Sometimes a book can be enjoyable and frustrating at the same time. So far I've got two in a row.
The original Science of Discworld was chock-full of information, and at the same time, somewhat of a slog to get through. Consisting as it did of bite-sized teasers of a Discworld story surrounded by hard science chapters three or four times their size, I found it a slow read, and the subject matter (the history of the universe) wasn't my favorite. The story itself was written well but little more than an exploded example for the science chapters.
The sequel, The Globe, is overall a better experience, with some caveats. The Discworld story follows that of the original book and involves the elves invading Roundworld and the wizards having to get rid of them... although as it turns out, that course of action isn't necessarily the best one they could take. The story is much stronger and stands on its own rather than relying heavily on the science chapters as in the first book.
The science chapters are also more easily digestible. Truthfully, "science" is a misnomer, as much of the content is actually philosophy. The subject this time around is not the history of the universe but how the mind works. Their thesis is that humans are pan narrans, the storytelling ape, whose ability and propensity to tell stories both gave it an evolutionary advantage and inspired the creation of everything from religion to art to science itself.
Although the actual content was more interesting to read (being much closer to home than the vastness of space and time), there were many bits of it that annoyed me. The writing sometimes seemed unfocused or slightly incoherent. Cohen and Stewart make sweeping, often controversial statements without citations or references (this is a book about science, after all).
A particular peeve for me was their attitude towards religion. Pratchett, as a humanist, has always been ambivalent or suspicious of religion, but Cohen and Stewart are downright antagonistic, lumping all religions together and treating them as simply a means to control people. While they spend time discussing modern art, they spend little discussing modern religion, concentrating on ancient barbarism or tribalism and ignoring the complexity of religious thoughts and beliefs. Cohen goes so far as to imply that ancient Jewish priests (kohanim) engaged in human sacrifice or murder. If any religious book was so nonchalant about science we would be rightly enraged, so their attitude towards it here was a major turn-off and arguably clouded my reaction to the rest of the book.
There are nuggets of wisdom and insight to be gleaned from this book, certainly, and the ping-pong list of subjects (from the scientific method to neurology, psychology, biology, history and anthropology) are diverse enough to keep interest. The Discworld part is, as always, a welcome diversion. But the science forms the meat of the book, and it's decidedly stringy.
9 comments:
I was wondering when I'd see your review of this book, and hoping you'd pick up on the same things I mentioned in my comment to your review of the previous Science of Discworld book. I'm glad to see you did both!
The kohanim thing I mentioned, and that you echo here, isn't the only issue signifying a serious lack of research, care, or interest on Cohen and Stewart's part, but rather a knee-jerk anti-religious reactionism.
At one point they say that Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated, and that this was a concept that the Jews of Holland learned from the Christians and didn't fit well with their own religion. Apparently they're unaware that excommunication is in the Talmud, and its practice in Judaism predates Christianity. This is the worst sort of mistake: one that could have been avoided merely by asking any religious Jew who'd spent three minutes in a Talmud class.
It seriously throws a lot of doubt on all of their other assertions regarding religion. For instance, their statement that the maintaining of the prevalence of the Kohen gene is due to sexual snobbery rather than marital fidelity: While to reject that idea out of hand and out of instinct merely from the desire to assert Jews' adherence to Jewish values over the course of centuries would be naive, the 'sexual snobbery' explanation simply doesn't hold water. Kohanim haven't been considered a "higher social class" in Jewish society since the days of the Temple, and to state that wives of Kohanim would only have affairs with other Kohanim due to said snobbery demonstrates a basic ignorance of how Jewish society is structured (if anything, sexual snobbery would maintain a sort of 'rabbi gene'). In addition, the study they quoted only demonstrated that social class doesn't affect rates of infidelity - it said nothing about level of religion.
Then there's the bizarre statement that "doing well at your bar mitzva" determined your desirability as a mate. I must have missed that part of Jewish History class (and my parents must have neglected to mention to me how much was riding on my prepping for כי תצא).
I loved the first SoD book, but after reading the second I'm not planning on reading the third.
The main thing here seems to be their presentation of supposition and hypothesis as fact (or even theory) without providing any supporting material. Their biases are fairly obvious and they come into play more here than in the previous book.
I wasn't only slighted as a Jew (they did seem to target Judaism more than other religions, didn't they?) but because if they're so glaringly wrong about this, where else can I trust them? What else of the "science" is simply made up from their brains?
I've read the third book in the far past, and I intend on reading it again... I'm simply not looking forward to it quite as much as I might otherwise do.
Exactly! The first book was fantastic and I left all sorts of bookmarks on subjects I wanted to read more about. But the second book cast the whole thing into doubt: if they made such basic failures of knowledge and research in something I knew about, how much else was made up out of whole cloth?
(I did notice that Judaism popped up more than other religions, but didn't analyze it too much: Being Jewish, Cohen's anti-religious attitudes will manifest themselves most strongly in opposition to the religion he personally 'should be' part of, so it's natural that Judaism will be his biggest target. Sort of like how people born in the West who hate Western culture hold up their own countries as the strongest examples of what they hate, regardless of the country's actual prominence.)
Incidentally, my wife and I finished FFIV and have moved on to FFMQ(!). But her father died over the summer; since one of the most prominent aspects of enjoying any Final Fantasy game is the music, we've had to put it on hold until after the eleven months. We're watching Stargate together instead.
FFQM in particular has some of the best music in the series, oddly enough, though the actual gameplay leaves much to be desired.
Baruch dayan ha'emes for your father-in-law. Aveilus is tough. 8-(
Thanks.
If and when I have to go through it, I don't know how I will. I'm rather dependent on music for my sanity.
We're basically doing FFMQ because of my personal OCD-like linearity. FFMQ came out before FFV, so we're playing it first.
I'm proud of something that I did from a legal standpoint regarding FFMQ. The copyright on the game is still extant, but the patent on the Super Nintendo has expired. So emulators are legal, which is good, because I don't have a Super Nintendo. But the ROM of the game isn't legal - unless, of course, you own a copy.
Which I do. I bought a copy of FFMQ off eBay, and it now sits in my closet gathering dust for the sole purpose of being legally allowed to have and play a ROM copy :)
Actually, my understanding is that that's a myth - even if you own a copy, the ROM is still illegal. Not immoral, certainly, because neither Nintendo nor Square are getting any more cash out of FFMQ, nor are they ever going to chase after you about it, but technically illegal.
...wow. That's actually rather draconian.
I'm going to have to look into this more. Has there ever been a lawsuit filed against somebody who created a second copy of a game they owned? Would such a restriction stand up in court?
It probably would stand up in court, but I doubt anyone has ever been taken to court over it. No one really cares about ROM emulation, especially of older games.
Mmmm. I don't like breaking the law regardless. But one wonders what one can do when one has no other recourse - particularly as I'm only interested in playing the original versions of games, and have no desire whatsoever to play updated rereleases with different graphics, bug fixes, and game balance.
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