A review by olityr
The Science of Discworld by Ian Stewart, Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen

funny informative inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This was a surprisingly good introduction to a wide variety of sciences. 

Favorite quotes:

• "Sufficiently advanced physics is indistinguishable from magic."
• "Science is not about building a body of known ‘facts’. It is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good."
• "That's where science and common sense overlap; science is common sense applied to evidence. Using common sense in that manner, you often come to conclusions that are very different from the obvious common sense assumptions that because the universe appears to behave in some manner, that it really does."
• "Whenever a scientist says 'There is no scientific evidence for...' there are three important questions you should ask, especially if it's a government scientist. These are; 'Is there any evidence against?', 'Has anyone looked?' and, If they did, 'Would they expect to find anything?"
• "Because we've got minds, we also have the capacity to create a little bit of mind in a lot of other creatures."
• "And then complicity really set in because what's on a piece of paper can come back and bite you in the ankle. The rulers started putting constitutional rights and obligations down on paper to protect their own position. Once it's down on paper that the king has certain rights and obligations, then the paper can always be referred to later and used as an argument. But what the kings didn't realize to start with is that when they put their rights and obligations down on paper, they were implicitly constraining their own actions. The citizens could read what was on the paper too. They could tell if their king was suddenly assuming rights or obligations that were not on the piece of paper. The whole effect of law on human society started to change when you could write the law down and anyone who could read could see what the law was. This didn't mean that the king's always obeyed the law, of course, but it meant that when they disobeyed it, everyone knew what they were doing. That had a big effect on the structure of human society. One minor aspect of it is that we always appear to be nervous of people who write things down."