are necessary in order to have something to build on to learn the next bit. The problem, they seem to be saying, is when the forget that it's really a "lie", and it turns into "believing-we-understand" instead of "wanting-to-know-more".

That is certainly not to say that The Science of Discworld is a children's book. You could certainly read it to children, though beware that this will probably result in time spent running around the back yard with oranges and footballs to explain the orbit of the planets, and so on. It is packed full of complex ideas and current theories. Most chapters start with the absolute basics and then swiftly bring you right up to date with the most recent discoveries from the High-Z Supernova Search Team (or what have you).

What I liked best about the book was the way the authors mentioned just enough about a particular topic (and dropped a couple of names or events; such as Jocelyn Bell's discovery of pulsars, or Adrian Thompson's experiments with Genetic Algorithms) for me to be able to go off and find out more about the things that I found particularly interesting. On the other hand, this brevity with most of the topics might frustrate some people.

What does it cover? Everything. Ok, so that's probably not a very good answer. There's this story about these wizards who create a universe and mess about with it for a while and get things wrong and shout at each other a lot. And there's a computer. And a librarian who's an ourangutan. It's a very funny story. Terry Pratchett wouldn't have written 35 books and be the second-biggest selling author in Britain if he weren't rather good at that sort of thing. In between every chapter of the funny story about the wizards there is a chapter of "hard" science. The stuff in the science chapters goes something like this:

• Science - what does it mean to think scientifically?
• Time, space & the big bang
• The stars, the elements, and more about the stars
• Newton, Einstein, and others
• Chaos, Emergence, and Langton's Ant (Note: if anyone has the url of a good site that demonstrates Langton's Ant, please post it as a follow-up. Thanks!)
• The planets, their orbits, & more about the stars
• The Earth from magma core to the atmosphere and the moon
• Philosophy on the nature of Light & Dark
• Life. Blue-green algae, Darwin, genetic algorithms
• Some notes on statistics and probability
• The Dinosaurs
• Mammals & DNA
• Neurology & culture
• Where do we go from here?

It should be obvious by now, but just in case it's not, I'll mention explicitly (as the authors themselves do on the second page of the text) that this is not a "The Science of Star Trek" type of book that speculates about the evolutionary feasibility of flying, fire-breathing dragons or tries explains what a thaum is (as if you could explain it, which you can't because a thaum isn't real, Terry just made it up).

Should I buy this book? Yes if: Probably
not if:

• You've been meaning to start reading some Popular Science
  • You already read an awful lot of Popular Science
    • You're looking for a good introduction/
      jumping-off point into a wide variety of interesting current scientific ideas
      • You've just finished a degree in Earth Sciences
        • You've read Figments of Reality and loved it's style
          • You thought all that icky biology stuff and all that stuff about different kinds of rocks in school was terribly boring
            • You can't think of a present for your bright 10-12 year old son/daughter/
              neice/nephew/etc. who has grown out of dinosaurs and has been pestering you to explain "how the stars work."

Can I buy this book? So far The Science of Discworld has only been published in the UK. As of June 10th, the authors hadn't even started discussions with American publishers, so the UK version is likely to be the only one available for quite a while. Buy it from Amazon.co.uk with the British spellings intact.

A word of caution
...to those who have not yet read any of Mr. Terry Pratchett's books. The Science of Discworld drops a number of tantalizing hints about the other Discworld books. You might well decide to buy one, just satisfy your curiosity about a particular character or story. Discworld books are addictive, with a capital "ADD". At first you'll casually pick up a paperback next time you're at the bookstore (I recommend Feet of Clay or The Colour of Magic), then perhaps you'll order the most recent hardback(s) from Amazon.co.uk. Next thing you know you're singing the Hedgehog song in the shower and doing very strange things with tapioca. It isn't pretty, and there's no known cure, but at least you won't be alone.
You have been warned.

Note: This is not yet availible in the US, but can be ordered from Amazon.uk.

Comments

Link to Langston's Ant and other A-life.

[Derek Pomery]

http://www.aist.go.jp/NIBH/~b0616/ Lab/Links.html has a list of many interesting A-life applets.

Langston's Ant is listed on the page, and is located at:
http://www.home.fh-karl sruhe.de/~gran0011/java/langton.html

Re:Link to Langston's Ant and other A-life.

[rillian]

The 'ant' hack in the xscreensaver package also implements Langston's ant. Only works with the X windowing system, though.

It claims to be based on A.K. Dewdney's "Computer Recreations", Scientific American Magazine Sep 1989 pp 180-183, Mar 1990 p 121.
Also used Ian Stewart's "Mathematical Recreations", Scientific American Jul 1994 pp 104-107.

Ook

[washort]

Oook. Ook ook, ook oook ook ook. Oook ook (ook ook OOK!) ook. Oook ook; ook ook ook ook.

Ooook

Re:Ook

[BugMaster ChuckyD]

Be careful using the "M word" he might pull your arms off!

Re:Discworld

[lorimer]

the Discworld series is excellent. unfortunately, due to Pratchett's nature of including at least five or six hilarious cameos by previous characters (and at least five or six oblique references to other characters without even the cameo) it's almost totally necessary to inhale them in the right order. =) If you want an excellent experience, start from "The Colour of Magic" and work forwards - for example, Death shows up so often later that to get the full giggle from all his throw-away lines, you really MUST have read "Mort" (3rd in the series).

If you just can't stand the thought of reading them in order, or have trouble finding the early books (I know our local bookstores only have "Jingo", "Lords and Ladies", and a couple other of his newest - and forget finding them in the used bookstores), "Guards! Guards!" is probably a good one to randomly jump into.

Oh, just go read them. :P