What to read to understand how science works

THE WAY science is often taught—as an abstract collection of facts and equations—is nothing like the way scientists discover and use their knowledge of the world. Research at the frontier of understanding is messy, meandering and filled with a series of both good and bad choices made by innumerable people. Acknowledging that messiness (and occasionally even revelling in it) is useful for two reasons: it re-introduces important historical and social context to the story of how humans have built and shaped their modern scientific world; and it shows how science is a remarkable product of human imagination and creativity, perhaps our species’ greatest collective achievement. These six books tell the stories of people, places and problems that have driven humanity’s understanding of the world.