Five copies of the mega-book SCIENCE to be won!

This week, five SciencePunk readers will win a copy of SCIENCE: THE DEFINITIVE VISUAL GUIDE, edited by Adam Hart-Davis!

I received a copy in the post today, and let me tell you, this book is HUGE. Huge in scope, in detail, and in raw physical presence. That is I am going to insist on calling it SCIENCE, all in caps. Words couldn't do justice in describing just how massive this hardcover is, so here's a picture of me shortly before I was crushed under the weight of it and had to be rescued by my pet ants:

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Science follows in the tradition of publisher DK's lavishly produced pictorial encyclopaedias, which include History, Ocean and Universe. It's 512 pages of delightful diagrams, wonderful art, and above all, cool science. This is the kind of book that, as a child, made me want to be a scientist. And still does. Even physics looks interesting:

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SCIENCE is the kind of book that you can pick up and fall into, and I can easily see my young self becoming absorbed for hours inside its beautifully illustrated world. Adam Hart-Davis carries the reader from prehistory and the dawn of science, through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, hurtling past the Industrial Revolution in a blur of steam and iron and then soaring into the space age, before plunging into the microscopic world of the Information Revolution. It's gratifying to see that (compared to the books of my youth), plenty of attention is paid to non-Western contributions to science, notably Arabic and Indian advances in mathematics, optics, and chemistry. It also includes a gorgeous reference section jam-packed with charts and tables of essential data, from an extensive list of Messier objects to the Beaufort wind scale, and a who's who of science.

It is, in short, deserving of the term 'definitive'.

So, on to the contest. Every day this week I'll give you the chance to win a copy of SCIENCE (RRP £30). The winner will be selected by an arbitrary and quite possibly entirely random process. But to be in with a chance, you have to answer the following question:

Which book inspired your passion for science?

Is it an encyclopaedia or a novel? Sci-fi or sci-fact? Tell me which one it was, and why, and you could win!

Winner announced tomorrow. Answers in the comments section please!

EDIT: CONTEST CLOSED - CONGRATULATIONS #26 CHRIS!

Stay tuned for another chance to win...

More like this

Richard Dawkins: The Blind Watchmaker

I read this as a nerdy 13-year-old and found my life subtly but profoundly changed.

The idea that all living organisms were machines for the protection and propagation of data was alien and yet, when thought about, unarguable.

Dawkins' simple and elegant demonstrations, using a primitive computer programme to create "biomorphs" that evolved on his screen, made the power of evolution clear, and his examples from the real world were beautifully chosen and compelling.

A magnificent book, only matched in popular biology writing by Dawkins' own The Selfish Gene and The Ancestor's Tale (The Extended Phenotype was more specialist, The God Delusion wasn't biology, and Unweaving The Rainbow and Climbing Mount Improbable were pretty much the same book). I am greatly looking forward to The Greatest Show On Earth.

By Tom Chivers (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World taught me to think critically, to ask questions, to look at evidence and sift out the baloney.

By madgestar (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

I wish I'd kept my post nice and short like Madgestar. Then I'd sound less like a pompous tit.

By Tom Chivers (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

There's no one particular book, but when I was a child, watching my dad fix cars using the Haynes manuals got me excited about engineering. For me science and engineering always went hand in hand. To my young mind the Haynes manuals read like lessons in logical thinking, breaking down problems and building up solutions. They were, and are, invaluable.

My first science books I read when I was 6: they where illustrated thin books on a number of subjects:

Ocean Life
Fire
Space
I dont' remember author(s) or publisher but I remember how the nice illustrations and terse explications got me thinking science. Now my son is learning to read and I hope I can show him this illustrated book which would serve well for many years.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams.

As a child, it sparked a massive curiosity about the whether or not there could be life on other planets. And also if I would have more fun with a second head and a third arm.

I thought yes on both counts . . .

I cannot find the book title, but it was about chemisty in the kitchen. It was just above a beginning reader level in difficulty. FUN FUN FUN

By Airedalelover (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

I was 9 years-old, it was a book, translated from the French, on The Art of Cooking. Alongside instructions for hanging an eel on a hook and draining it to collect the blood for making a sauce to serve with the eel, there was a section on making fortified wines and liqueurs.

