Synopses & Reviews
The Floating Egg begins with the search for an alchemist's secret and ends with the re-imagination of a past world. Each chapter is connected to a particular corner of north-east England and each explores the uncertain line where myth is dissolved into science, and belief gives way to knowledge.
Different episodes show how the fall of Constantinople converted the common rock of Yorkshire cliffs into a source of extraordinary wealth and power, and how this in turn uncovered the inhabitants of a succession of past worlds; how a stone falling from the sky near this same coast changed the minds of all the natural philosophers of Europe; and how a new science was born on the top of the tower of York Minster.
By using different ways of describing the world of scientific endeavour, the author has produced a fascinating, visually beautiful and highly entertaining book which allows us to witness the birth of a new science the science of geology.