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| The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science | 
| Author: Natalie Angier
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy Used: $1.84
You Save: $14.11 (88%)
New (42) from $7.73
Avg. Customer Rating:  76 reviews
Sales Rank: 6451
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0547053460
Dewey Decimal Number: 500
EAN: 9780547053462
ASIN: 0547053460
Publication Date: April 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Over 600,000 Feedbacks Posted!!! Great Buy!!!*** Never Used*** May Have a Publisher's Mark~We have over 3,500,000 Books Sold!!!
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Diva of Science Writing November 30, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
As a retired Ph.D./ M.D. scientist, I can attest to Ms Angier's careful and comprehensive use of authoritative experts to undergird her clear discussion of the scientific method and its use in the fields whose canons she so convincingly describes. But what blew me away was her rich and creative use of the language. Scarcely a page passed without a "keeper" from her keyboard. The imaginative neologisms and nifty alliterations are unexected lagniappes in a serious volume on science. Brava diva!
Saul Rosen
You really should read this book November 30, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Yes, you. What, you were an English major who minored in avoiding science classes? Read the introduction and find out what you're missing. Then admit your deficiency and start in on the text. You spent all that time studying writing, so you're perfectly prepared to appreciate this book's wit. Admit it: you enjoy your facts sprinkled with metaphors. You probably prefer it that way. There's no natural law requiring science presentation to be dull and dry. Why not be on the lookout for puns as you learn about thermodynamics? Better yet, why not learn how thermodynamics applies to your everyday life? Your kitchen counter gets dusty because of how the universe is made. It's not your fault.
Or were you a science major? You won't be bored. Natalie Angier has done her fieldwork. She's talked to scores of scientists and assembled their knowledge (and hers!) into a remarkably broad book. Maybe you studied physics but always wished you'd taken more biology. Or maybe you majored in biology but never found time for geology. Don't worry. It's all in here.
Are you a 15 year-old trying to decide on a science career? By all means read this book. You'll learn how scientists think, how they work, where they work, what they discover, and why they enjoy it -- more than enough information to assist your career choice. But unless you just scored well on your SATs, keep a dictionary by your side. The vocabulary reaches beyond what you'll need to satisfy No Child Left Behind standards.
I suspect Angier deliberately wrote that way. Her book is for adults who want to improve themselves. The non-scientist who wants to know what science is about, and more importantly, why science is just plain fun. Or the scientist who wants a non-specialist's introduction (or review) of other fields. That covers just about everyone, doesn't it?
Saving souls for science November 30, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
High-school science education has a lot to answer for. Between students' early and late teens, there's a striking fall-off in spontaneous, avid curiosity about how the world fits together. More precisely, a fall-off in the feeling that "I'm the kind of person who can understand that kind of thing," replaced by "That kind of thing is for nerds / brainiacs / people with the math gene."
This isn't the place to speculate why that should be. But if you experienced that, and feel any regret about it, The Canon is a terrific restorative. It's nicely balanced between the core knowledge of five natural sciences and the unifying ways of thinking in all science. More important, it embodies, fizzes with, radiates the joy of making sense of things: of "OK, I see how this goes with that, so yeah, of course the other thing would happen..."
People who "don't get science" do that all the time in other domains. The Canon shows, tells, embodies -- in short, empowers them again to do it in science as well.
 Fun Science but smart November 30, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Ms Angier presents a more fun and smart approach to science and apply everyday scenarios with explanations.
 It's the smugness what got me November 26, 2007
6 out of 17 found this review helpful
The wordiness of The Canon is just as the other one star reviewers say. At times it is embarrassing. But it was the smugness that got me. This is really to the fore in the audio version which is read by a woman with a voice shrill enough to make your bones ache. Yet, she the fits Angier's writing perfectly; one gets the impression throughout that Angier is just dying to write, "I'm clever and know stuff, and you don't."
But we are warned. The book is called "The Canon" for a reason. I get the impression that Angier truly believes that what she has put down in her tedious book is what all right thinking people should believe. And just to ram the point home she makes snide comments about the Bush Administration and Creationists and -- by extension -- all of us who don't buy into the whole "science is the way, the truth and the light" thing.
As a result the opening sections on scientific methodology and probability theory are critical to what Ms. Angier seems to be trying to achieve. And boy are those sections l-o-n-g. They also have a sort of frantic air about them as Ms. Angier dances back and forwards trying to explain why scientists are so often wrong, but why we should believe everything that the latest scientific consensus says anyway.
Although the title is accurate in the sense outlined above, a better title would surely be "The Politically Correct Guide to Science." For example,if this was the only book that one had ever read on science, one might be forgiven for believing that almost all American scientists were women, since that is mostly who Angier interviews.
In the past few years there seems to have been an extreme outburst of insecurity among parts of the scientific community. We are told that if we do not do/think as we commanded by the scientific elites on matters of public policy, philosophy and religion, the world will come crashing down on us. None of the advocates of this point of view have ever said what makes them expert on anything outside their field of science. This should make us all very comfortable in rejecting what we hear from scientists, whether it is their adolescent atheism or the perverse ludditism that many of them see as the only reasonable response to global warming. (Or is it Global Warming these days.)
But if scientists are really worried about the state of the world, The Canon is there to give them some comfort. No doubt people of a certain kind will lap it all up as if. . . well as if it was really canon law.
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