他有漂亮的大眼睛，還有迷人的鬍鬚！
I finished the book a while ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it and keep wanting to write something down after finishing it. Keep wanting to write a whole essay with a central theme keep delaying my effort to write anything! le sigh. A scatter brain can only produce random thoughts with not collective theme. I will go where ever I want to go then. Ah, a beauty of Randomness...
It's been a while so let me think... The book starts with something weird, if I remember correctly. It first talked about the view on science became a fad in the beginning of the 19th century. I remembered that book started with an English artist, who claimed to use science for his technique when painting cloud and natural lights. The I remember the book started by talking some English people started to catalogue different kinds of clouds. After that I remember the book talked about telegraph, and he mentioned about morse codes. Then there're people studying storms patters, what is a storm? With European Navy in Caribbean sea, and every ship can pass the news around, it's like a net with notes. People could start to draw maps and how storms progressed. And I also remember some people at USA studying pattering of falling trees in New York or somewhere near USA northeastern, many people also started to advancing hypothesis what is a storm? Then there was a scientist tried to study the atmosphere by flying hot air balloon, and take measure of pressure, humidity...etc at different heights. Then there's the tragedy of Robert FitzRoy, who was famous for being the captain of Darwin's trip, in which Darwin formed hypothesis of Evolution. RF was also an accomplished sea captain. His legacy was in establishing Meteorology department for England. He was the first one to use the word "forcast". He is the one who put first daily weather report in the newspaper. He also distribute barometers for all the seamen, including local fishermen. Because He himself used barometer extensively to watch for storms and gales. I remembered a story, where he avoided a catastrophe while he and his family were returning form New Zealand. He also established land stations around England Isles to gather weather reports using telegraph. His tragedy came first with Darwin's theory of Evolution, the second came with his weather prediction. He killed himself at the end, by using his razor.
I felt that the tragedy of RF was the theme of the book, especially after he published the first weather report, which has the similarity as current scientists predicting climate change. One of the interesting thing about RF's weather report was that the purpose of which was to save seamen's lives. So he had this gale warning system set up so that when the warning was on, no ship should go out. The owners hated this system, because they would lose money. But the majority of the seamen liked the idea. I remember some full time scientist also made fun of the report. I agree that RF is not a full time scientist. But he did use the scientific knowledge well for his own purposes as a seaman. He firmly believed barometer was the key to avoid major disaster on the ocean. And he used this knowledge and awareness to do good for his fellow ocean goers. I can imagine the weather report at that time would not be as accurate as now. I remembered when I was younger in Taiwan people joke about the phrases they used in forcast, "晴時多雲偶陣雨", which pretty much covered all the weather conditions... lol But it's the thought that really counts. And I think from that thought, came the improvement.
I think this kind of book is really important. Because it gives many people a glance of what science is. What does the role of a scientist has in a society. But most important of all is that, the book presents a lot of characters who was not trained scientists, but they either have faith in scientific method, or they have a single pursuit of a truth behind a phenomenon(weather related, or telegraph...), or they have a practical experience using the knowledge derived from scientific method. They all contributed to our understanding to the world around us. To me it is important, because science is not just for scientists. It's a method for everyone to use, to verify knowledge, so called facts, believes, even to test what science is.
Although I do wonder now, that science seemed to became too deep, too elitism. But it is important to remember that both science and art are born from the common men. And in the midst of them, through argument, hypothesis, trials and errors, a continuing pursuit for truth, time and energy spent, by our fellow people, science became that way. But in the most basic and humble forms, everyone can employ it for their practical use.
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