Michael Faraday

a course of lectures delivered before a juvenile audience at the royal institution

The chemical History of a Candle

The Chemical History of a Candle

Misha

I enjoyed Faraday's _The Chemical History of a Candle_ a lot. 

Lectures' spirit is of minimal-trust investigation [0] (as much as a narrative can be). The book left me with doubts and questions (within its framework). And bitter-sweet feelings: on the one hand, "yes, the investigation is real" (as much as successful concise narrative can be); on the other, unsatisfaction with "science should be much more certain" (both learned mistake from textbooks dumping facts and from "man you need to rule out this, that and those alternative explanations and I am not sure it's doable without leveraging a lot of Occam razor or something"). The later dissatisfaction was accompanied with meta-level "oh, yeah" of facing messy reality instead of being handled a toy.

[0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/p...

The chemical History of a Candle a course of lectures delivered before a juvenile audience at the royal institution