A review by gabe_reads
Is Science Necessary? by Max F. Perutz

slow-paced

2.0

I think I was expecting this book to go some way towards answering the question it sets out, but it just doesn’t really. It’s comprised of a first section with chapters on how science has improved various aspects of life. I skipped most of this as it was talking a lot about past and future statistics, though written in the 80s this was quite outdated. And given I didn’t know much about the areas it wasn’t even interesting from a “what they thought back then” point of view.

The rest of the book involves chapters of his life, book reviews, and chapters about other scientists. These turned out to be quite interesting for the most part and pretty easy to read. Again this is biased by my preconceptions but I was expecting more of an overall point, beyond painting a general picture of science and scientists. I did kind of grow to like that I just wandered my way through the book, without it constantly bringing me back to a point or argument.

However it is very clearly written by a Cambridge professor in the 80s, with all the associated ideas about how science works and who scientists are. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it just doesn’t really feel applicable to how science is done today.