Popular physics books have never been so popular. It's about time, says Tom Chivers.
by: Tom Chivers
The universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate, yet we still don’t know what much of it is made of. If I had to guess, I’d say that most of it consists of books telling us that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The soaring popularity of popular physics books is a publishing phenomenon.
Traditionally, evolutionary biology has received most attention from publishers. As the philosopher and neuroscientist Daniel Dennett says, no area of science has been so well served by its writers: Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and John Maynard Smith are particularly fine examples.
But since Dennett wrote that in 1995, evolutionary theory has been fighting for shelf space, as quantum physics and relativity mount a comeback. The past few weeks have seen Stephen Hawking’s new book, The Grand Design, move from the books pages to the front pages with its provocative argument that physicists do not need a creator to explain the universe’s existence. But a reader could equally well pick up We Need to Talk about Kelvin by Marcus Chown; In Search of the Multiverse by John Gribbin; Quantum by Manjit Kumar; Void by Frank Close; and dozens more.
“There’s a real interest in science books at the moment,” says Stuart Clark, author of The Universe (part of the “Big Question” series). And it’s not as if they’re light reading. Clark’s own book asks what stars are made from, whether there are alternative universes, what the fate of the universe will be, and whether, à la Hawking, there is cosmological evidence for the existence of God.
Marcus Chown agrees that such science is becoming mainstream: another of his books, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You, sold 60,000 copies. “I thought the words 'quantum theory’ would put people off, but they appear to think: 'I’ve heard of that. I ought to find out what it’s about.’ Popular science is a mature part of literature.”
It’s not just literature that has seen a flourishing of interest. This year, popular physics has been dominated by the TV series Wonders of the Solar System, presented by Professor Brian Cox. It has given physics, in the form of astronomy and cosmology, the box seat in the scientific mainstream. Clark says it’s not just down to the former D:Ream keyboard player, though: “Cox realises science is inherently interesting, that you don’t have to bust a gut with hyperbole and CGI to keep the public’s interest.”
The first episode of Wonders pulled in 2.8 million viewers and created a huge buzz online. As Chown says, “what was striking was how many non-scientists on Twitter absolutely loved it”.
But as the sales figures suggest, interest has been building for a few years. One of the biggest sellers, Simon Singh’s 2004 book Big Bang, was also one of the first – following the granddaddy of the genre, Hawking’s A Brief History of Time.
The book is now more than 20 years old – but, says Chown, it changed everything. “Ten million copies sold and 237 weeks on the bestseller list. There have been popular science writers before – Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov. But I don’t believe there were popular science sections in bookshops before Hawking.”
Whatever the reason, the explosion of interest is overdue. Physics – the stuff of the impossibly huge and the unimaginably tiny – shouldn’t need a reason to be popular beyond its own incredible subject matter.
Open these books and you’ll find out more about how the universe began and what it is made of; why planets orbit stars and why stars glow. You’ll discover the weird stuff that goes on at quantum level – particles that are in two places at the same time and that seem to know if you’re watching them. You’ll learn why the universe had to be how it is, since we’re here to talk about it. It’s a chance to dip your toe in the greatest pool of learning in human history – and a section in Waterstone’s is the very least that it deserves.
from: Telegraph
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