Win a SCIENCE mega-book, part 2

Another day, another chance to win SCIENCE: THE DEFINITIVE VISUAL HISTORY!

Well, it's going to be hard to beat the massive response to the first round of this competition - thank you to everyone who commented. It was heartening to see so much love for science, and I've now got a fantastic collection of reading material to add to my list.

Back to the book! Here's a beautiful spread in SCIENCE of on one of my favourite inventions ever: Harrison's Chronometer, which helped to solve the Longitude Problem, changing the world forever. It's a tale of obsession, invention, and cruelty retold wonderfully in Dava Sobel's Longitude.

i-18e742a3a2898a76ce937a8432909463-harrison.jpg

So, as we're on the subject of time and place, here's the competition question. For the chance to win a copy of the massive, beautiful, illustrated encyclopaedia SCIENCE, I want to know:

Which era of scientific discovery (past, present or future) would you most like to live in? Would you be a gentleman scholar in the Victorian days of the polymath? Unlocking the great foundation truths of mathematics with the Ancient Greeks? Or streaking out into the stars in centuries to come?

Answers in the comments section please!

EDIT: Competition now closed - although you can still answer the question if you want. For another chance to win, see part 3!

More like this

The Renaissance! Without a doubt THE period in history where discovery, innovation and experimentation in the arts and science took huge leaps forward and knowledge was persued for its own sake.

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

I don't know why - from a science point of view - you would want to live any time but now. You can know more about the universe than has ever been known, see images from a few million years after the Big Bang, understand how life came about.

The only time that might be better than this would be the future, but that's a gamble, so I'm sticking with: now.

By Tom Chivers (not verified) on 13 Oct 2009 #permalink

Definitely the present. I suspect that the future will, of course, bring more and more discovery; but I think we live in very exciting times. It seems like it's almost a monthly occurrence that astronomers are bringing us news about a newly discovered exoplanet. All of the recent space probes and hubble have really opened our eyes to how our Solar System is made and how it works. Neuroscience is also a very exciting field right now. And the best part is how we get so much science information so quickly.

The answer is obviously the future... I'll use my time machine to visit the present or the Renaissance. Because every playstation omega will come packed with a time machine. Obviously.

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

Early 20th century for me, the perfect time for a combination of complex work being done and there still being some physical involvement in experiments rather than everything being tediously computer controlled and measured. I've never forgotten the description of Rutherford and Geiger having to spend hours in total darkness so that their eyes were sensitive enough to see the tiny flashes of light given off by the gold foil experiment, always thought its amazing that they essentially managed to determine the structure of the atom with their own eyes.

The time for me would be the enlightenment period. For the first time society as a whole, not just lone individuals, embraced the wider truths that science could offer. The public were massively enthused about science, so much more than today. Back then science was so much more accessible, the cutting edge was within everyone's grasp.

Its a toss up between now, and the early 20th century. The early 20th century because you could be working on very modern experiments still with bench top type of equipment. I am a big fan of benchtop type of experiments! But, now because of the ease of handling data. Graphs don't need to be drawn by hand, and with computers handling large amounts of data isn't a complete nightmare.

In the right company, the present is just fine with me, but any time in which I could learn about new findings and find polite, scientifically open-minded individuals to share conversation with would be fine with me. I might like to be a naturalist in Darwin's time, to be among the people exploring and cataloguing the great diversity of our planet, but I'm a bit of a technophile, so I might not prefer going into the past if I couldn't have some of my modern technology with me. The future would certainly be a great option, particularly if modern anti-intellectualism wanes.

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

The temptation to say mid to late 19th century is there. Science was really just coming into its own, amazing advances, and really the birth of professional scientists. It was also a time before such focus on highly specialized fields and areas of research that we see now. A person could study everything. But even with my romanticized vision of the past I'll have to say now is the time I'd like to be in. You don't need to be rich to get a quality education. We know so much and have great technology, but there are still so many unexplored areas of study. And we have Google, which might be my number one reason for choosing now. Worldwide communication. Online translators, search engines specifically for primary literature, and now Google docs making mass survey data easier than ever to collect. It's an exciting time to be into science.

As a female who had totally lousy eyesight and is enamored of central heating, I'm going to say I like the present just fine--LASIK surgery, central heating (FTW!), equal opportunity, and lots of science...good stuff! But if those weren't problems, I think I'd be most interested in the Elizabethan era; I've always been fascinated by Elizabeth I, and it seems like there was a lot of exploration and science being done then, too.

Ancient Greece, without a doubt. To live in a society where scientific and philosophic inquiry is encouraged to that level would be amazing. I often think about walking down the paths of ancient Athens and seeing great minds pondering everything from our existence to our place in the universe. This was, in my opinion, the first cracking away at the old mystical schools of thought and replacing it with a world of enlightened rational skepticism and science. Plus, as a speaker for modern Greek, I'd have a shot at actually conversing with some of the folks!

It's always interesting to read James Herriot's (veterinarian) stories that discuss the medical industry explosion right around the time of WWII: first sulpha drugs, then antibiotics. Suddenly they had *effective* medications to treat diseases and infections that had killed, killed, killed. Not to mention the advent of plastic, disposable, STERILE tools, instead of glass and steel that were boiled (hopefully) between uses.

