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The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm |  |
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The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm | |
Human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. It has built on itself for centuries, becoming vast and increasingly specialized. Most of us are ignorant about the fundamental principles of the civilization that supports us, happily utilizing the latest—or even the most basic—technology without having the slightest idea of why it works or how it came to be. If you had to go back to absolute basics, like some sort of postcataclysmic Robinson Crusoe, would you know how to re-create an internal combustion engine, put together a microscope, get metals out of rock, or even how to produce food for yourself?
Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. Every piece of technology rests on an enormous support network of other technologies, all interlinked and mutually dependent. You can’t hope to build a radio, for example, without understanding how to acquire the raw materials it requires, as well as generate the electricity needed to run it. But Dartnell doesn’t just provide specific information for starting over; he also reveals the greatest invention of them all—the phenomenal knowledge-generating machine that is the scientific method itself.
The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world.
网友对The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm的评论
What I was looking for was a book about 'how to rebuild our world from scratch'.
A series of 'this is how to build a fire', 'this is how to identify iron-bearing rocks', 'this is how to smelt iron', 'this is how to build a steam engine, etc.
The book instead is a series of chapters describing problems that one facing the rebuilding of civilization would face with no solutions. For example it describes how post-1800s farming requires industrial nitrogen fixing and how not having that is an issue, without providing a solution.
This book is a good starting point for research, but is not what I was hoping for.
This is NOT a "How-to" book by any stretch of the imagination, despite the title.
To his credit, the author does a good job of pointing out a lot of the areas that society will need to quickly rebuild following a collapse. However, each chapter could have been summed up in a paragraph with little loss of actionable content, because there simply is none. Every chapter goes on at great length about the importance and history of the topic, but offers nothing more than a passing mention of the what without any of the how. Descriptions of the actual mechanisms by which a society might bootstrap important technologies are generalized and vague to the point of uselessness.
The complete lack of actionable directions and usable technical diagrams could be overlooked (or at least forgiven) if the author had cited the work better. For someone with a Ph.D., Dartnell's citation style is one of the worst I've encountered for a non-fiction work. Rather than in-line citations with the relevant passages, footnotes, or endnotes, readers have to turn to a "Further Readings and References" chapter at the end of the work and look through the chapter in the hopes that the point they want elaborated actually has a listed reference. Even if it's there, it's only a mention of the original author's last name, not a full citation. For that, you need to then turn to the bibliography and again cross-reference it.
A prime example of the difficulty of drawing any useful information from this tome is located in Chapter 6, on materials. On page 132, the following appears:
"An incredibly elegant example [of bootstrapping metalworking machinery] has been provided by a machinist in the 1980s who created a fully equipped metalworking shop--complete with lathe, metal shaper, drill press, and milling machine--starting with little more than clay, sand, charcoal, and some lumps of scrap metal."
No usable information on the actual build process follows, but that is understandable given the magnitude of the project. The work in question is the phenomenal seven-part series by the late Dave Gingery, <i>Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap</i>. Frankly, Mr. Dartnell appears to have gone out of his way to make it difficult to figure this out, though. Why did he describe Gingery as "a machinist in the 1980s" instead of just using his name? Why does the reader have to go on a scavenger hunt through the back material to track down the book title?
The writing is at times interesting, and the few details Dartnell offers are at least generally accurate, if not at all useful. It's entertaining, but completely misses the target of what appears to be the target audience. Worth checking out of the local library for a quick perusal, but a complete waste of money for anyone serious about works on societal rebuilding.
There are some books that have an extremely wide appeal and many uses. "The Knowledge" is one of them.
It is a non-fiction work, and the premise is that "the Knowledge" contains the basic information that survivors of an end of the world scenario would need to recreate the modern world.
The book comes at this from a variety of angles and posits several different end of the world scenarios: nuclear war, bio weapons, asteroid, etc.
"The Knowledge" begins at the beginning and makes the point that there will likely be many resources available if the number of survivors are few and talks through the kinds of supplies that one would have to gather and why. Some items have a limited shelf life. Some things are just extremely useful, and, often, not for the obvious applications.
Then, "the Knowledge" moves on to the basics for long-term survival, food, shelter, water, etc. There are sections on writing, engineering, medicine and disease.
One of the central premises in the book is that society should not seek to recreate the march of history. Instead, the survivors should seek to take advantage of past knowledge and "jump" epochs of trial and error that already occurred. But, even if you know you ultimately want to develop safe nuclear power, the things needed to do that safely will require potentially hundreds of years of development in a post-apocalyptic era. Manufacturing precision ball bearings alone requires substantial material science and manufacturing capabilities.
So, beyond the clear use for the book (being a post-apocalyptic survivor), what are some other uses?
One that comes immediately to mind is a writer. Whether your book is a science fiction novel or survivor thriller, "the Knowledge" has information that would make your book standout with cool details and neat insights that would engage your audience.
Coaches, scout masters, and camp trainers could all use this as a guide for developing interesting education and training opportunities for their teams.
And, the uses go on and on.
One caveat, this is a book that has some direct information, but much of it refers to other sources to find out the details. It works even better if you combine it with a book like "Country Skills."
I highly recommend this book.
In service,
Rich
This is a pretty good book. Entertaining, a good light treatment of the topic...
And the lightness is my main problem. Everything is covered in to shallow a depth, the author doesn't explore any one topic in sufficient detail, and the end result is...
Well. The author comes out (towards the end) and says this is a thinly disguised popular science popularization, rather than a flawed-but-serious attempt to do what the book is marketed to do.
So... the marketing is hyperbolic, and a huge let-down. Maybe pick up if this one's under $4.00 on sale, or buy for a precocious 12 year old, rather than an adult with a strong technical background.
This would make a better TV show than a book.
A radio interview with the author led me to believe this book had basic information for the processes needed to start from scratch and reconstitute necessary technologies. As food production, finding, obtaining and storing potable water, simple metallurgy (from mining to finished product) subsistence plumbing and sanitation. It was, apparently, too much to ask. The Back to Basics Handbook is much more valuable and comes much closer to fulfilling the expectations generated by The Knowledge's author.
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