The Firmament of Time [Paperback]

Loren Eiseley (Author), Gary Holthaus (Introduction)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0803267398 | ISBN-13: 978-0803267398 | Publication Date: May 1, 1999 | Edition: First Printing

Loren Eiseley examines what we as a species have become in the late twentieth century. His illuminating and accessible discussion is a characteristically skillful and compelling synthesis of hard scientific theory, factual evidence, personal anecdotes, haunting reflection, and poetic prose.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The quest to understand humankind's place in the universe is an old one, perhaps as old as the human species itself. That quest is tinged with science, but also with magic, for, writes the paleontologist Loren Eiseley (1907-1977), a human being "is both pragmatist and mystic. He has been so since the beginning, and it may well be that the quality of his inquiring and perceptive intellect will cause him to remain so till the end."

In this lively, literate set of essays, originally delivered in 1959 as a lecture series at the University of Cincinnati, Eiseley traces the history of science, giving special attention to the 18th and 19th centuries, which witnessed the rise of a kind of scientific inquiry that crossed narrow disciplines. Building on the ideas of Newton and Laplace, for instance, the Scottish scientist James Hutton developed the foundations of historical geology; Hutton's doctoral work had not been in physics but physiology, and his dissertation concerned the circulation of the blood, from which he evidently hit on the idea of considering the earth as a living organism. Eiseley moves on to discuss trends in evolutionary thought, putting in good words for such neglected figures as Jean Lamarck, a "much maligned thinker [who] glimpsed ecological change and adjustment before Darwin." Eiseley's explorations end with an admonition that our scientific understanding may well have outpaced our moral evolution, leading to the danger that "we have created an unbearable last idol for our worship"--namely, ourselves. His wise words remain compelling reading today. --Gregory McNamee

Review

"Dr. Eiseley describes with zest and admiration the giant steps that have led man, in a scant three hundred years, to grasp the nature of his extraordinary past and to substitute a natural world for a world of divine creation and intervention. . . . An irresistible inducement to partake of the almost forgotten excitements of reflection."—New Yorker

(New Yorker )

"[This book] has a warm feeling for all natural phenomena; it has a rapport with man and his world and his problems; it has appraisal, and even blame and condemnation; but, above all, it has hope and belief. And it has the beauty of prose that characterizes Eiseley’s philosophical moods."—Chicago Sunday Tribune

(Chicago Sunday Tribune )

"There can be no question that Loren Eiseley maintains a place of eminence (Bloomsbury Review )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 183 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books; First Printing edition (May 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803267398
• ISBN-13: 978-0803267398
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #502,879 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautifully written and profound book -- one of the best accounts of the human meaning of geological time, December 11, 2007

By 

Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Firmament of Time (Paperback)

Loren Eiseley remains one of the most articulate of Twentieth Century naturalists, who approaches anthropology from the perspective that human beings belong to nature and approaches evolutionary and other natural sciences from the perspective of a humanist. He aims to bring to life the way of thinking according to which everything is natural, without diminishing the sense of wonder at nature and humanity that would result from a crass materialism. This book, in my humble view, is one of his best and was the most profound for me. It gave me the tools and the words to consider events on a different time scale than the one we normally associate with history. He suggests for example, that you consider a slow sequence of water droplets, continued and magnified over centuries, and get a sense for the wonder and force of time. What was a trickle is now a flood, and the process of erosion and geological transformation can come to life in your mind's eye. It is this kind of imagination, that can grasp the firmament of time on an other than merely human historical scale, that is required to really come to grips with anything like the general process of evolution. We begin to see, not sudden and chance emergence of freaks, but dynamic reproductive flows, channelled by selective pressures, gradually altering the ecotopology. I don't believe I could have written that sentence had I never read Loren Eiseley -- but of course I can't claim to approximate in any of these sentences the marvelous economy with which Mr. Eiseley wields his pen.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Reflecton on Time, Evolution, and Natural History, January 5, 2008

By 

Brian Allen "neotropical birding" (Manistee, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Firmament of Time (Paperback)

Loren Eiseley is a man of great thoughts and words and here is at his best considering the passage of time, the evolution of life and development of man's perspective and insight on life and time. There were several passages in the book that I found so impressive that I subjected my wife and son to my out loud reading. The essay on the hall of the crustaceans is one of the best examples of how Eiseley turns his powers of observation and knowledge of natural history into a perspective of time and evolution that helps you feel and understand the eons of struggle for survival.

In this book Eiseley discusses the history and development of thought on evolution from the middle ages to the atomic era bringing all the names you remember from Biology 101 to life better than any textbook. This book was written in 1960 but the words seem contemporary and presceint.

Loren Eiseley is one of the only authors that can journey by horse across a mountain and carry you with his thoughts through eternity. I highly recommend this book, a short but powerful and stimulating read.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A profound meditation on our evolving understanding of the natural world and human nature itself, November 15, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Firmament of Time (Paperback)

This work is a profound retelling of Mankind's changed understanding not only of the natural world, but of the nature of human nature. Eiseley in his poetic and contemplative prose traces Modern Science's transformation of the picture of Nature Mankind long held. This relates not simply to extending the time- frame of cosmic and terrestial happening, but to rereading the very nature of human nature. But Eiseley does not simply describe the movement from a static world- view of permanent unchangeable species to an evolutionary one of emerging Life, he makes a penentrating critique or certain aspects of Scientific Culture upon human life and Nature itself. And while doing he insists on our holding open an understanding of the Nature which may yet emerge, and the mystery which remains within and perhaps beyond the Universe despite all our progress in understanding.
This is a profound poetic meditation on Nature and Human Nature, and one which however strongly based in fact leaves us with a feeling of question and wonder at what we are and will become.