Customer Reviews

Cosmology: The Science of the Universe

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Even though "Cosmology" is technically a textbook, it takes a rather different sort of approach from the usual such offering. This book makes the subject come alive with excitement by employing a unique style. Even though the book was designed for intro ivy-league students, there's more than enough here to challenge (and intrique) someone who's fully science/physics-literate. The book emphasizes basic principles and intelligently avoids the various fads which seem to plague cosmology at any given time (inflation, dark matter, excessive veneration of the latest observations made with the newest & sexiest technology, etc). It makes clear the important distinction between astronomy and cosmology.

Harrison is both an expert in, and an aficionado of, the grand ideas about creation, so the hard science here is interspersed with relevant pieces of history, philosophy, and literature (i.e., the humanities) -- but not too much, rather just enough to give an appreciation for how great minds of all sorts have wrestled with these problems in one form or another for as long as we know. And Harrison has a way of boiling down the difficult concepts to their essentials, making an opaque subject transparent.

Even though the scientific level is moderately high for a book aimed ostensibly at novices, there are no lengthy mathematical derivations or formulas of the sort that one might think would be necessary to convey, say, Einstein's general relativity or the intricacies of sub-atomic physics. Often taking an order-of-magnitude and geometrical approach, the book avoids long confusing digressions into trivialities and summarizes many of its important points in excellent diagrams. Harrison is great at bringing in just enough from some other branch of physics to help you grasp the topic at hand, so the development as you progress through the book is nearly perfect. He's also excellent at conveying the important conundrums, uncertainties, and many pitfalls in the field. The coverage is very balanced and complete, yet anything but shallow.

Even though I was a grad student in astrophysics at Berkeley, I didn't learn cosmology from Joseph Silk there. Instead, I learned it after I left -- from this book (the 1st edition). Harrison is that good at making what can be a perplexing subject both interesting and understandable. I came away from it feeling I finally "got" cosmology, the grandest of all subjects.

The only better book for the less serious lay person or someone who finds scientific material difficult would be his "Masks of the Universe" -- unfortunately now out-of-print, but well worth tracking down.

This is one of the few science vulgarization books which gives more than just a journalistic cover of its subject. It gives you the history, the meanders, the highlights , the beauty and the greatness of the whole enterprise. More, it gives you effective tools to reach your own conclusions. In this case it is the model which describes the expansion of the homogeneous, isotropic cosmological space by means of studying light propagation in a chamber with mirrored walls which recede from one another. There is little that the author cannot explain with this simple model. Harrison is a distinguished cosmologist who happens to be also a very good writer.

This cosmology book contains relatively little mathematics, so it can be read by almost any motivated person who is genuinely curious about the subject. And it has an enormous amount of interesting information that ought to intrigue even highly informed scientists.

Harrison traces the history of cosmology and reviews some elementary astronomy. Then we get to the question of a cosmological center and the Copernican Principle. Next is a stimulating discussion of whether the universe has an edge or boundary in space or time. After that, we're ready to read about curved space, relativity, and black holes (including "cosmic censorship," Hawking radiation, and black hole thermodynamics, entropy, and information content).

There is a wonderful chapter on the expansion of the universe, and an explanation of the Hubble sphere and its relation to the observable universe.

After a description of several models of the universe, we get to some observational cosmology: use of redshifts and supernovae to establish distance scales, ages of the universe, galaxies, and stars, amount of helium produced by a hot big bang, and questions about "dark matter." Harrison then discusses what happened not in the "first three minutes," but in the first second, including how inflationary theory can solve the horizon problem, the flatness problem, and the monopole problem.

Near the end of the book, there is a fine explanation of why the sky is dark at night (resolving "Olbers' paradox"). The book concludes with a short discussion of life in the universe.

This is an excellent and fascinating book.

Undoubtedly, "Cosmology, The Science of the Universe" by Edward Harrison is by far the best book on cosmology that I have ever read. Dr. Harrison did an outstanding job in presenting the physics of the universe. He does not shy away from presenting the mathematics necessary for a complete understanding of the physics involved in describing the universe (or universes as Dr. Harrison points out).

The book contains hundreds of equations, diagrams, illustrations, tables, charts, descriptions and analogies so the reader (or student) can grasp a complete understanding of the physics.

This book is a must for any student of astrophysics. I very much enjoyed reading and would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the physics of the universe.

A good book describing our past and present universe. A must for students and docents in natural science.

Although my education is in physics, it is all but impossible to keep up with your own field of study, let alone with all the other areas. Hence it is nice to find a book like this once in a while that will cover what's going on in areas of interest outside your own specialty.

