'Thing Explainer' review

'Thing Explainer" is a picture book by the engineer-cartooner Randall Monroe (who does xkcd). This has so much stuffed into it, not just information but also manner. It is two major things that are at odds, so I don't which one to present first. So I'll just do it: it's a book that 1) uses only the first 1000 most frequent words in English (so it has to use some cleverness for technical concepts) and 2) presents technical concepts.

- How it's made and How it works. If you like 'Cathedrals', Lego, science, whatever, this is 'How it's made' but for more sciency things.
- At the same time, it is Oulipo-style constrained writing. The author took an arbitrary restriction (not exactly arbitrary) and, for all the labels of the hugely entertaining drawings of scientific concepts and engineering artifacts, made them entirely using the 1000 most common words in English.

The note at the end of the book states what his Oulipo rule really is (and gives the words he allows himself:

Note: in this set I count different word forms as one word
I could have said ship but I stuck to boat because space boat makes me laugh.

And he doesn't feel like he has to use every word in the list (this isn't serial music); he doesn't use a couple extremely common but profane words. The funny thing is is that he doesn't force himself to absolutely strictly adhere to the rules.

But the point he intended comes across. He wanted to explain abstruse scientific comments in a manner understandable by those early in the language (and thought) learning process. Language is not thought, so those who understand the concepts already can find the technical terms that match up what the author translated into slightly more verbose 'simple' sentences and similarly, the accessible vocabulary is used to get across the same concepts seemingly necessarily captured in abstruse technical vocabulary.

There's another side to using 'basic' English. The bad side of this is that it is deliberately dumbing down science. Simplify the language removes true things. It is intentionally anti-intellectual.

Or rather, it is nominally anti-intellectual, it could be anti-intellectual, but it is not. It is not the diametrical opposite of anti-intellectual, which I take to be obscurantism, because the whole point of the exercise is to be intellectual, present knowledge, and it is intentionally not obscurantist, because it is intentionally trying to present knowledge in a digestible form.

One exercise is to attempt to translate back to technical language. What is the scientific terminology that was the source of the circumlocution. What exactly is a 'fear water'? Oh, it's the adrenal gland, or at least adrenaline. When you translate technical terms, which are mostly stipulated and have their single technical definition, into multiple non-technical terms, there is the likelihood that the new term will be using high frequency words commonly used for lots of things already. So the new term requires some more frequent use to make sure it applies to that original singular technical concept. For example, 'power box' is used for electric battery but surely could be used for other boxes associated with power. But it is easy to see that with repetition, we could get used to just using 'power box' for just those items we currently call electric batteries.

Highlights:
- Includes descriptions of: a nuclear bomb, the ISS, the periodic table, a smartphone, the LHC, a jet engine, cell anatomy. Look, I could just list every page. It's both science and technology.
- 'thousand' isn't in the top 1000, so discussing itself is already constrained (it's 'ten hundred').
- 'Nine' isn't in the top 1000, so it is given as 'one more than eight', 'almost ten'.
- 'Gold' is the only element name that remains on the periodic table.
- the tree of life. Most animal names are fairly uncommon nowadays, now that few of us live on farms or the wilderness. So lots of liberties taken here. But a lot of the descriptives work. For example, 'gray tree jumper' for squirrel, 'sea dog' for seal, 'pocket babies' for marsupials, 'sweet thing' for fruit are all excellent. But there are some clunkers like 'food often in cans' (I have no idea), 'small dog' (is that a fox?). Here, with so many examples, it's nice to see how one can be paratactic and perceptual and that's often what one finds in other languages (because it is so hard to see the many times it already is the case in your own). Nice inclusion of 'water bear' for water bear/tardigrade/moss piglet/slowstepper.

I want to see the translation to Chinese. Well, the translation back to English. So I wonder if there'd be a difference if the Chinese were created from scratch (thousand most common characters or thousand most common terms) (presumably translating the given text directly would, or should, be dumb.

Also, I'd like to see Euclid's Elements done the same way.

One negative. If you're like me, you're getting older. I mean that with respect to the book. Meaning with respect to how it is printed. Meaning... ugh. My eyesight isn't terrible, but the font size is so small that it is a chore to read. I'm sure it wouldn't be so bad if my eyes were younger.

Sorry, two negatives. I am disappointed it is so short, only 60 pages but some fold outs.

Holy crap, a skyscraper!