Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Short History of Nearly Everything, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science, Discovery, and Mystery
Writing, Wonder, and Inspiration
Progress, Sexism, and Dogma
Existence, Awe, and Survival
Summary
Analysis
In 1921, an engineer for General Motors named Robert Midgley Jr. discovers that a compound called “tetraethyl lead” stops car engines from shuddering. Despite lead’s poisonous and deadly effects on humans (it can cause hallucinations that induce death), a conglomerate named Ethyl Corporation begins manufacturing leaded gasoline, which proves a commercial success. Midgley then invents chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which find their way into many consumer products and begin burning a hole in Earth’s ozone layer at a rate of 70,000 pounds of ozone per pound of CFCs. Bryson explains that ozone is oxygen with three atoms per molecule instead of two, and it soaks up deadly ultraviolet radiation. Ozone is hard to come by, which makes ozone-burning CFCs the “worst invention” of the 20th century by Bryson’s estimation.
Bryson raises the case of Midgley Jr. to show how reckless humans can be: CFCs are rapidly taken up commercially and used for years before scientists discover how damaging they are to Earth’s ozone layer. The ozone layer is a crucial barrier that protects humans from being obliterated by deadly ultraviolet radiation, meaning that the hasty human drive to industrialize the use of CFCs (without understanding their impact on the atmosphere) threatens our very existence and the existence of all other species. Bryson thus implies that humans can be a direct threat to life on Earth.
Themes
By the 1940s, scientists still don’t know how old Earth is. A scientist named Willard Libby invents radiocarbon dating—but it only applies to bones, not rocks. Nevertheless, his invention prompts renewed interest in finding a method for calculating Earth’s age. Graduate student Clair Patterson knows that Rutherford’s half-life measure (of the decay of uranium into lead) can be used to age rocks, but he doesn’t know how to identify which rocks of the Earth’s rocks are definitely the oldest. Eventually, Patterson tries meteorites, correctly guessing that they’ll be as old as the Solar System. He’s shocked to find that they are 4,550 million years old.
Bryson revisits the question of Earth’s age to show that up until the mid-20th century, everything scientists assumed about Earth’s age for 300 years was incorrect—that Earth is much, much older than any scientist had imagined. Once again, Bryson emphasizes both how little humans actually know about the world around us and how many generations it can take to address scientific mysteries, implying that scientific discovery is a vast and likely endless task.
Themes
Patterson also has to factor out atmospheric lead. He discovers that before 1923, there was hardly any lead in the atmosphere, and he begins campaigning for lead reduction. Despite losing funding and research positions (at the hands of well-connected lobbyists), Patterson helps to get the Clean Air Act passed in 1970. Many corporations subsequently outsource production to countries where CFCs and lead additives are still legal.
Patterson’s attempt to age Earth with meteors shows that humans have been pumping our atmosphere full of lead—which is poisonous to us—without fully understanding how this will affect our ecosystem. Once again, human behavior is exposed as something that recklessly endangers our already precarious existence.
Themes
