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Sloppy science
Sep. 8th, 2011 08:37 pmI've recently been reading The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean (Little, Brown and Company, 2010). It's a sort of anecdotal meander around the periodic table, touching on each element at least once. (The title refers to an old practical joke, in which a spoon is moulded out of gallium. When the spoon is put into a cup of hot beverage — or, for that matter, left too long in someone's hand or mouth — it melts.)
The structure seems to be a bit forced. I get the impression that the material was rearranged several times, from the way that some people and some elements are mentioned several times — not that material is repeated, but the phrasing of the "see also this other chapter" stuff and the way the descriptions are split between the two sections. In some cases, an element gets less coverage in its "own" chapter than in another chapter where it's compared to some other element.
The book isn't bad, but it could be better. It's the sort of thing that Asimov did well, and the anecdotal stuff is less engaging than, say, the books by Richard Feynman or Oliver Sacks.
My main complaint about the book is that it's sloppy. I keep hitting things that make me say "No, that's not right" in my head. I gather that Asimov had the same problem when he was writing some of his non-science books, such as the ones about Shakespeare or the Bible, but his science writing was usually rigorously correct (at least, as far as then-current information went). He didn't let the explanations for non-scientists drag his content away from accuracy. I'm finding The Disappearing Spoon rather irritating. One paragraph I read yesterday had no fewer than three "gotcha"s.
( Detailed grumbling lies beneath... )
I've got the book on loan from the library, with about another week before I have to return it. At the moment, my brain is mushy enough that I don't want to start either of the new books I just had delivered from Amazon (Seanan McGuire's One Salt Sea and Patricia Wrede's Across the Great Barrier); I want to wait until I can enjoy them properly (which will likely involve reading the earlier books in each series first). I'm going to continue to read it for now, but if the irritant frequency gets any higher, I'll probably give up. Perhaps I should just go back to one of my Asimov essay collections.
The structure seems to be a bit forced. I get the impression that the material was rearranged several times, from the way that some people and some elements are mentioned several times — not that material is repeated, but the phrasing of the "see also this other chapter" stuff and the way the descriptions are split between the two sections. In some cases, an element gets less coverage in its "own" chapter than in another chapter where it's compared to some other element.
The book isn't bad, but it could be better. It's the sort of thing that Asimov did well, and the anecdotal stuff is less engaging than, say, the books by Richard Feynman or Oliver Sacks.
My main complaint about the book is that it's sloppy. I keep hitting things that make me say "No, that's not right" in my head. I gather that Asimov had the same problem when he was writing some of his non-science books, such as the ones about Shakespeare or the Bible, but his science writing was usually rigorously correct (at least, as far as then-current information went). He didn't let the explanations for non-scientists drag his content away from accuracy. I'm finding The Disappearing Spoon rather irritating. One paragraph I read yesterday had no fewer than three "gotcha"s.
( Detailed grumbling lies beneath... )
I've got the book on loan from the library, with about another week before I have to return it. At the moment, my brain is mushy enough that I don't want to start either of the new books I just had delivered from Amazon (Seanan McGuire's One Salt Sea and Patricia Wrede's Across the Great Barrier); I want to wait until I can enjoy them properly (which will likely involve reading the earlier books in each series first). I'm going to continue to read it for now, but if the irritant frequency gets any higher, I'll probably give up. Perhaps I should just go back to one of my Asimov essay collections.
