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Binding: PaperbackEAN: 9780091886578 Edition: 2nd Revised edition ISBN: 0091886570 Label: Ebury Press Manufacturer: Ebury Press Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: May 02, 2002 Publisher: Ebury Press Studio: Ebury Press Related Items:
Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review: Terry Pratchett needs no introduction. Ian Stewart has written fine nonfiction books on mathematics, and he and Jack Cohen collaborated on the quirkily inventive pop-science titles The Collapse of Chaos and Figments of Reality. What on earth, or on Discworld, are they all doing in the same book? Pratchett provides a very funny 30,000-word novella about Discworld science, beginning in the High Energy Magic faculty of Unseen University and leading his eccentric wizards to investigate an alien cosmos where there's no magic to keep things going. This is the Roundworld universe--ours. The key point: much that's true only on Discworld (eg: that suns orbit planets and not vice-versa) was once believed on Earth and the wizards' comic misunderstandings echo the history of real science ... Unusually, Pratchett's story is split into chapters and in between his chapters Stewart and Cohen wittily discuss the concepts underlying the fiction, from the Big Bang through stellar formation to life and evolution. Much of the science we know, they cheerfully insist, is "lies-to-children": good stories that are mostly untrue, like thinking of atoms as tiny solar systems. Discworld operates by narrative plausibility and so does human thought even when our Roundworld universe disagrees. Between the laughs, The Science of Discworld is a provocative, informative book that'll make you think about what you think you know. --David Langford Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Excellent bookAlong with Science of Discworld II, a couple of the best science books ever written, but a fun story as well. Rating:  - MAGIC IS FICTION; PERIODAs a scientist and a fan of Terry Pratchett's books I was intrigued by this book, but the authors soon went down the science IS magic route, first of all, by saying science can become soo advanced it looks like magic, (yes LOOKS like but actually ISN'T) then comparing science to magic, (but this doesn't work either chaps, as magic is a work of fiction and science is fact!) and then saying science IS magic (and at this point I stopped reading.) A waste of time. Rating: - Yet another excelent book!Although a slight detour from the norml type of Discworld book, I found the combination of the story (which was great) and the explanations of the real science behind the story to be absolutely fascinating and I learned stuff I never knew before while still being entertained in the good old Pratchett style! I have now brought all three of these Science of the Discworld series and have already read them several times over as they were so enjoyable. Rating: - BoringThere are 336 pages in this book, 336 sentences would have covered it. The one star is for the cover and the index. Rating: - Opens your eyes to the new scienceThis is a fantastic view on the new science. It is not intended to go into the same depth as one of Ian Stewarts science book and it is not intended to explain science in discworld - after all discworld runs on narrativium. What it does is show how to take a different and more approachable view of modern science and that science is full of magic, wonder and surprises. This book brings the new way of thinking to everyone in an accessible and fun way. If you are a scientist it makes you think, and if you are not then it entertains and perhaps make you think that science and scientists might not be so strange after all.  Try searching the Internet for "The Science of Discworld" or Ebay for "The Science of Discworld". You might also be interested in the following great products:
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