Popular Science Review - Science of Discworld II

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Review - The Science of Discworld II - Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen

Subtitled "the Globe" (play on words here, guys, as its about our "roundworld" and Shakespeare gets in there too), this second in the series continues the cunning plan of taking on science by pretending that our universe is actually kept in a small globe in Discworld's University, giving the authors the chance to examine scientific ideas from a real outsider's viewpoint.

It's actually a very clever idea, that works fairly well in the next instalment of the series, S of D III, but this particular instalment is by far the worst. Even Terry Pratchett has had his off days (and that's as a huge fan of his fiction), and this is clearly the ScoD off day.

The topic is the development of mind, a sophisticated and complex one, and a fair amount of the science is quite reasonable, but the tone (which I can only assume comes from Cohen, as I've never seen it in either Pratchett or Stewart's solo books) is unremittingly smug and full of "aren't I clever, compared to you thick people out there." This is typified by their continuation of the myth that in the middle ages people thought the earth was flat. In fact educated people have not thought this since Greek times - and the majority of people have simply never thought about it at all. (Do you, in your everyday life?) They don't bother to point out that this myth was made up by anti-religious bigots in the 19th century to try to show how evil Christianity was. (It's odd in a way, as this is a real example of the sort of "narrativium" process they are so enthusiastic about, but of course it doesn't support their "scientists are always right; the unwashed are always wrong" mantra.)

To be honest, the Discworld story is probably the weakest of the three too, but it's definitely the science chapters that make the reader groan. As well as the tone, there's an unremitting tendency to take sideswipes at religion and other belief structures, and bizarrely at physics and cosmology. (I say bizarrely, though biologists like Cohen are infamous for suffering from physics envy.) And though the idea that the thing that makes humans different is our tendency to tell stories is quite nice, this piece of amateur anthropology/sociology is hammered so hard at every opportunity that it becomes tedious.

I really was tempted to give up part way through this book, which is very rare. If you love the approach, do read it, but whatever you do, don't read it first.

Also in hardback

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

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