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Terry Pratchett The Science Of Discworld ISBN 13: 9780091865153

The Science Of Discworld - Hardcover

 
9780091865153: The Science Of Discworld
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In the 'fantasy' universe of the phenomenally best-selling Discworld series, events in fact mostly follow the dictates of common sense. Everyone in Discworld knows that the world is flat and that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. In our own world, science tells us that our more 'logical' universe does not obey common sense at all. The appeal of Discworld lies in the fact that much of it does make sense in a way that particle physics does not. The aim of 'The Science of Discworld' is to use the comfortable but curious science of Discworld to illuminate the less comfortable science of our own world. The vehicle for this is the 'Roundworld Project', set up within Discworld by various wizards at the Unseen University, who set out to construct a carefully tailored magical exclusion zone, inside which magic is reduced to nill and only rigid 'scientific' rules apply. Roundworld, it turns out' is in fact our own universe. With us inside it. Terry Pratchett presents here a brilliant new Discworld story, and Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen weave around it a hugely entertaining discussion of scientific issues in our own universe.

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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
Review:
‘The hard science is as gripping as the fiction’ -- The Times

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  • PublisherEbury Press
  • Publication date1999
  • ISBN 10 0091865158
  • ISBN 13 9780091865153
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages336
  • Rating

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