The Science of the Discworld II: The Globe

Like the first Science of the Discworld book, this one alternates between non-fiction chapters and a story about the Discworld wizards exploring our world. The author's classify the non-fiction chapters as extended footnotes for the "story" chapters, and I guess that makes sense of the organization. Though those so-called footnotes are twice as long as the non-footnote material.

Where the first book followed a linear time progression from big bang to the creation of life on earth, this one jumps around a bit more in time. As do the wizards. And while it coalesces around certain themes, this book ended up feeling a bit all over the place to me. It's much more thought experiment, being a history of civilization and philosophy and something of an extended argument against religion and for science. Which is all well and good, but it isn't entirely what I was expecting.

There were, as always, a few fun tidbits. But this book ended up feeling a little all over the place. It never quite came together for me, even though I basically agree with what the authors were trying to argue. Maybe it's because I had a bad cold while I was reading it, but maybe this is just a more difficult subject to apply their sort of rigor to.

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