Natural Science

500 is Dewey-speak for science and mathematics. This section is straightforward, predictable, and mostly commonsensical.
50x books about more than one basic science
51x math
52x astronomy
53x physics
54x chemistry
55x earth sciences
56x paleontology (dinosaurs go here!)
57x basic biology and microscopic life
58x plants (botany)
59x animals (zoology)
Did you get a science challenge ?

1. Go find anything that interests you in the 500s.
2. Read a book about science that you found somewhere else in the library. examples:
   J 811.008 SPECTAC Spectacular Science : a Book of Poems
   J 808.81 PLOTZ Imagination's Other Place : Poems of Science and Mathematics )
   J 793.7 KELLER Take me to Your Liter : Science and Math Jokes
3. Find a biography about a scientist such as Curie or Einstein or Banneker (which might, or might not, be in the 500s).
4. Look for a fiction book about science (such as Amelia Bedelia, Rocket Scientist? or Pig and the Shrink)
5. Look for a Science Fiction book, which isn't the same thing at all.

The original Dewey schedule contained an unscientific twist. Although Dewey came after Darwin, humans were not placed in their correct scientific position with the other primates, but back at the beginning of the biology section, before evolution. And spontaneous generation got its own number (577) co-equal with evolution (575).

In subsequent years librarians changed the 500 numbers so that they would agree better with real science, and now human biology simply goes snuggly into 599.9.

Adult or teen? Have you read Natalie Angier's The Cannon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science ? She is both a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Takoma Park author.

Posted by library at June 27, 2007 01:48 PM