1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science: James Trefil’s Map of Scientific Knowledge
Written to bring science to everyone, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science by the physicist James Trefil has a double purpose. It offers quick answers to all kinds of scientific questions, and at the same time it encourages curiosity: it is an entertaining way to discover what we did not know about science.
Author: James Trefil, physicist and science writer
Title: 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science (1992)
Format: English paperback (Cassell), 320 pages
Scope: Short entries across the sciences, arranged by field
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0304343234 (ASIN 0304343234)
Knowledge in a Specialised World
Humanity has advanced slowly in its evolution. Day by day and year by year, what it has learned about life and the world has let it discover the main keys to how the universe works and the laws that govern nature. But at the same time society increasingly specialises its knowledge, so that each of us knows a great deal about one field and little about others. Even specialists often find a question arising, or simply feel a pang of curiosity, outside their own area.
Seven Great Areas
The book groups its contents into several broad subject areas, among them astronomy, biology, classical physics and the earth sciences, and it was conceived to give a general overview of scientific knowledge. Its short entries explain topics such as the expansion of the universe, the origin of the Moon and the death of cells in a page or less.
Scientific Literacy
Trefil wrote the book as part of a wider argument about what he called scientific literacy: the idea that every citizen needs a basic grasp of the major ideas of science, not to do research, but to follow public debates on energy, health, climate or technology. With the geologist Robert Hazen he had made the same case in Science Matters (1991), and with E.D. Hirsch and Joseph Kett he co-wrote The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. 1001 Things is the most accessible version of that project.
How the Entries Work
Each entry is short, often just a paragraph or two, and focuses on one idea: why the sky is blue, what DNA does, how plate tectonics moves continents, what entropy means. Trefil explains the idea and, where useful, why it matters, then moves on. That brevity is the book’s great strength for browsing, and the arrangement by field makes it easy to follow a theme for a few pages.
A Note on Its Age
The book was published in 1992, so some areas have moved on. It predates the first discovery of planets orbiting other Sun-like stars in 1995, the evidence for an accelerating universe in 1998 and the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. The foundations it explains, gravity, atoms, evolution, cells, energy, have not changed, but readers should treat the frontier topics as a snapshot of their time and look up the latest developments.
The Author
James Trefil is a physicist who spent much of his career at George Mason University in Virginia and has written many books explaining science to general readers. His style is friendly and clear, and the reviewer’s description of the book as an entertaining way to discover what we did not know is a fair summary.
Tip
It makes an excellent gift for a curious teenager.
Who Should Read It
It is a book to keep at hand and dip into rather than read cover to cover: perfect for curious teenagers, for adults who want to fill the gaps left by school, and for anyone who wants to understand the science behind the news. I read the Spanish edition published by Círculo de Lectores in Barcelona in 1994.
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