Harper, 2023
ISBN: 978-0063251182
Reviewed by Ian Mowll
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This book is about the scientific discovery of the elements that make up the human body, and how these create the building blocks of life. The journey starts with the big bang 13.8 billion years ago and then traces the evolutionary journey of our planet and the development of life itself.
But it’s much more than the science, it’s about the scientists who made the discoveries: the challenges, the pitfalls and the unexpected twists and turns. The book brings the science alive and makes me realise how much skill and dedication was needed by so many to bring us to our current understanding.
There were many moments when I felt a deep sense of awe at the stranger than fiction journey that our planet has been on. For instance, the amazing chemical processes needed for photosynthesis to capture light and convert it into energy; the immense complexity of every individual cell of our body and how water came to be on our planet.
In the book, I saw so many times that scientists were blinded by their own knowledge and could not see outside the box, rejecting new ideas because they seemed so far away from current thinking. For instance, there is the ‘it’s too weird to be true’ bias, the ‘I’m an expert so I’ve lost sight of how much is unknown’ bias and the ever present ‘confirmation bias’. All of this teaches me to keep an open mind about new ideas and not to dismiss them without careful evaluation.
We are born with a craving to explain the world’s mysteries and to understand our place in it. There is so much more to find out and, in the future, there will be much that will surprise us and upend our current thinking. Wow – what an adventure we are on.