introduction

Physics; A Very Short Introduction

February 18, 2020

“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?”

So declared C.P. Snow, CBE, in his now classic Rede Lecture of 1959, now published as “The Two Cultures.”

Telescopes; A Very Short Introduction

February 19, 2019

If someone was to ask me what inventions have played the greatest role in the advancement of natural history over the past few centuries, the telescope would very likely make the first position on the list. Not only has it made possible innumerable astronomical discoveries, it also led to the development of that most ubiquitous tool of field naturalists – the binocular.

Dinosaurs; A Very Short Introduction, Second Edition

March 5, 2018

Given that Oxford University Press’ Very Short Introductions series is now well past five hundred volumes in total (and still expanding), the fact that Dr. David Norman’s original edition of “Dinosaurs; A Very Short Introduction,” displays on its spine the series number “128” should tell you something. Originally published in 2005, it provided an excellent general overview to the state of palaeological knowledge about these creature at that time. Science, however, marches on.

The Atmosphere; A Very Short Introduction

May 11, 2017

“Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring / up through the atmosphere, / up where the air is clear! / Oh, let’s go fly a kite!” So – memorably – sang the freshly awakened and amended George Banks, superbly portrayed by David Tomlinson, in Disney’s “Mary Poppins.”