Preface

THE RAPRD ADVANCE of science is exciting and exhilarating to anyone who is fascinated bv the unconquerability of the human spirit and by the
continuing efficacy of the scientific method as a tool for penetrating the complexities of the Universe.
But what if one is also dedicated to keeping up with every phase of scientific advance for the deliberate purpose of interpreting that advance for the general public?  For him, the excitement and exhilaration is tem-pered by a kind of despair.
Science will not stand still.  It is a panorama that subtly dissolves and changes even while we watch.  It cannot be caught in its every detail at any one moment of time without being left behind at once.
In 1960, The Intellige7it Man's Guide to Science was published, and at once the advance of science flowed past it.  In order to consider quasars and lasers, for instance (which were unknown in 1960 and household words a couple of vears later), The Neiv Intelligent Man's Guide to Science was published in 1965.
But still science drove on inexorably.  Now there came the question of pulsars, of black holes, of continental drift, men on the moon, REM sleep, gravitational waves, holography, cvclic-AMP, and so on, and so on, and so on-all post-1965.
So it is time for a new edition, the third.  But what do we call it now?  The New New Intelligent Man's Guide to Science?  Obviously not.
Since 1965, however, I have done, with my own name in the title, a two volume guide to the Bible and also a two volume guide to Shake-speare.  Why not use the same system here?  Enter, then, the 1972 edition of my guide to science, entitled, straightforwardly, Asimov's Guide to
Science.
ISAAC Asimov
Neiv York
1972