The Where, the Why, and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science

by Jenny Volvovski, Julia Rothman, Matt LaMothe

A science book like no other, The Where, the Why, and the How turns loose 75 of today's hottest artists onto life's vast questions, from how we got here to where we are going. Inside these pages some of the biggest (and smallest) mysteries of the natural world are explained in essays by real working scientists, which are then illustrated by artists given free rein to be as literal or as imaginative as they like. The result is a celebration of the wonder that inspires every new discovery. Featuring work by such contemporary luminaries as Lisa Congdon, Jen Corace, Neil Farber, Susie Ghahremani, Jeremyville, and many more, this is a work of scientific and artistic exploration to pique the interest of both the intellectually and imaginatively curious.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Art, Design, Graphic Novels, Stem, Essays

168 pages, Hardcover

First published September 14, 2012

Reviews

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the cover picture to be a little misleading. I thought that this book would have useful figures for introductory science courses, but all the art in the book turned out to be far more abstract than the cover. I thought this would be a bother, but then decided that I don't need nice model based art for those classes and that these more abstract interpretations of scientific concepts might be more appealing to the non-science person who typically takes introductory courses. The book starts with astronomy and physics like questions, then geology, biology, and ends up at scientific questions that concern humans. There are links to all the artists websites if you take a fancy to any of them, which I did for a handful.

Seventy Five difficult questions are approached by different scientists and the art is all very interesting. They do have a note on one of the earlier entries about the Higgs-Boson particle which was a mystery during the assembly of the book, but before it came to print evidence for that particle was found. So really only 74 mysteries. That was really exciting! The premise of the book was that in this age of instant knowledge gratification what is there left to wonder about? So setting up these conundrums of modern science was a great way of saying what we don't know. But to have one solved (or partially solved) while the book was being made showed that science isn't done, isn't static. There is still much to do and much more to discover.

[Reilly Zimbric · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF.
I started this May 22, 2022. Today is November 16, 2023. I’m not even halfway done. I quit. I’m done. I give up.

[Juliana · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book angered me because it had a lot of potential and a lot of work obviously went into it. I blame the editors who came up with a concept and missed an opportunity. The good half--scientists and others explain "mysteries of science" such as How are Stars born and die? Why does the Earth contain water? How long can trees live?, etc. The scientists are notable and the essays brief but engaging.

These essays are on the left side--what I did not like was the right side. And I did hear about this book on Brain Pickings--which I love but I also have to hold myself back from ordering anything just because it was mentioned on Brain Pickings. The wrong in this book is right on the back cover description, "turns loose 75 of today's hottest artists onto life's vast questions."

So on one side (the left side of the book in this case)--well thought-out and researched answers to questions. On the other (the right side) --crazy and wacky illustrations that have little to do with the explanations of concepts by today's "hottest" artists. I love art. I love artists. But in today's world where we are able to create amazing infographics and have the capability to create fantastic illustrations to EXPLAIN concepts this book fails by taking a "whimsical" approach. The right side should have matched the left.

My two stars are for all the work that went into the left side (and also for the artist work I don't hold them accountable as they were being whimsical). I took away three stars for the bad concept.

[Gamze Kaplandere Taşlı · Rating 3 out of 5]

Çok keyifliydi ama beğenmediğim birkaç şey var. Öncelikle çoğu çizime bayılsam da keşke bu kitapta bu tarz çizimler yerine daha bilimsel şeyler, gerçekte çekilmiş fotoğraflar görebilseydik. Bu sanki kitabı biraz basitleştirmiş gibi hissettirdi bana.

Ayrıca çoğu sorunun cevabı; “bunun cevabı hala bilinmemektedir, bunun sebebini bilmemekteyiz “ şeklindeydi. Öğrenmek, cevap almak üzerine olan bir kitapta cevapsız kalan sorular beni üzdü. Ama bunları bir kenara koyuyorum, eğer bu kitabı ortaokulda keşfetmiş ve okumuş olsaydım mutluluktan uçardım. Hem illüstrasyonlar hem de yüzeysel cevaplar o yaşta daha çok hoşuma giderdi.

Kitabın arkasında yazdığı şekilde merak uyandırdığı kesin. Birçok konuyu tekrar internetten bakıp birkaç şey daha okuma ihtiyacı duydum.

[Tulpesh Patel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Where, The Why, and the How, compiled by Jenny Volvovski, Julia Rothman and Matt Lamothe, is an exciting project bringing together artists and working research scientists to match fantastically quirky art with descriptions of 75 currently unsolved scientific questions.

The ‘wondrous mysteries of science’ explored fall largely within the realms of physics and astronomy, geology, and plant and animal biology; the choices of topic feel a little obscure, but that just adds to the chances that you won’t have come across it all before.

