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 1787, the first dinosaur bone ever discovered is found in a New Jersey creek, though it goes unrecognized and ends up lost in a store room. Around the same time, the influential Compte de Buffon makes damning comments about the “New World,” claiming it’s a toxic wasteland full of tiny, shriveled animals and disfigured natives. His views are much to the chagrin of Thomas Jefferson, who starts a trend of sending expeditions out to find bones, sending them to Europe to disprove Compte de Buffon’s claims.
Bryson uses humor (with the story of the dinosaur bone that ends up lost in a store room) to emphasize that humans really know very little about Earth’s history, so much so that we can easily overlook important artifacts. Buffon’s damning criticisms about the “New World” expose the interrelatedness of prejudice and scientific progress. Sometimes, as is the case here, the desire to dispel prejudice can fuel scientific discovery—though most of the time, the opposite happens.
Themes
From these expeditions, woolly mammoth bones start cropping up all over the United States and are sent to Europe alongside theatrical overestimations of the mammoth’s capabilities, including speculation that it pounces like a tiger and has fangs. (It turns out that someone piecing together pieces of a mammoth skull screwed on tusks upside down, and they were mistaken for fangs). When the famous bone examiner George Cuvier receives some mammoth bones in France, he names the creature a “mastodon” (meaning “nipple teeth”) and develops the theory of extinction. Jefferson is unable to believe that God would allow for such a cruel fate as extinction to happen, so he commissions an expedition westward to seek out living mastodons and disprove Cuvier’s claim.
Bryson emphasizes how easy it is to make grave scientific errors with the humorous example of tusks that are mistaken for fangs. He implies that the scientific endeavor is fraught with error, meaning there is always room for improvement—no matter how much humans think we know. Bryson also provides another case in which religious intuitions misdirect scientific efforts with Jefferson. Jefferson spends funds (that could be used in more productive ways) on a misguided hunt for living mammoths on the basis of his belief in a benevolent creator.
Themes
Meanwhile in England, mining surveyor William Smith deduces in 1796 that the ages of various fossils ages line up with different layers (or “strata”) of rock. He maps Britain’s rock strata in 1815 and prompts a fossil hunting craze, although dinosaurs aren’t recognized as such until 1855. Some of the most influential (though often overlooked) fossil hunters of this time include 12-year-old Mary Anning, who carefully excavates and sells “sea monster” fossils in Dorset from 1812 (most are now housed in London’s Natural History Museum). She inspires the tongue-twister “she sells sea shells on the sea shore.” A fossilized dinosaur tooth is also discovered in 1822 by Mrs. Mantell, the wife of a country doctor named Gideon Algernon Mantell.
Bryson leverages Smith to show how something that seems boring on the surface—like rocks—can capture the public imagination if well-expressed and can therefore have a profoundly more impactful effect on scientific progress through the engagement of amateurs. Bryson subtly alludes to the exclusion of competent women from the scientific endeavor in this era. Mary Anning’s skill in excavating fossils is unparalleled and profoundly important (evidenced by the presence of her fossils in London’s Natural History Museum), though her contributions aren’t recognized in her own lifetime because she is neither a scientist nor a man.
Themes
The eccentric Buckland publishes a paper on the fossilized tooth that Mrs. Mantell found, but because he doesn’t know about dinosaurs yet he assumes it comes from an ancient lizard, which he names “iguanadon.” The term “dinosauria”—meaning “terrible lizard”—isn’t coined until 1841 by a “sinister” anatomist named Richard Owen. Owen steals the country doctor Mantell’s discoveries of countless dinosaur fossils after Mantell is crippled in a riding accident. Owen renames many samples to hide his thievery, and Mantell is driven to suicide in 1852, after which Owen (allegedly) writes a damning obituary accusing Mantell of plagiarism.
Bryson’s macabre story of the rivalry between Owen and Mantell shows that scientific engagement can run so deep that it ends up becoming a matter of scandal, theft, and even life or death situations. The potential for engagement in scientific progress is thus very high if scientists express themselves in ways that capture the public imagination. Buckland’s assumption that Mantell’s fossilized tooth belongs to a lizard exposes, once again, limitations in scientific knowledge.
Themes
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Eventually, Owen is caught claiming credit for another amateur naturalist’s discovery and is subsequently pushed out of the Royal Zoological Society. Uncharacteristically, Owen later revolutionizes museum culture by devising the new Natural History Museum as a place accessible by all classes instead of only the permit-bearing elite. However, Owen he also leads a smear campaign against Charles Darwin and has Darwin’s statue in the museum relegated to the back of the coffee shop.
Owen’s uncharacteristically generous efforts to make museums more accessible to the public shows that scientific progress is often held back by social prejudice. Here, Bryson shows that prejudiced views limit amateurs’ access to museums until well into the 19th century, which is counterproductive considering how many contributions amateurs make to science.
Themes
Meanwhile, a ruthless competition between wealthy Americans Edward Drinker Cope (who notoriously hunted for bones amid the battle of Little Big Horn) and Othniel Charles March (whose uncle built a museum for him) changes the face of paleontology. Cope and March increase the number of dinosaur species discovered from 9 to 150—including many popular species like brontosaurus and triceratops—through an all-out rivalry that includes sabotaging each other’s digs and stealing each other’s samples.
Bryson once again shows how a piece of information that would likely be found in a science textbook (specifically, the number of dinosaur species we know about) can be rendered more compelling. By framing this information within the dramatic anecdote of Cope and March’s feud, Bryson is able to more effectively engage the reader than he would by simply stating an abstract fact.
Themes
By the start of the 20th century, several tons worth of new dinosaur bones have been excavated, leaving the next generation of scientists perplexed about how to age them and reconcile them with wild speculations about Earth’s age (which range from 5,000 years to millions of years), though none of the estimates come anywhere near the ballpark of the actual time of the dinosaurs, which was 65 million years ago. Eventually, a New Zealand farm boy named Ernest Rutherford provides “irrefutable evidence” proving that Earth is at least several hundred million years old.
Bryson’s survey of where scientific knowledge about Earth’s history stands by the start of the 20th century shows how much scientific advancement is a never-ending process. Specifically, the question of Earth’s age is still in play at this point, and significant fossil analysis needs to be completed at this stage in history. Bryson thus implies that the more scientists discover, the more they learn how limited their knowledge (thus far) is.
Themes
