[.uk] Discarded Science: Ideas That Seemed Good at the Time... (ISBN 1904332498)

Take the good with the bad:
"Discarded Science" is a nicely readable book describing what used to be "known" about the world, life and the universe. For example, when the Earth was flat, how did the best minds of the day explain the movement of the stars? This book tells us. The reader need not be well versed in science to enjoy the book - the writing is very accessible. However, Grant spends a good amount of time lambasting crackpots who have cropped up from time to time, many of whom were never taken seriously in the first place. The book would have been much more interesting had he stuck to describing what was the orthodox thinking, even if it was wrong. A Rogue's Gallery of Nutcases would have made an entertaining (other) book. The illustrations in the book are black line drawings with red backgrounds that are very tough on the eyes.

Informative, often hilarious:
This book is an intriguing bestiary of peculiar scientific ideas that were eventually cast aside as hokum. Encompassing everything from Velikovsky's wacky cosmological theories to phrenology to the idea that we're all living inside the earth, Grant's work provides an excellent overview of the pseudoscience of yesteryear. Other reviewers have commented on how Grant goes out of his way to jab at religious folks, but really he's going out of his way to jab at young earth creationists and, let's face it, they probably deserve it. In any event, it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book, but I can see how some people might find it distracting. That being said, some of the actual presentation left a lot to be desired. The peculiar red line-art illustrations (to prevent photocopying..?) were kind of an eyesore, and the book itself has kind of peculiar dimensions (very compact yet extremely thick) that make it somewhat unwieldy and unappealing. If you can look past the unattractive presentation, this book is definitely worth a look. It's fascinating to see what bizarre ideas used to lurk in the shadowy periphery of science, even in the relatively recent past.

Regarding Science-Ejected Vitalism::
Vitalism is a profoundly science-ejected concept, though many CAM or 'natural health' cabals falsely claim that vitalism survives scientific scrutiny. Some favorite quotes: "life force (spirit) \o'purposeful life spirit'...\c this idea, vitalism, was still a respectable theory in the hazy days when qualitative alchemy was being transformed into quantitative chemistry \o...\c the theory started to fall to pieces in 1828 when \o...\c Wohler \o...\c was able to synthesize urea \op.263...and\c in 1894 \o...when\c Rubner \o...\c found that the amount of energy which the body extracts from food can be predicted by the laws of thermodynamics \o...and\c 1896 \o...\c Buchner \o...per\c fermentation does not require the prescience of living cells was merely the final nail in the coffin \o...\c yet, vampire-like, the theory refuses to stay in that coffin \o...per\c Reichenbach \o...\c odic force, od or odyle \op.264\c." -r.c.

Doesn't live up to its title:
Perhaps a better sub-title would be "why I'm so smart and everyone else in the past was so stupid." I was looking forward to understanding how some of the scientific ideas in the past came to be and what the logic was given the knowledge of the time. Instead it was mostly a harsh criticism on how "stupid" these scientists were. I was especially disappointed in the amount of effort spent on bashing Christianity without adding anything to what the focus of the book was supposed to be.

not bad, but too polemical:
The title misled me into thinking that this book would offer a careful consideration of what made some scientific ideas "seem good at the time." Unfortunately, this is only true of a few of the vast number of outdated ideas considered in this book. The author intends, apparently, to be encyclopedic--everything is considered here, even things no one would claim were ever thought to be scientific hypotheses (e.g., cannibalism to acquire the powers of one's enemies). However, like an encyclopedia, most entrees are brief, the exceptions being the ones the author seems a little obsessed by (intelligent design and religion in general get bashed repeatedly, sometimes amusingly, but usually in a way that makes you embarrassed for the author). George Bush gets beat up a fair number of times too, for related reasons, but this betrays the polemic character of the book, which is often condescending (in the spirit of "look at these quaint or irrational ideas... we know so much better now, unless you're a Christian fundamentalist moron!") (Incidentally, I'm not.) As a scientist myself--I teach physics at the College level--I expected more rigor to the criticisms and more scholarship. For example, not a single quotation comes with a page citation, and several quotations are not mentioned at all in the Bibliography). In short, an easy read, but disappointing.