The book starts with a genuine ‘wondrous mystery’: What came before the Big Bang (or should it be just the Bang?), the answers to which will fundamentally change the way we understand ourselves and the universe around us. The book moves on to comparatively trivial questions (and not really ‘wondrous mysteries’ if you ask me), like why pigeons’ heads bob when they walk (answer: it's actually their bodies that moves backwards and forwards, this stabilises their heads to compensate for their inability to move their heads and eyes side to side and their lack of real binocular vision, which then allows them to detect the motion of things around them) and ends on the smallest scale with a discussion of the potential health effects of nanoparticles.

For what is essentially a coffee table pop-science book, there are one too many ‘posits’ scattered around for my liking, but using no more than a couple of hundred words, the problems currently puzzling scientists are snappily and engagingly described.

The science is only half the fun of the book, however. The illustrations accompanying each mini essay range from the literal to the very obtuse, and whilst the scientific themes occasionally overlap, each piece of art, be it modern print, comic strip, cartoon or traditional Japanese style, playfully captures some essence of the problem being discussed. It’s just as much fun trying to get inside the mind of the artists as much as the scientists and if ever the artwork is released as full-size I will certainly be the first in the queue to snap them up.

Whilst some phenomena, such as with the pigeon, are on the verge of being explained by scientists, many of the answers lie on the exciting (and frustrating, if you’re the research scientist) ‘we have no idea’-end of the scientific knowledge scale.

The purpose of the book is to inject a little more wonder into our lives and remind us that we don’t have all the answers – yet. The editors’ advice in the book’s introduction are certainly worth following: 'Remember that before you do a quick online search for the purpose of the horned owls horns, you should give yourself some time to wonder.'

The Where, the Why, and the How is one of the most accessible, and definitely one of the prettiest, science books that I’ve read in a good long while.

[Christos · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was a decent book, however I am rating it 1 star because it suggests a potential factor for autism is "stabilisers in certain immunisations". It tries to get this past by claiming all the factors stated are controversial but this is not the case. This simple fact made me question the accuracy of this book in general.

[Katherine Coble · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is simultaneously very good and very disappointing.

Let's start with the "very good":

The book takes several scientific concepts ("Can anything escape a black hole?") and explains them in short, easily understandable answers of no more than a few thousand words. At the end of each answer is an artwork that renders the artist's conception of the topic discussed. The artworks are often themselves interesting examples of different artistic styles.

Now for the "very bad":

The cover illustration led me to assume (yes, yes, I know) that the illustrations were going to be scientific diagrams. You know--here is the left ventricle, here is the right ventricle, this is how the blood moves. That sort of thing was what I was hoping for and expecting. Instead the artwork is mostly like an exercise you'd see an art teacher give third-year students. "Draw what you are inspired to draw when someone says "Higgs bosun" ." Instead of diagrams illustrating the concept to further facilitate understanding these pictures are more the type of thing you'd expect to see hanging on the wall at a trendy restaurant. ("For Sale: local artist")

It makes the book a 3 star read, honestly. Because I got the book wanting the diagrams of How Gravity Works. If I want an apple with outer space imposed over it to illustrate gravity I'll just go to AllPosters.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a Chronicle book, which is a gifty sort of company that makes items other than books (datebooks, journals, specialty book packages) for sale at big box booksellers like Barnes & Noble. The production value is excellent, the paper fine and toothy. The mysteries of science covered are hardly wondrous. Rothman is one of the writers, but her illustrations are included, too. And the art is spookily similar. It's highly unlikely that 75 artists would all create in the same style with essentially the same materials. This wondrous mystery is solved by reading the preface which indicates that those listed as creating the book also matched the artists to the questions. Chronicle behavior. And the Where Why and How are not answered. Was I mistaken in thinking that we'd learn something new? What came before the Big Bang still is unknown in any of those directions except maybe where. The answer to that is - out there.

[Jillian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book asking 75 pertinent (and partially unanswerable) science questions, accompanied by an illustrator's interpretation of each question. What a neat idea! I don't think about the intersection of art and science enough, so this book was refreshing and clever. Each Science is written by an expert (the astronomy names were familiar to me), and they are short but meaningful. I want to learn more about all 75 topics. I gazed at some of the illustrations for quite a while, they are weird and intricate and cool. Thank you, Zip Drive!

[Ashley Boggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun coffee table book with illustrations on interesting science questions. I bought this knowing it didn't contain a full scientific explanation of every question, so I think I'm happier with it than some of the reviewers here. I think it becomes more of a conversation starter because of this though.

