Breakthrough: How to Think Like a Scientist, Learn How to Fail and Embrace the Unknown

What can we learn about the world and ourselves if we think like scientists?

A scientist’s journey from observation to discovery is anything but straightforward. It is littered with failure, unexpected diversions and joyous realisations. Science helps us to understand ourselves in a world where we often feel like strangers – but what we know about the world around us, what has already been explored and discovered, is only half of science’s story.

Dr Camilla Pang will look at some of the biggest mysteries facing science today and how some of the best cutting-edge scientists can illuminate our own approaches to observation, hypothesis, exploration, troubleshooting and discovery in our lives.

Breakthrough explores the frontier between what we do and don’t know about the world- where knowledge meets mystery, complexity overwhelms certainty, and the vastness of our universe unspools the logic of science’s established laws.

The stability of science was originally a safety blanket for her survival with Autism; after becoming a scientist herself, Camilla quickly realises that it is the complete opposite. Scientific research, much like life – beset by new technology and ubiquitous information – is constantly changing. Part of its curse but also of its beauty.

There’s a scientist hidden inside all of us. Science’s greatest gift to us is not formulae but enabling the urge to discover that makes us truly human.

Format: Hardback
Pages: 256
Imprint: Viking Penguin
Publication date: 30/07/2024