Lacking the resources to make the liqueur that demanded the use of large quantities of brandy and vodka, I substituted brown malt vinegar to cover the intact eggs in a glass bowl (I was extrapolating from the story of Cleopatra dissolving pearls in vinegar to make an opulent drink).

For 2 weeks, I watched the eggs shrink in the acid of the vinegar. I learned that although chicken egg-shells and pearls seemed similar to me (they formed inside oyster shells), they really weren't. I learned to use isinglass for fining and how very difficult it was to filter a solution. I also learned that putting your expts. in the airing cupboard that was the favourite curl-up space of anyone wanting a solitary read was not a good idea and likely to end in spilt solutions and the pungent smell of vinegar.

The book also introduced me to the idea that the starch content in potato affected cooking techniques and that you could enhance the golden colour of fried potato by soaking it in milk because the protein content facilitated what I know now to be the Maillard reaction. Plus my long-suffering parents allowed me to discover that you can't quite freeze an ice-cream or ice that contains a hefty slug of alcohol - teaching me about different freezing points (I had plastic tumblers in the snow with different solutions and in the freezer).

That book taught me a lot about the careful conduct of experiments and not to make assumptions about common substances.

Man, I had to look way back for this. I guess my inquisitive mind developed young.

Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts, James Lawrence

As a boy, my mother was into antiquing. This meant loads of boring trips to shops for hours at a stretch, but in the occasional store there'd be a few well-stocked bookshelves. The usual fare in the 1980s and early 1990s was series from previous generations, books that would be bought ahead like encyclopedias and sent out one volume at a time.

I started reading Hardy Boys, as I could usually find those around, but a real treat for me was to find Tom Swift books (looking back these were actually Tom Swift, Jr.), as they frequently had the same sort of mystery feel as the Hardy Boys, but with a science fiction background. I don't remember many details, I had to look up a book list to even find titles I remembered, and the details and titles I do remember sound utterly goofy upon reminiscing.

The point is that I knew from that point in my childhood on that science would be a great field to look for questions to answer and mysteries to solve.

By ABradford (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

Cosmos by Carl Sagan. I was around 12 when I read it and never before has a book so utterly replaced my world view. The sheer scale, complexity and elegance of the universe finally began coming into view and I was enthralled. What was so amazing though is that Sagan was equivalent of Virgil in the Inferno, rationally guiding you through this strange world we live in.
From here on I knew I wanted to become a scientist since the natural world tells the greatest story alone, without any need for superstition and mysticism.

For me it wasn't a book.
It was watching Star Trek (mainly TNG) almost every day when I was ~8 - 14 years old. It was my religion and watching the episodes was my sunday school.
Even though the science in it was usually sloppy and no more than a scientific sounding "deus ex machina", it was nonetheless a scientific/technological approach that frequently got them out of trouble. That, in combination with the mission of exploration they were on and the humanist philosophy, has definitely contributed to me being the person I am today.

The Foundation trilogy bu Isaac Asimov. The thought that you could use math to such a high level as to predict the future made me want to study it. Math then lead to statistics then to physics...

"Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid", by Douglas R. Hofstadter. I've read it for the first time in 1998, quite superficially and with lot's of help from my cousin, who was then an undergraduate in Computer Science and borrowed me the massive book.
It changed my views on the way scientists, in general, think: how could a Physics major write so fluently and with great deal of interest about subjects as diverse as music, consciousness, paintings, philosophy, mathematics and so on. Until then I thought the job of a scientist was merely to think and work really hard with that little red circle in which his work is contained in the somewhat infinite space of possibilities of all areas of science.
By the end of this year I'm getting my degree in Mathematics, mostly thanks to this amazing work. And my dear cousin Daniel.

Was it Donald Wollheim's Mike Mars series? (How embarrassing to have been so sucked in by Cold War propaganda...)

Or the Tom Swift, Jr. series?

Possibly even the Hardy Boys, who consistently used forensic technology and logic in bringing the baddies to justice.

