A Short History of Nearly Everything — Bill Bryson

“To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better.”

Review:

About thirty pages in, I was extremely tempted to throw this book out the window and blot it from my memory. For a book about big-picture ideas like evolution, planet formation, and scientific discovery, Bryson made the strange choice of frequently focusing on the dramas in the lives of obscure scientists. And when I say obscure, I mean really obscure. Paleontologists, botanists, astronomers, and zoologists — it didn’t matter what their bizarre expertise was, where they came from, or whether anyone had ever heard of them; Bryson would dig up some little story about a discovery they made, wrap it into some drama it created within academic circles, and then end the story with something like: “And then he died. Friends say he was bitter about [insert grievance made by academic rival] until the very end.” I literally cannot remember a single name of any of the unknown scientists he mentioned. The triviality of some of the drama Bryson described bordered on madness. But my inner masochist (and the guilt I feel when I put an unfinished book down) pushed me to continue.

A Short History of Nearly Everything surely has some redeeming qualities. It is as comprehensive a book you can get on the history of the universe and life itself, given the size of what must be condensed into less than 500 pages. Bryson starts as wide as possible, focusing on how it is believed the universe began, how our solar system was formed, and how the earth is believed to have gotten to its current state. Each step of the way, the reader gets a glimpse of the actual evolution of theories on individual subjects. We see how scientists’ ideas about the world changed over time given new discoveries, and even how they stagnated despite certain advances. Bryson details how we came to discover how old the Earth was, what material it was comprised of, and many of the underlying mechanics of our existence on this planet. From that big picture view, he eventually zooms in. Later chapters describe our changing understand of cells, bacteria, and genes. It really does seem to cover nearly everything.

I couldn’t complain about Bryson’s actual writing or style, just his choices of focus. The first book that came to mind when I picked this up was The Big Picture by Sean Carroll, which was a fantastic “how the world works” type book. But instead of focusing on important overarching themes like The Big Picture, Bryson put his magnifying glass over history’s minutiae — the obscure people behind discoveries (sometimes small, sometimes significant) that advanced science over many years. The author seemed to revel in every detail, as if each had an equal weight in the grand scheme of things. In some ways, I can appreciate this. Sometimes we have to look very closely at a chain of events to realize how improbable it all was, or to realize how complex and amazing life is. But from a learning perspective it can make things awfully dull at times.

Having pushed through the rest of those 400 something pages, I can’t say I enjoyed myself, but I did feel like I captured a bit of wisdom. It was something that was also echoed in both The Big Picture and Sapiens. It’s the idea that none of what exists right now was inevitable. Not our current biological form, not our existence on this planet, and none of our current modern-day circumstances. Everything could have either taken a drastically different path or collapsed anywhere along the way. I think Bryson summed it up best here:

“We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life’s dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes. The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billion years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.”

We’re beyond lucky to be here in this very moment.

Score: 5/10

Notes:

· It’s possible there have been or currently are many universes (maybe infinite) each with different attributes, in different combinations, and that we simply live in one that combines things in the way that allows us to exist

· While the number of planets with advanced civilizations in our galaxy may be somewhere in the millions (based on the Drake equation), the distance between any two of these places is thought to be at least 200 light-years, which makes communication very unlikely

· Around 4.6 billion years ago, a massive swirl of gas and dust accumulated in space where we are now; virtually all of the mass went on to create the sun; out of the remaining material, colliding clumps of rocks endlessly crashed into each other and grew larger, eventually forming our planets over the course of millions of years

· Every object that has mass creates a little depression in the fabric of the cosmos. Thus the universe, as Dennis Overbye has put it, is “the ultimate sagging mattress.” Gravity on this view is no longer so much a thing as an outcome — not a force but a byproduct of the warping of spacetime.

· Lucky breaks for Earth’s habitability:

o Location — we are the right distance from the right sort of star, one that is big enough to radiate lots of energy, but not so big as to burn itself out swiftly; 5% nearer or 15% farther from the sun would basically put us out of the zone of habitability

o The right kind of planet — the molten core of the planet created the outgassing that helped build our atmosphere (and protective magnetic field); it also gave us plate tectonics which ensured that the earth was not simply covered in water everywhere

o Twin planet — without our relatively large moon’s steadying influence, the Earth would wobble much more in its rotation, which would have large consequences on weather and climate

o Timing — our existence today is predicated on an incredibly long and fortunate series of events occurring over 4.6 billion years

· Why we know as little as we do:

o Most living things are small and easily overlooked (bacteria, fungi, other microscopic creatures)

o We don’t look in the right places (like tropical rain forests that harbor a lot of animal plant life, but aren’t researched thoroughly)

o There aren’t enough specialists

o The world is massive and life somehow finds a way in the most farfetched habitats

· One reason life took so long to grow complex was that the world had to wait until simpler organisms had oxygenated the atmosphere sufficiently. Once the stage was set, a new type of cell arose that most likely captured a bacterium that evolved into the modern-day mitochondria of the cell. Mitochondria allowed cells to manipulate oxygen in a way that liberated energy from food. With more energy, complexity could grow.

· There is clearly no thinking presence behind any of the actions of the cells. It all just happens, smoothly and repeatedly so reliably that seldom are we even conscious of it, yet somehow all this produces not just order within the cell but a perfect harmony right across the organism.

· Ice ages in the past may have been caused by cool summers. If summers are too cool to melt all the snow that falls on a given area, more incoming sunlight is reflected by the surface, exacerbating the cooling effect and encouraging yet more snow to fall (in a vicious cycle).

Phrases/Quotes:

· We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life’s dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes. The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billion years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.

· “Humans are here today because our particular line never fractured — never once at any of the billion points that could have erased us from history.” — Stephen Gould

· In ways that we have barely begun to understand, trillions upon trillions of reflexive chemical reactions add up to a mobile, thinking, decision-making you… Every living thing, never forget, is a wonder of atomic engineering.

· Genes are nothing more than instructions to make proteins. In this sense, they are rather like the keys of a piano, each playing a single note and nothing else, which is obviously a trifle monotonous. But combine the genes, as you would combine piano keys, and you can create chords and melodies of infinite variety. Put all these genes together, and you have (to continue the metaphor) the great symphony of existence known as the human genome.

· “One of the hardest ideas for humans to accept is that we are not the culmination of anything. There is nothing inevitable about our being here. It is part of our vanity as humans that we tend to think of evolution as a process that, in effect, was programmed to produce us.” — Tattersall

· We flatter ourselves. Most of the real diversity in evolution has been small-scale. We large things are just flukes — an interesting side branch. Of the twenty-three main divisions of life, only three — plants, animals, and fungi — are large enough to be seen by the human eye, and even they contain species that are microscopic… The world belongs to the very small — and it has for a very long time.

· It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours.

· To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp.