We also happened to visit her town's library (in Washingtonville, NY). MrsHouseLibrary and I went north to attend her memorial service. About a year later, she donated them to her local library, and they were happy to get them. When they retired, one of my sisters took both sets, because no one else wanted them. My folks had an Encyclopedia Britannica from, oh, I can't even imagine how old it was and in the early 60s, got a brand new set of the World Book encyclopedia, which we used quite extensively, and I read random pieces from it often over the years. And because I was the only one who had a computer, I also got the encyclopedia on a CD-ROM.
It was a huge outlay of money - there were six who qualified. So your 1957 encyclopaedia on science is probably worth keeping.īack in 1996, my parents decided to buy a set of encyclopedias for each of my siblings who had children. String theory is like a religion where there are no tests, can never be tests, and you just have to accept everything on faith. Observation of space has consistently gone against the big bang, yet fudge factors are thrown in to keep the theory alive (e.g. Today, science has gotten a bit sketchy with non-scientific ideas creeping in that can never be tested. When observations did not match the theories, observations won the battle, and new theories had to be formulated. That is, there were predictions made that could be tested through experiment or observation. One other thing: in 1957 science was conducted like science. Some obscure but interesting opinions of people that have been forgotten, a different perspective on a particular phenomenon, or valid explanations that may be true, but have been trashed in light of new and more popular explanations. With older science books, there usually is some knowledge of value not available in newer additions. However, some of the ideas remain the same. A lot of the information in science has been updated since 1957.