Hell, it was probably good ol' bad ol' comic books. Look where science got Barry Allen, Reed Richards, Ray Palmer, and even Bruce Wayne!

By Pierce R. Butler (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

The Time Life series on science. My grandparents had the books in their bookshelves, and I could spend hours on rainy autumn days sitting with those books and reading them. They were great! (I suspect this was the series Dalani was talking about.)

I can't say it was a book. I ma sure books helped. I did read Gray's Anatomy through to the end when I was 18. LIkely, that is what has led me to me love of anatomy. But my love of science started way before that. Mostly with my dad's enthusiasm for all things natural. From teaching me how to fix a car,(in the 70's, when a car was easy to fix) to taking me camping, to being as excited as I was when we were stuck in a flash flood in the dessert. My dad took to almost any situation with excitement about the prospect of understanding it rather than fear at not knowing. He is very dyslexic and never read to me, but he did make up wonderful stories about the world that almost always had intricate, yet obvious explanations about the natural world. It also helps that he is a chemical engineer...
I wish I could say there was book that lent to my enthusiasm about science, but I think being immersed in science with an aura of excitement from a very respected person played the largest role.
I ma hoping to give that thirst for knowledge to my own kids. I am glad my Dad is still here to lend his fervor to their lives :)

By cristina 5ive (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

In my local library as a kid, I found a book called "How Science Works".

Now, you'd expect such a book - given it's all-encompassing title - to be a vast multi-volume tome. But no. It was merely 30 pages long and mostly pictures.

I suspect that it didn't really contain the secret of "How Science Works" or Mr. Hawking really needs to track it down. But in order to know for sure, I think I need this new book to compare.

I enjoyed "How Science Works" very much.

Believe it or not, The Holy Bible. Even to a kid it was apparent these were not acceptable explanations for how things came to be. Thus was born my love of SCIENCE.

My passion for SCIENCE actually came from reading the Nancy Drew series as a child. The fact that every mystery had a rational explanation that could be uncovered by logical thinking made me realize that scientific methods were applicable in all facets of life.

Though I can't remember when my interest for science actually started, the book series "Was ist was?" (German equivalent of "How and why") certainly helped to broaden my interest.

I used to go to our local library often once I managed to read, and those concise, colourful books were ideal to give me a flavour and good understanding re basic principles of natural sciences, history, and technology. Brilliant introductions for 10-15 year olds, before venturing into more serious science books.

I actually should go back and have a look at the most recent editions - I understand by now (30 years later) the publisher has also ventured into DVDs and computer software with the same brand.

I love DK's books. They make perfect fodder for browsing and reading during dinner, or whenever I don't feel like cracking something deep or complex.

That said, they do an excellent job at packing in information with plenty of eye candy.

As to answer the question for a chance to win this book, well, the book that inspired my love of science is the book that accompanied the show that inspired my love for science: Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

(After reading Cosmos, and seeing the series, I moved onto Dragons of Eden, Isaac Asimov's essays, and on and on...)

I had a set of Ladybird Science books which were bought for me by my dad. I remember the pages about lodestone and how to make your own cell best. But they weren't really what inspired my passion for science: my dad was. My dad was a biology teacher before he retired, and he still lives and breathes an infectious passion for science which he passed on to thirty five years'-worth of pupils he taught and three children, and now several grandchildren, of his own. My leanings were more to chemistry than biology, but the grounding my dad gave me (and hundreds of others) in scientific method and history and procedure was invaluable in forming my young mind.

My little girl is six years old, and her passion is looking like it's going to be astronomy, but she still looks to grandad - not to teach her the answers, but to teach her how to find the answers for herself.

Hard to say really. Certainly I recall reading Arthur Mee's children's encyclopaedia (ca 1910, or possibly a later edition), when I was very small. No, I'm not that old, but as my father was the youngest of three we had the last two or maybe three volumes, including the index to the whole set. I wasn't that interested in the articles themselves but I can vaguely recall poring over this index for all the things I couldn't then read about - like gavelkind - which has to be a pretty sad thing for any four year old to do.

