Science in Short Chapters
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- General readers interested in science essays and short-form reading
- Readers curious about nineteenth-century science writing
- English learners who want light reading in spare moments
- History-of-science enthusiasts interested in early popular science texts
Not a good fit for
- Readers needing systematic science textbooks or up-to-date knowledge
- Researchers expecting rigorous experimental data and modern references
- Deep readers who prefer long, sustained argument
Reading tips
- Pick topics that interest you from the table of contents and skip around rather than reading straight through
- After every few chapters, note one point of knowledge or stylistic feature that struck you
- Read it as material for the history of science, distinguishing the era's background from today's consensus
- English readers can close-read a short chapter or two to pick up popular-science phrasing
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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About the author
W. Mattieu Williams (1820–1892) was a nineteenth-century British writer on science, remembered chiefly for his popular science writing aimed at general readers; public information about the details of his life is limited. Two of his works are held in this collection: The Chemistry of Cookery and Science in Short Chapters. Judging by their subjects, he was concerned with the scientific principles behind everyday life: the former explains cookery within a chemical framework, while the latter discusses various scientific questions in short chapters. Writing of this kind stresses readability and practical use and seeks to make science intelligible to readers without specialist backgrounds, reflecting one direction in Victorian popular science publishing. His works can still serve as material for understanding how science was communicated at the time.
