I recently finished “Our Accidental Universe” by Prof. Chris Lintott and just before that I re-read “The Disordered Cosmos” by Prof. Chandra Prescott-Weinstein. Both are books for the general audience to explain the nature of our Universe told by some of the best explainers in the business. They are as far apart in style as I can tell as possible. I like reading books this way, in contrasting pairs. Both are a series of essays/chapters on topics in Astronomy highlighting the often randomness of our Universe and serendipity in our discoveries.
The Disordered Cosmos (DC) originated from blog posts and this shows some in the writing and language. There are footnotes explaining terms or author’s asides but no extended reference list.
Our accidental universe (AU) is in that sense a much more “traditional” popular Astronomy book, footnotes for jokes and asides, with a long list of where the author got his information from for these stories.
The bigger differences between these two books are how much you meet the author personally. In AU, you meet Chris as younger self briefly to highlight discovery or to set a timeframe. There is a person behind the stories and jokey asides but the author keeps his privacy. This is very different for the DC. Here we meet the author personally and writing about intensely personal things and the various identities she brings to the science of Astronomy/cosmology. It is a much more emotional read. When I read it for the first time in the spring of 2019, a lot of the frustrations with the system of physics resonated with me. My experiences as an immigrant white dude here are nowhere near as bad as some of those described in the DC. But the feeling on being judged on emotional labor for students or feeling of not belonging thanks to physics group dynamics. Yeah that hit pretty solidly mid-tenure. I thought that spring semester in 2019 was the roughest (“oh my sweet summer child” is the phrase I think).
So I will be honest, the second half of the DC did not stick in my brain at all. Too stressed. So I really wanted to reread it. When I am overwhelmed by a 3 class semester where one is a new class and assorted chaos, yeah I need to read space kablooie, not the Disordered Cosmos.
The AU is a very smooth read. I also know how Chris sounds so I heard it in his voice and frankly he just sounds so much like the BBC. Stephen Fry encountered this when people in prison were confident he would go to university. Purely because of his diction. I’ve heard a British friend describe it as “plummy”. It is a much more relaxing read, often because I heard part of the stories too.
So when we read books about Astronomy or our Universe, you might expect a soothing story where the narrator has a nice accent in your head. But if you want a glimpse how this sometimes goes down in the heads of people doing the work, the DC is a much more direct and honest look in to the very human and flawed endeavor that is the science of Astronomy.
The fun part is that both books have a similar takeaway message: understanding the cosmos is fun. Be it as we are given a tour by a BBC voice or shown it as an act of resistance against the worse human behaviours. Exploring the Universe is chaotic, random and above all fun.
