Weighing the Soul

From the IgNobel-winning author of How to Dunk a Doughnut, another slice of the weird and wonderful side of science

Good science and common sense often don't mix. In Weighing the Soul, Len Fisher shows the path to scientific discovery is frequently a bumpy one that follows Schopenhauer's famous maxim - 'All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.'

Fisher tells the fascinating, human stories behind some of the great as well as some of the not-so-great scientific ideas of the past - those that were truly bizarre, peculiar or downright daft, and those that just seemed that way at the time. As he shows, it is often only with hindsight that the two can be told apart, and it is some of those who appeared most wrong - and who were variously ignored, persecuted and imprisoned as a result - that ultimately went on to be proved most right.