Product Description

When a wizardly experiment goes adrift, the wizards of Unseen University find themselves with a pocket universe on their hands: Roundworld, where neither magic nor common sense seems to stand a chance against logic. The Universe, of course, is our own. And Roundworld is Earth. As the wizards watch their accidental creation grow, we follow the story of our universe from the primal singularity of the Big Bang to the Internet and beyond. Through this original Terry Pratchett story (with intervening chapters from Cohen and Stewart) we discover how puny and insignificant individual lives are against a cosmic backdrop of creation and disaster. Yet, paradoxically, we see how the richness of a universe based on rules, has led to a complex world and at least one species that tried to get a grip of what was going on.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23005 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

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

Review
'The hard science is as gripping as the fiction', The Times .'An irreverent but genuinely profound romp through the history and philosophy of science, cunningly disguised as a collection of funny stories about wizards and mobile luggage. More that that, it offers a fresh look at the place that humans hold in the history of the planet', Richard Wentk, Frontiers

From the Publisher
The Sunday Times bestseller, fully revised and updated

Customer Reviews

Excellent book
Along with Science of Discworld II, a couple of the best science books ever written, but a fun story as well.

MAGIC IS FICTION; PERIOD
As 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.

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.