It was an illustrated natural history book from the 50s that my mom had. As a kid I would spend hours looking at the beautiful drawings of flora and fauna. At first the pictures seemed like a part of a different world than was around me in suburbia, but after time spent with this book I started looking at the oaks and robins with that same awe I looked at the redwoods and sharks in the book.

I don't know the name of the book was, but it was an illustrated guide to human biology for kids. Introduced me early to the importance not only the content of the information but also how it is presented.

Awesome - I'll probably get a copy of this book for the nephew for Christmas :-)

Funny enough, I wasn't exposed to much in the way of *science* as a kid. Science at elementary school was horrible: memorizing all kind of things that were useless and no analysis or discussion of any of it. Elementary school math was similarly horrible, again pointless memorization. I'm not sure if it was that I was female, or that my parents weren't themselves very science-oriented, but I didn't get much exposure to science at home either. (Sure, my brother got a chemistry set, but I was somehow overlooked for such toys.)

Then algebra changed my life. "Wow," thought I, "there's a POINT to all this stuff, and it's FUN." Later I got to use that algebra in high school chemistry and physics, then there was calculus and calculus-based physics, and after that a degree in physics. What wonders the world holds!

So I suppose if there's really a single book that got me started on science, it would be my Algebra I book. Dry and without much science content, true indeed, but what a wonderful revelation it brought me.

By Galadriel (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

I read Einstein and Infeld's The Evolution of Physics in the eight grade and it was all over - I wanted to be a theoretical physicist come hell or high water from that point on. Before that I knew I wanted to do something sciencey, but that book, along with Banesh Hoffman's biography of Einstein pointed me in the direction I'm still facing.

I didn't become a professional theoretical physicist. I stopped after the masters and make a living as a computer programmer, but I haven't lost the love of science that I think was kindled by that book.

By Eric Johnson (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

For me it was Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. His portrayal of a naturalist and surgeon during that time really captured my interest.

Heinlein's books and watching Cosmos on PBS got me to pay attention in high school science classes, but then I got into a non-science job anyway. Years later, Robert Carroll's Website and then Sagan's Demon-Haunted World got me re-interested in science and skepticism and their application to "lay" concerns, like consumer protection.

Encyclopaedia Britannica when I was about 5.

All other books in the house were dry legal texts, biographies of politicians, and tedious "classic" fiction. But the Britannica had everything in it: dinosaurs and volcanoes, photosynthesis, atomic fission, internal combustion, etc.... I read it avidly until I was almost 7.

By Vince Whirlwind (not verified) on 12 Oct 2009 #permalink

"Dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals", by Darlene Geis. Not an especially great book in retrospect, but I loved the idea of now-extinct huge strange animals walking the earth and swimming in the seas in the remote past. It's the first book I remember checking out of the library (at least from the 'older children's section', and I think I was around 4-1/2 or 5), and a year or so later I'd saved up enough birthday money etc. to buy myself a copy. Now I teach a Dinosaurs class. Patrick Moore's "Space" was the other science book that I lusted after until I was able to buy a copy, and which fired my imagination to bursting. I still buy more books than is sane or reasonable.

"Contact" by Carl Sagan

I was a reasonably religious kid, and I read it because I'd heard that it did a good job of presenting a description of god that was compatible with our scientific understanding of the universe (through the Palmer Joss character). No other book has gotten me as excited about humanity's future, and it definitely was the source of my ongoing science addiction.

I'll have to be honest and say that whilst the myriad of science fiction books I devoured as a kid helped me develop an interest in science - my passion for science was kindled by the World Book Encyclopaedia.

A to Z...baby!

I don't think I could pinpoint a single book. I remember reading kids books about science and nature as early as I was reading anything. It may be entirely possible that my interest in science (at that point nature more than science) inspired my book selection. However it started, it's become a wonderfully nasty cycle. The more science books I read the more I love being a science nerd, wanting more and more books. I need that book!

I really liked The Way Things Work. I don't know if it was the single book that inspired me to do science, but I know many hours were spent flipping through it's pages. From your description of this SCIENCE book, it seems to be a more sophisticated and encompassing version of The Way Things Work.

