I started reading this by accident. I forgot why I'd gotten it (still don't remember) and hoped it was a novel as I'd abandoned the science side of the two cultures once I figured out their subject matter, physicality, was just the surface of existence. It was interesting to read of the brilliant practitioners of the trade being so caught up with petty squabbles, or their own success, not understanding the surfaceness of those pursuits, confirming my decision.

And yet there's an aesthetic to their deconstruction of everyday physicality. The periodic table, which provides the cast of characters, starts off seeming so immutable, and yet it had to be discovered in the first place, before it could grace the walls of a chemistry class. Atoms, named for that which could be subdivided no further, have become just the starting points; objects that can be taken apart like LEGO constructions and made to do all sorts of tricks -- to the point that the language we speak makes the results nearly impossible to speak about. If financial types can be "masters of the universe," why not these scientists, who can be just as arrogant?

Written to require no prior science knowledge, it still managed to make me feel ignorant but unable to blame my lack of the prerequisites. But ignorant, maybe, in a good way, like the quality fear you experience reading a thriller.

Still, I can now say I understand, at least in a "narrative" way, how MRIs work, why titanium is used for hip replacements, why the silicon-based life forms of science fiction are doubtful, the background of the Fermi paradox which is "solved" in book 2 of The Three Body Problem (which I reviewed also, but can't remember what I'd said), why Americans dropped the second 'i' from 'aluminium' and maybe even why Linus Pauling stuck to his belief in megadoses of vitamin C even when there was no evidence for it.