I love the illustrations in here, they have so much character. I'm thinking about pulling out one or two to frame.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some say that science and art cannot go together but this book disproves that myth. By having artists illustrate the scientific questions answer by scientists the book provided a perfect pairing of art and science. If you are looking for complex explanations of scientific questions this isn't the book for you, but if you are able to appreciate a simple explanation combined with a visual representation that this book just might be the score your looking for.

[Justin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Scientifically, it adds nothing to the conversation and the illustrations are often so oblique as to approach pretentiousness. Its main purpose is to elicit wonder, or something, but I could get the same effect by scanning wiki articles.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The art is what drew me in. The first few questions in I was met with the realization Julia Rothman style illustrations like the cover weren’t going to fill this entire book. I had hoped it would be similar to her Anatomy series, but for adults; it is not.

However, on Question 24 (“Can evolution outpace climate change?”) Bryksenkova’s representation of the Light Peppered Moth’s rapid adaption to its new environment was so beautiful my eyes were opened, and I began to see the book from the perspective of Charlotte Mason style “keeping,” or notebooking/nature journaling, as we tend to call it. Realism and accuracy aren’t necessary for someone to keep a personal representation of knowledge acquired, and I began to anticipate each artist’s perspective more and more as I progressed through the book. It was especially enjoyable to look at the art before reading the scientist’s answer, then again after, to get a fuller understanding of what was being depicted. I even began to feel inspired as to how I would portray these topics in my own art.

The scientists’ contributions were really the star of this book for me, however. Although the art was initially a letdown, these breakdowns of such complex and mysterious topics were what kept me turning page after page. The thoughtful editing moved from subject to subject in such a manner we transitioned from the cosmos to chimpanzees without my really noticing when! These brilliant minds were able to explain concepts in a few short paragraphs sometimes in ways I had never understood before, very accessible and downright entertaining.

Yes, many of the questions were unanswered mysteries, and the humility to admit humanity doesn’t know everything was refreshing. Science often does not hold answers to moral or ethical questions, and even on the physical plane the more we learn the more we discovered how vastly outpaced our little minds are by the expanse of the elaborate and complex universe in which we have been placed. From the stretch of dark matter to the affect of nanoparticles (the first and last topics of the book) we are surrounded by mysteries to probe into. As the scriptures say, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings to search a matter out.” I was left with a sense of awe at the mind of God as revealed through His creation.

The book ended too soon. I love when a book leaves me wanting more!

[Michael Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

TODO full review:
+++ I love the idea. Ask graphic designers and visual artists to illustrate our science. Vice-versa: ask scientists to give graphic designers and visual artists new topics for (symbolist) exploration.
++/- The result? A book where questions of current scientific interest (and for some of these questions, it is likely the interest will persist for more than a little while) get a nice poster. Although the posters were by and large visually interesting, their link to the topic was sometimes marginal. Although the scientific questions are interesting, their link to the society was sometimes ... well, somewhat tense.
--- Mephisto: when any visual answer is good, what does that say about the science associated with it?
+/- From the visuals. Some are cute: Where did life come from? Simple, Adam and Eve and cans of tomato soup (Warhol ftw). Some are boring: Dark matter in the universe? Ok, let's draw an old-school telescope over a starry background. Some are creatively topical: What is dark energy? A visual answer combining technology and people and an expanding front emerging from a flowery design. Some are small changes from a known design: What existed before the big bang? A small adaptation of Escher's House of Stairs (or Relativity). But why only these graphic styles? Why no modern, clean, clearly digital designs?
+/- From the science. Lots of stuff about natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and geosciences. Good. Then some stuff on big issues in-between the biology and the sociology of humans. Also good. Also, why do cats purr? Can't argue with that. But why no technical elements? Why no design? See, modern science is somewhat larger, and surely something on the nature of technology in the digital society could be both more interesting, more challenging, and more useful than What does "chickadee" mean to a chickadee?.

[Lewis Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book aims at the stars and winds up in a very strange place that I mostly enjoyed visiting. It’s a collection of 75 short illustrated essays, written by a selection of scientists, that aim to resolve, or at least contextualize, some of the mysteries that modern science investigates. It mostly doesn’t succeed in this task.

Providing satisfactory answers in 300 words or less to questions like “How do humans have the ability to learn language?” and “What existed before the Big Bang?” and “Where did life come from?” or “How much of human behaviour is predetermined?” seems almost comically ambitious, so I’m not sure how to rate the fact that many answers fell pretty flat. This was particularly bad in the more physics-heavy sections of the book. I’m not sure if anyone can explain the Higgs Boson and Hawking radiation clearly to a non-expert, but I am sure that this book doesn’t do it.

On the other hand, the book is a great compendium of fun facts. (Did you know that only male whales sing? Or that the muscles of hibernating animals don’t atrophy? Or that squirrels will hide around 5,000 nuts each fall and remember where each nut is located?)

The illustrations are also very beautiful and fun, with a few lamentable exceptions.

