Writing on science for laypersons can elevate an author to the status of a cult figure. Fritzof Capra (The Tao of Physics), Carl Sagan (Cosmos), Richard Feynman (The Pleasure of Finding Things Out), Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), Stephen Jay Gould (The Panda’s Thumb), Bill Bryson (A Short History of Nearly Everything) are names that come to mind instantly.

 

The latest to join the pantheon is Natalie Angier with The Canon.

 

The Canon is for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or how electricity works. Angier's sparkling prose and memorable metaphors bring the science to life, reigniting our own childhood delight in discovering how the world works.

 

When I read The Canon, I learnt what was actually happening when our ice cream melts or our coffee gets cold, what our liver cells do when we eat a caramel, why the horse reveals evolution at work, and how we're all made of stardust. These are fascinating stuff that I never knew before.

 

Initially, I had apprehension reading this book because I wasn’t used to reading pages and pages of mind-numbing scientific factoids about how the world goes round and stuff like that. These are the kinds of things that I feared that would turn me off. Besides, I have never really read a science book from start to finish. But as soon as I read the first chapter ‘Thinking Scientifically’, I was hooked. She talks about how a scientist usually thinks and other stuff about being a scientist. It was very interesting and insightful.

 

I found science boring in school. This book made me realise, in hindsight, that I should have taken the science stream. I don’t blame myself. I blame the schools and teachers for not adopting a story-board approach to science. I believe any subject, even history, can be made interesting and exciting if a good story is constructed and narrated. It’s all about presentation and simplicity. Kids (and adults, like me) hate jargon and will be forced to learn by rote if they are taught the hard way which is often the most boring way – thrashing out problems after problems.

 

A better approach would be to hook a person to a subject based on story-board approach, get him/her to like it, appreciate its significance in the lives of people and in our own life, so that when factoids and boring stuff are rammed down the throat later on, they become palatable; the boring stuff will not be boring anymore if they like it.

 

In fact, once a person likes a subject, he/she may even relish working out boring (which is not so boring anymore) problem after problem. And this book did exactly that – it got me hooked. It got me excited. It got me liking science. It was like reading a novel. It charmed me into a different world. It was a fantasy. And I think science is a wonderful fantasy to live in.

 

The book is fantastic in its own right, but as a science book for the lay person, I would go so far as to suggest that it is essential reading.