I think it was Napoleon who said something about how your world view is constructed based on the zeitgeist circling around you when your twentieth birthday rolls around. I happened to be reading Field Notes From A Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert at this time in my life.

It was 2005 and the Atlantic Ocean was host to over 28 tropical storms, of which, a record-breaking fifteen would become hurricanes. Something was up.

Kolbert wasn't a scientist but her writing instilled some sense of duty in me, something undergraduate science professors had trouble doing. I chose Geological Oceanography as my major, but after realizing that even the best science can't change the world (it can only describe it with some detail), I chose Marine Policy as my second major. Her writing humanized the science behind climate change in a style more writers should develop. It provided sheer inspiration.

I think it was the children's book, A Wrinkle in Time. It wasn't the plot, but rather one of the minor characters, who had a home chemistry lab. That just sounded like the coolest possible thing!

I remember getting handed down an ancient looking bound copy of the collected works of Arthur Conan Doyle. My father had received it as a child and in turn gave it to me. I think I must have read the Sherlock Holmes stories dozens of times. Although a detective rather scientist Holmes' use of evidence to solve apparently intractable problems made a strong impression on my growing mind, sending me towards a career in which I too seek evidence to solve scientific, rather than murderous, problems. It's amazing that Conan Doyle could write such a logical character like Holmes, given his own propensity for believing in spiritualism and falling for the Cottingley fairy hoax.

My interest in science has been there most of my life, from watching ants marching across a tree stump at 7 years of age, to walking through the woods near our house in South Mississipi at 10-14 years of age. I used to love pulling back a bit of bark of the pine trees to see what I could find. In high school, my interests changed to... other things (Mostly women and beer) so I fell off the path a bit. My professional interests shifted a into computing and then networking and eventually into satellite communication. But I always tried to keep up with my old loves by reading a science book now and then.

It was 4 years ago, really, when I rekindled the old science interests. My daughter was born. I started thinking about her education and even though she was only a year old, I was sending letters to schools to see how they taught their science curriculum (yes, i'm strange). I bought a telescope and taught myself how to find specific objects in the night sky and now go out with her on clear nights to look at the moon and stars.

About 1 year ago, my son was born. This pushed me farther into my interest in science and I've changed my degree path to one of education; and specifically to be a teacher for the sciences. I haven't figured out what to specialize in yet, hopefully my kids will help me out there.

By Stephen C. (not verified) on 13 Oct 2009 #permalink

I was indifferent to science for most of my childhood, not helped by the fact that I barely had any exposure to it in school -- I was in a rural, "conservative" area where basic science teaching essentially ended in the 6th grade, biology didn't cover evolution at all for fear of offending local parents, and chemistry was taught on toy chemistry sets as the obligatory one "academic" class that had to be taught by the football coach. By the time I got out of high school I felt I had nothing to do with science, and it had nothing to do with me.

Then I read The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley, and for what was really the first time in my life, I understood that it was possible to approach the world methodically and skeptically in order to understand it, and that crucially this only deepened one's sense of wonder. Eiseley's writing was full of this wonder and his sense of beauty, even while he was poking fingers and insights into the earth's bones. For the first time, I was also reading someone who was able to convey the real immensity of time and the development of life; he conveyed the message of the title of that book quite well. I have a hard time describing what the vastnesses opening in my brain felt like without sounding like a lunatic.

Just like an old sweater, a mind, once stretched, never quite goes back to its original dimensions. I couldn't go back to a shallower view of life after that, nor did I want to.

I didn't come to it until I was 18, but if I had to pick a book which inspired my passion for science, this had to be it.

By Luna_the_cat (not verified) on 13 Oct 2009 #permalink

First, thank you everyone for the overwhelming response. So much love of science! Fantastic! By the sharp sword of Random.org, I pronounce our first winner to be....

...

#26 Chris!

Chris, please email your delivery details to winner@sciencepunk.com so I arrange your prize.

Everyone else, there are still FOUR copies of SCIENCE to win, next contest starts in a few minutes!