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The Intelligent Man's Guide To The Physical Sciences
Science
400 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1979
16 people are currently reading
360 people want to read
About the author
Isaac Asimov
4,341 books27.8k followersWorks of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles,
The Foundation Trilogy
(1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 22, 2025
this is so unlike most of the books ive read this year but is certainly among the most rewarding. i found it, along w/ its biology counterpart, in a free library outside of a 100-year-old church a block from where i live, sun-bleached but in good shape. i havent taken a rudimentary science class since high school (i took some science electives in college), and i had been feeling like i was walking through life w/ a huge intellectual blindspot. this text came to me at the perfect time.
the star system feels like an unfair metric for this book. my ratings are typically based on how a book impressed my very specific/personal artistic, writerly, humanistic sensibilities. although isaac asimov is a brilliant thinker and engaging writer, i wasnt approaching this text as a work of art or literature. i still had to supplement this book w/ external diagrams and chat gpt dialogues. some days, i had to force myself to sit down w/ it, as if i was studying a section for school. other times, i swam through it and saw the mechanical in the mystical, vividly.
my five stars are for the fact that this book grew me into a more mature and open-eyed person. i can comfortably intuit, on a basic sense, how the material world's unfathomably enormous and infinitesimally small components coordinate to produce the grand drama that surrounds us. the physical sciences are stunning and humbling and also... somehow simple and elegant. the universe loves symmetry and balance and rules and order. it also loves light and color and movement. it can shapeshift into any form in infinite ways through a handful of base tricks.
i also gained a new appreciation for the long string of scientists who have painstakingly set the building blocks of knowledge for future generations to build on. asimov explains physics as a sequence of human achievements, and as collaborations over short and long stretches of time, beginning with the ancient astronomers from before christ to the quantum and nuclear physicists of the early 20th century. the book was written in the 60s so it was amusing to read with a retrospective lens. asimov wrote maybe two or three "throwaway" lines about the potential of a climate disaster in the near future. above all, i learned that a scientific leap can happen fast and make life on earth unrecognizable in a geological instant, for better or for worse. often for both.
the star system feels like an unfair metric for this book. my ratings are typically based on how a book impressed my very specific/personal artistic, writerly, humanistic sensibilities. although isaac asimov is a brilliant thinker and engaging writer, i wasnt approaching this text as a work of art or literature. i still had to supplement this book w/ external diagrams and chat gpt dialogues. some days, i had to force myself to sit down w/ it, as if i was studying a section for school. other times, i swam through it and saw the mechanical in the mystical, vividly.
my five stars are for the fact that this book grew me into a more mature and open-eyed person. i can comfortably intuit, on a basic sense, how the material world's unfathomably enormous and infinitesimally small components coordinate to produce the grand drama that surrounds us. the physical sciences are stunning and humbling and also... somehow simple and elegant. the universe loves symmetry and balance and rules and order. it also loves light and color and movement. it can shapeshift into any form in infinite ways through a handful of base tricks.
i also gained a new appreciation for the long string of scientists who have painstakingly set the building blocks of knowledge for future generations to build on. asimov explains physics as a sequence of human achievements, and as collaborations over short and long stretches of time, beginning with the ancient astronomers from before christ to the quantum and nuclear physicists of the early 20th century. the book was written in the 60s so it was amusing to read with a retrospective lens. asimov wrote maybe two or three "throwaway" lines about the potential of a climate disaster in the near future. above all, i learned that a scientific leap can happen fast and make life on earth unrecognizable in a geological instant, for better or for worse. often for both.
June 28, 2017
O com poder entendre tantes i tantes coses
July 18, 2021
I do not quite like the structure of the book. Historical and systematic at the same time. But Asimov complained there was too much editing/cutting. So I should read the later installments.
October 21, 2025
I pondered for some time about whether to make the review of this book through the lens of when it came out, or whether to compare it to the books of nowadays, and I think the latter is more fair, because if someone came looking for an introduction to the sciences they should see reflected in the rating the real experience of reading it now.
This is the reason I could not rate it higher, and I think I was even a bit benevolent. The reality is that this is an old book, and a lot of things can change over time, especially in science. This is also reflected in the technologies of writing at the time: the book is very dense, and could benefit from more illustrations and resources to help the reader navigate through it more fluently, and keep track or visualize everything better.
Another issue I had was with the development of chapters. At the beginning of the chapter it is easy to keep track of the topic, but as it continues and the author links more and more ideas it becomes a bit fatiguing to follow it. But to be fair, it is a respectable effort to condense all the most important findings of a field in a single chapter, and to relate them in such a way.
Also, as the title of the book suggests, it is supposed to serve as an introduction, so I guess the target audience would be someone without much prior knowledge about science in general, but I have to say it is though to go through, even with a bit of knowledge beforehand. I would probably not recommend it to someone wanting to dive into the topic, as I think it would probably be a challenge and discourage them.
But I think I am being too critical of the book, there are also many points which I quite enjoyed about it. You can really tell how much the author is fascinated by science, and he does transmit it by the way it is written, it really makes you realize how far we've come.
This is the reason I could not rate it higher, and I think I was even a bit benevolent. The reality is that this is an old book, and a lot of things can change over time, especially in science. This is also reflected in the technologies of writing at the time: the book is very dense, and could benefit from more illustrations and resources to help the reader navigate through it more fluently, and keep track or visualize everything better.
Another issue I had was with the development of chapters. At the beginning of the chapter it is easy to keep track of the topic, but as it continues and the author links more and more ideas it becomes a bit fatiguing to follow it. But to be fair, it is a respectable effort to condense all the most important findings of a field in a single chapter, and to relate them in such a way.
Also, as the title of the book suggests, it is supposed to serve as an introduction, so I guess the target audience would be someone without much prior knowledge about science in general, but I have to say it is though to go through, even with a bit of knowledge beforehand. I would probably not recommend it to someone wanting to dive into the topic, as I think it would probably be a challenge and discourage them.
But I think I am being too critical of the book, there are also many points which I quite enjoyed about it. You can really tell how much the author is fascinated by science, and he does transmit it by the way it is written, it really makes you realize how far we've come.
February 3, 2019
Absolutely Amazing Book to read !
September 27, 2021
Read this in 1968. Wonderful book, great supplement to high school classes.
August 11, 2024
Es un libro con muchas curiosidades, muy recomendado
October 8, 2025
Lo leí un verano, de adolescente. Me lo subía a la piscina de mi pueblo y un señor mayor lo vio y alabó mi gusto. ¡Desde entonces sé que no todos son gañanes en los pueblos! Un gran hombre aquel señor, también era aficionado a la genealogía, y un gran conocedor de los maquis...
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April 23, 2018Nueva guía de la ciencia es un libro publicado endos volúmenes por Isaac Asimov, donde hace un extenso relato de losdescubrimientos científicos en todos los campos de la ciencia. De lecturafácil, los temas son relatados brillantemente comenzando desde los primerosconocimientos sobre el tema (antigüedad, época griega clásica o en los siglosdel Renacimiento) hasta las últimas aportaciones científicas sobre la materia (las últimas correcciones dela última edición datan de 1983).
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews