Penguin Books Australia

With the intelligence and exuberance that made Woman an international sensation, Natalie Angier takes us on a whirligig tour of the scientific canon. Drawing on conversations with hundreds of the world's top scientists, and her own Pulitzer Prize-winning reportage for the New York Times , The Canon is a magical guide to scientific literacy that will enrapture, inspire, and enlighten.

Old ways of thought permitted no process such as science for correcting errors and misconceptions. So ideas were static for long periods. Being bad explanations, even the best of them typically had little reach and were therefore brittle and unreliable beyond, and often within, their traditional applications. When ideas did change, it was seldom for the better, and when it did happen to be...

For the first time in history, we are interacting with computer programmes so sophisticated that we think they're human beings . . .

'Often historical, occasionally hysterical, and consistently smart and funny, this book challenges everything we think we know about how the world works'
Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness

Randomness and uncertainty surround everything we do.
So why are we so bad at understanding them?