So much of physics is buried so deep in mathematics that it is sometimes difficult to see the picture that the math is showing us. This book is the best I've seen that gives at least some discussion to the riddles that remain at the bottom of subjects like time, space, gravity, black holes, multi-dimensional -- the things that got most of us interested in physics in the first place. The overall treatment has to be considered elementary (no math) but quite broad in scope.

At the end of each chapter are two sections called Reflections and Projects. Between the two, I was reminded of Einstein's famous 'thought experiments.' Here is discussion that takes you beyond the text, beyond the state of the art as it is now known.

This book was first written in 1981. It went through a major upgrade in 2000 and a minor upgrade in 2005. As such it isn't absolutely up to date with the latest findings. For instance 'dark matter' is included, but 'dark energy' isn't. Then again anything that's printed in book form is going to be a bit out of date, by definition.

Excellent reading material for the undergraduate just getting started or those of us who've been 'here' while this part of the science went 'there.'

I have been studying astronomy since 1970.

If you know a great deal about stars, planets, the Milky Way, etc., you can still be very ignorant about General Relativity, the expansion of space, the cosmological constant, etc.. That was my situation in the 1980's. Then I found Dr. Harrison's book, the first edition. It was a revelation, and the second edition is even better.

Dr. Harrison is an old school academic with a deep knowledge of the history, philosophy, and science of cosmology, and he communicates his knowledge very well. Master this book and you will know more cosmology than many working astronomers.

If you want to travel farther, this is your stepping stone to more technical works.

Highly recommended!

Undoubtedly, "Cosmology, The Science of the Universe" by Edward Harrison is by far the best book on cosmology that I have ever read. Dr. Harrison did an outstanding job in presenting the physics of the universe. He does not shy away from presenting the mathematics necessary for a complete understanding of the physics involved in describing the universe (or universes as Dr. Harrison points out).

The book contains hundreds of equations, diagrams, illustrations, tables, charts, descriptions and analogies so the reader (or student) can grasp a complete understanding of the physics.

This book is a must for any student of astrophysics. I very much enjoyed reading and would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the physics of the universe.

Cosmology, or the scientific study of the universe as whole, has in the past 25 years seen explosive growth and progress in unfolding the nature and history of our universe. Yet for many people, the findings of cosmology and the main theories lie hidden in impenetrable obscurity due to the highly technical mathematics involved. This is highly unfortunate, as it is arguable what we discover in the heavens is certainly as important as things we discover on the Earth.

Harrison is both a veteran scientific cosmologist, and he also has an excellent knowledge of the humanities. Unfortunately this breed of scientist seems fairly rare nowadays, especially those who write for a large audience, though some do manage brilliantly to combine first rate science with a sound knowledge of the humanities (Peter Medewar, Richard Dawkins, John Barrow). This book is then not just simply an account of modern scientific cosmology but is also an account of how pictures of the universe imagined by various thinkers ranging from scientists to theologians to philosophers and poets, has changed through time, often in radical ways.

Harrison argues there is no perfect one to one relationship between a picture of the universe we make and the Universe as it is in itself. Harrison adopts a rather Kantian position that we only know things as they appear to us, not as they are in themselves. Hence we only ever develop 'masks of the universe' which cover the true Universe itself, and all our attempts to understand the universe fall short of the reality. Interestingly he takes this argument somewhat further in another book and argues for 'learned ignorance' (a term he takes from Nicholas of Cusa) about our quest to comprehend the cosmos.

Harrison then proceeds to look at both what astronomy and modern physics tell us about the nature of the physical universe, and also examines other pictures of the universe developed by philosophers, theologians, and poets. Harrison raises some fascinating points including the mysterious Olber's Paradox and the problem of the water bucket and inertia (a problem which troubled Einstein and Mach), the end and beginning of the universe, cosmic creation, and what the implications might be of finite and infinite universes.

Overall this book is a fascinating and highly accessible introduction to cosmology and is a must read not just for interested scientists and students but also by philosophers, theologians, and others who are curious about what science tells us about our place in the scheme of things.

Cosmology: The Science of the Universe
Harrison has written a book that tries to explain Cosmology with an intermediate level of mathematical complexity. It is well to have some prior exposure to the conceptual material on a more intuitive basis before getting hung up on the technical details. A feel for differential calculus is a real plus for the reader, as well. All this said, you'll feel as if your getting some real "meat on the bones" as you work you way through. Very good for the committed enthusiast.