Customer Reviews

The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from Heraclitus to Hawking, A Helix Anthology

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I really liked this book. It is fun reading and gets you thinking about very big questions.

As a science buff, I'm used to reading the latest books on physics, cosmology, etc. by modern-day leading scientists. But in this book, you get to see how the best thinkers of each age took what was known and put it together to explain the universe. And you get to see it in their own words, supplemented by Danielson's concise but insightful commentary.

This seems to me a book for both non-scientist and scientist. For the non-scientist, Danielson makes even the latest physics very understandable. For example, his description of Einsteinian gravity in the Wheeler chapter is as accessible an explanation of general relativity as I have seen in any popular book, and far better than those of my old introductory physics books. Any high schooler should understand it. Danielson seems to be able to draw out the essential ideas from both modern and ancient scientists and present them in a non-technical but accurate way. He also includes some very fun contributions, such as George Bernard Shaw's hilarious toast to Albert Einstein.

And I like the way each thinker's thoughts are presented in a short chapter-sort of bite-size stories. This means a person can pick it up and put it down without losing the thread. The chapters are presented almost exclusively in historical order, but I chose to hop around from era to era. In fact, the historical order lets you hop around without losing the sense of the historical context. I found it fun picking up the book and deciding which big name I was going to read next.

I think scientists should like the book too and find it valuable. Even though I have extensive science training and a degree in physics, I still did not have a good sense of the real contributions or views of most of the earlier scientists such as Copernicus, Descartes, etc., or of what was known about the universe and when, or how it all has come together in the modern view. To take just one example, I did not imagine that Ptolemy knew so much about the cosmos, including the facts that the earth is spherical and that it is a small, point-like object relative to the size of the "heavens." And he knew this based on a combination of careful observation and deep thinking that to me makes him the intellectual equal of virtually any modern cosmologist. I never viewed him this way before.

Mostly, though, it is fun having Feynman side by side with Copernicus, and Weinberg with Plato and even Milton, all struggling to come to terms with the nature of the universe. By his artful yet precisely constructed commentary, Danielson somehow brings them into a kind of conversation together. It makes for a surprisingly gripping read, and I continue to go back to certain chapters as I have discussions with friends (and think more) about what different thinkers thought way back when.

I personally would highly recommend it.

The depth and breadth of selections makes this book a treasure. It features a wide diversity of pieces, ancient and modern, secular and religious, from many disciplines. What comes through in all the selection is the human drive to pursue ultimate questions and attempt to find ultimate explanations. It pulls together many writers I studied in fragmentary fashion in my philosophy, theology, and science classes. I highly recommend it as a masterful collection of writings.

Dr. Danielson was actually my professor for first year Honors English here at UBC. He was an absolutly incredible prof, and his love for the cosmos really comes through in this book.

I picked this book out of the astronomy section at the local library because I wanted to learn more about the history of cosmology and because a quick glance gave me the impression that it was an anthology of original writings by scientists about what they observed and what conclusions they drew from it.

When I got home, I discovered from the introduction that the anthology was compiled by an English Literature professor. Bad sign - if you actually want to learn about science.

If you want to read a vast collection of speculations about the nature of the universe informed by very little observation and deduction, this is a great book. You get to find out what everybody from Heraclitus to Cotton Mather (sorry, but this was the point where I dropped the book with a dull thud) thought or felt about the cosmos. Oh, every once in a while he drops in a few pages from an actual astronomer, but even there he tries to make the science easy and palatable by leaving the mathematics out. (Only 15 pages out of 528 for Copernicus, and nearly one-third of them are filled up by his dedicatory letter to to Pope Paul III!)

Possibly it gets better as he moves into modern times, but I'll never find out because I've lost patience with winnowing such a great quanty of chaff for such a tiny proportion of wheat. This book goes back to the library with a suggestion that it should be be filed under literature, not science. I'm glad I didn't waste my money on it.

Awesome looking book, but the seller (Amazon.com) sent me a damaged book. I'm pretty disappointed. It had a huge, heavy crease through the entire book. Like several hundred pages of a diagonal, embossed crease. It's as if someone took the entire book, put half of it in an iron clamp, and pulled on the other end.

Ever put on your favourite TV show only to find out they made a "clip" episode just full of all the old moments so the episode itself has nothing too new to say? The collection of exerpts are interesting but hardly make it a book.

great/lots of info/will refer to family and friends