One last quibble: each short essay is written by a different scientist, but the book never explains the nature of their expertise. By that I mean that under each answer it will say “Written by Dr. So and So, Ph.D and professor at Someplace University” and not actually tell you anything about what this person knows or why you should take what they say seriously. People can have graduate degrees in any field of knowledge you can think of! It would nice to know that the person writing about chemistry has actually studied chemistry and is not, like, a cryptozoologist.

[May-Ling · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book opens with the premise that it wants us to ponder questions, some unanswerable, with curiosity and creativity. and then it selects 75 questions for us without sharing criteria and answers them. now not only are 75 distinct artists chosen, but so are separate scientists.

this approach ends up creating a book that's a bit all over the place to me. I didn't mind the variation in art, but having a more distinct voice or approach to each question may have left me more satisfied. I liked it a lot more when I simply read each question and looked at the art without text; certain artists did an amazing job at opening up possibilities. and I still read explanations for areas of particular interest, but I mostly enjoyed the ones that felt more expansive in the idea that their perspective is simply one take.

[Julio Biason · Rating 3 out of 5]

(This is getting quite common on my reviews but) This is a weird book.

Now, don't get me wrong: The idea the title gives is that they are going to give you the where, the why and the how, but they actually mean the questions "where", "why" and "how". A lot of the answers is, basically, "we don't know yet" -- which, by the way, is completely fine, specially when dealing with proper science.

Also, the questions are not really "trivia"-like: they go more deep than simply "Why are plants green?" and the like. And, because you have no certain questions, it gets even more nerd-like -- which, again, is completely fine.

(Also, the illustrations: meh)

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Must say that I was disappointed with this book. The cover art is a cut away section of the stem of a plant and I thought that all the illustrations would be similarly enlightening. But not to be. In most cases I found it almost impossible to glean anything useful at all from the illustrations and the text (of necessity) is rather short and simplistic....usually finishing with something like "We just don't know".
They do cover a wide range of subjects ranging from astrophysics to junk DNA and cancer ......but, as mentioned above, the discussion is rather simplistic. I rate the book as two stars mainly because the illustrations are so unhelpful.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

I snagged this one from the library while searching for Julia Rothman books for my girls. It looked interesting--the intersection of art and science. But despite a fascinating premise, the execution of the book didn't work for me. A lot of the art was uninspiring, and while some of the scientific explanations were both interesting and well done, others felt trite or woefully inadequate. (Obviously, there's only so much you can do in one page, but if your question is far too big for your space, you might want to pick a different question.)

Not a terrible book, but not particularly delightful or inspiring.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me over 10 years to read this book - it was the sort of book I could pick-up, put down for months, and pick up again. In fact, I packed it and moved it to a new house! It's beautiful. Art and science hanging out on the same page. It evokes wonder and curiosity and it's a great idea! My only complaint about it is that "we don't know and more research is required" is too often the highlight of the articles. I know that is and always will be true in science, but it gets tiresome when read over and over.

[Tommi · Rating 3 out of 5]

My kids gave it to me because of my efforts in art. The art does a good job of indicating how weird the world is. It was interesting to see what the artists came up with to illustrate (or not) the concepts. The science seems pretty solid, too. But the answer to a lot of the questions (spoiler alert!) is - we don't know. ;0

[Raewyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The technical illustration on the cover is misleading. The artists interpret these concepts in a variety of literal and abstract ways.
Essays differ greatly in clarity and depth -- I am not part of the target audience of this book (even though the end paper design is drool worthy).

[Audrey Sauble · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun, fairly light introduction to a variety of scientific mysteries. I picked this book up because I was familiar with one of the artists involved in the project, and both the art and the writing were very intriguing.

[Petya · Rating 1 out of 5]

A nice read if you feel like getting your head out of your ass for a moment and reminding yourself what being human on Planet Earth in this Universe actually means.
The art was underwhelming, unlike what I'd expected.

[Alli Tripp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous oversized book with a beautiful artwork and esoteric amazing science on the other. The pairs of science and same touch inspired art , paired on each set of pages... This makes for an awesome coffee table book.i feel smarter after reading it. I hope I am!

[D.J. Desmond · Rating 3 out of 5]

really interesting concept. I liked the art. Every scientific concept is something still being figured out, which is fun but can be a little frustrating. You learn, but you are left on many cliffhangers

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

The concept of scientists answering difficult scientific questions and various artists illustrating their interpretations of the answers was intriguing. I enjoyed many of the artists interpretations and brought insights into how others may view problems.

[María Frutilla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Una portada tramposa para un catálogo de ilustradores disfrazado de libro de ciencia.

[Mike Mohney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non-fiction

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting illustrations, plus I learned a few new things.