Herriot is candid about how many of their early "medications" amounted to, pretty much, quackery and hope. There were cases where, if an animal recovered, it had very little to do with the veterinarian's treatment. They were often helpless when faced with really terrible illnesses or infections. Compared to treatment once sulfa and penicillin became available...well, there IS no comparison.

We now have effective medicine for so much, and we're working hard on even more. But the change in medical fields during the middle of the 20th century seems like it must have been almost magical. Treatments and survival rates we now take for granted were suddenly possible; what an amazing time it must have been, to be a doctor, veterinarian, or medical researcher.

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

Definitely the Victorian era: there was a sense that literally anything
could be invented, anything could be done.

Any era that could come up with something as bat-shit insane and completely glorious at this is a winner:
http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__5603.aspx

(incidentally, my favourite bit if engineering ever!)

I would go for just after World War 2.

By then, some very talented mathematicians will have shown that anything a 21st century computer can do can also be done by machines that will be assembled around the world before 1950, save only for enough speed and storage. A huge, barely explored space will now appear based only on an arrangement of 1s and 0s, and the practical applications will fund an exponential growth in computing power.

Some astonishing developments in electronics will occur in this era, but for me the biggest developments will occur in algorithmics. This is closer to mathematics and engineering than science, but I think if you include the ancient Greeks' mathematics, you must include this.

I never actually wanted to be an astronaut, I wanted to be one of the engineers who worked with the astronauts. Since that's all done, if I had my druthers, I'd love to be able to skip ahead and work on interstellar colony ships. There's going to be really nifty and new applications of scientific knowledge to get those things flying right.

I'd like to move forward to whatever period of future history where somebody is capable of explaining string theory to me without it all sounding like an LSD-induced hallucination.

By Vince Whirlwind (not verified) on 13 Oct 2009 #permalink

Whilst it would be good to be in at the dawn of the Space Age, and rub shoulders with greats like Van Allen, Sagan and Feynman, the future beckons.

We've been disappointed by the 'promise of the new' so far - so it's fast-forward for me. Whether starships, contact with extraterrestrial life, brain uploads, or voyages to strange new dimensions - one of 'em has to pan out and make life much more interesting than it is now.

Yup, I know I'm setting myself up to be disappointed. As they say "Hope springs eternal...". I can always stave off terminal ennui by browising the book wot I won in 2009.

It has to be right now.

Despite the glorious and genius attempts of Ancient Greeks such as Eratosthenes, who measured the circumference of the earth with only a 1% error margin, and the anatomical drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci, as well as the endless inventions of Thomas Edison, to the great discoveries of Marie Curie and the decision not to patent the radium-isolation process for the good of the scientific community, (a lesson we could still use today).

Plus the work of Tesla on electricity and Turing in computer science, the wonders of the science of today, building on such notable figures of the past are marvelous. The Genome Project. The world wide web. The Hubble Telescope. fMRI scanning. Robotics such as ASIMO. The glimpses of the future not yet realised, early ideas in nano technology and steps towards a human foot on Mars.
Not forgetting all the gadgets like mobile phones and sat-nav, and the medical gadgetry such as defibrillators and CPAP masks.

Today, as never before, the age of science is in bloom.

I would have loved to attend the 5th Solvay International Conference on electrons and photons in 1927. Many of the worlds leading Physicists met up to discuss the newly formulated Quantum Theory. So many great minds in on room: Einstein, Bohr, Plank, de Brolie, Dirac, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Pauli and Marie Curie to name just a few. How exciting it must have been to be amongst these prolific Scientists, with a feeling like you are discussing possibly the most important discovery in human history, within grasp is an explanation of how the universe works.

By Dave Ferret (not verified) on 14 Oct 2009 #permalink

I think the present era is fine, though I would like to have been born about 30 years later. It is tempting to think about fast forwarding in order to be here for other great discoveries/achievements, but that supposes such things to be not only possible, but nearly certain. I am afraid I am sceptical of such a promise and increasingly worried that we will even be around long enough to confirm the null hypotheses. Still, I am somewhat hopeful of the promises of AI.

The future!

I've always thought the worst thing about dying will be 'not knowing how the story ended', so to speak. The great thing about today's science is that not only do you get today's research, but bundled with it you also get everything that's gone before it which has contributed. It'll be great to be around in 100 years and see how different strands of research have been woven together to create a Grand Unified Theory, or in 1000 when we can compare the origins of different types of life rather than just speculate on our own.

There's no better time than now. We've got new telescopes in space looking for the hint of life on other planets. We've got more people than ever thinking about how to make our planet a cleaner place to live (though to what good, who knows). Advancements in medicine are a daily occurence. New discoveries about our evolutionary history are hitting the news stands all the time. And with the latest technology sending science to you directly through your phone and computer, interest is spreading to people who may have never had the chance to see these things before. Sure, we've got our politics and closed minded people to push through, but it seems we're still making a positive move in the right direction. It's a great time for science.

By Stephen C. (not verified) on 14 Oct 2009 #permalink

I'd love to have been around when electromagnetism was discovered. It must have been amazing to start controlling these magical invisible fields. The possibilities were endless.

As an aside, Maxwell's equations have needed little adjustment, to get it that right was a great achievement.

WE HAVE A WINNER!

By the power invested in my by Random.org, I pronounce today's lucky person is:

#19 Dave Ferret

Congratulations Dave! Please email your delivery details to winner@sciencepunk.com

Everyone else, thank you, and stay tuned - anothe chance to win is coming up!