Heavenly Knowledge An Astrophysicist Seeks Wisdom in the Stars [Hardcover]

Fiorella Terenzi (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0380974126 | ISBN-13: 978-0380974122 | Publication Date: March 1, 1998 | Edition: 1st

"I enthusiastically embrace the fabulous new discoveries of astrophysics, but I do not want to stop there. I want these discoveries to swim in our imaginations, to open our hearts to new ways of thinking and feeling about life, about men and women, about catastrophes and rituals. I want us all to hear how the music of the spheres resonates with the music of our hearts."

With these words, Dr. Fiorella Terenzi launches readers on a thrilling, emotional and empowering journey that extends from the farthest reaches of space to the innermost secrets of the soul. No one can better serve as inspirational teacher and guide on this very personal expedition to humanity s place in the universe. Internationally renowned both as an astrophysicist and a recording artist, Dr. Terenzi performed the first experiment in acoustic astronomy--translating radio waves from distant galaxies into audible sound. She leads a new movement blending science and art, knowledge and emotion.

Dr. Terenzi shows that most of us have heretofore contemplated only portions of the majesty of the cosmos. In HEAVENLY KNOWLEDGE, she presents clear and accessible scientific facts, then goes much farther she also makes unique connections between the way we live our daily lives and the vast universe that surrounds us. Through her telescope, Dr. Terenzi brings to life a sensual universe where comets roar through space, spreading life like the process of human reproduction; the hidden galactic core becomes a metaphor for self-knowledge; and dying stars act out great truths of being, nothingness, and rebirth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A scientist with her own eponymous Web site, Terenzi cuts a pop-iconic figure that's part Timothy Leary and part Dianna Troi (the comely Star Trek psychologist). Leary, Terenzi writes, "had a genius for seeing intimate connections between seemingly irreconcilable parts of life." Terenzi, born in Italy but now based in the U.S., has consciously followed in his footsteps, converting galactic radio waves into sound?and releasing them on a soothing CD and CD-ROM, as she details here. Her admittedly ghostwritten print debut, however, fails to bridge the gap between "purely objective" science and "a dynamic relationship with data" that would allow us to "commune" with the heavens. Chapters like "The Human Star Population" and "The Sex Life of the Cosmos" draw relationship lessons from phenomena like binary stars, in prose that glows galactic purple: "Yes, nebulized is the perfect word for what she felt at that moment. She felt as if she shattered into a billion particles, each shooting off into a different direction." Terenzi's work in acoustic physics and the smattering of cosmology we get here make for agreeable moments, but the bulk of the book is mired in pop psychological posturing (with lessons learned in Italian cafes thrown in) and overly simplified science. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A Time magazine article calls Terenzi (Univ. of Milan, Italy) a cross between Madonna and Carl Sagan. Her work is similar to Sagan's Contact and Cosmos, but she has also studied opera. She has lectured all over the world in the field of astrophysics, started a web site, and published a CDROM entitled Invisible Universe. She not only popularizes the astronomy/cosmology fields but performs real celestial music. During her research at the University of California at San Diego, Terenzi converted radio waves to sound. She then cut a CD combining electronic music with those "star" sounds called Music from the Galaxies (Island Records). Here, Terenzi discusses the similarities among stars, galaxies, and human relationships. Her new work cannot be easily pigeonholed because it deals with relationships, astronomy, and a little bit of New Age thrown in. This quick read is an optional purchase for public libraries.?Lisa S. Wise, Broome Cty. P.L., Binghamton, N.Y.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 196 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1st edition (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380974126
• ISBN-13: 978-0380974122
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,278,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Heavenly Knowledge" is a truely interesting read!, March 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Heavenly Knowledge An Astrophysicist Seeks Wisdom in the Stars (Hardcover)

Having studied astronomy and science all my life I have read numerous books on various scientific topics. Many are dry and difficult to read, many are pleasant, but a few are really extraordinary. I recall back to Loren Eisley's books that deals with anthropology in a very poetic fashion. After reading Dr. Terenzi's book, I got the same feeling I remember after reading Dr. Eisley's books. She paints a unique picture of the study of astonomy on a personal level, not just using facts and figures and formula, but using your imagination and sensabilities to understand the universe, and at the same time understand yourself. She paints parallel pictures of galaxy interactions, and inter-personal relationships, and along the way tells her unique story of how she became a scientist, then a writer and musician, all the while synthesizing them into a whole. If you like astronomy, and poetry, you will love Dr. Terenzi's book!

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A dream of reason and imagination married in wonder, September 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Heavenly Knowledge An Astrophysicist Seeks Wisdom in the Stars (Hardcover)

"I dream of a cosmology in which reason and imagination are not enemies but rather partners...in wonder," says the author. My perusal of this slender volume in a famous unnamed bookstore chain (but which borders a coffee-shop) suggested an unwarranted cover price. But peruse I did. I value the author's insight that "purely objective scientists have fostered a materialist worldview" which finds humanity "isolated in a world of things" and results in "religious nihilism" [p. 15]. Her solution: "We [women, that is] seek a science which learns more by conversing...with Nature than by putting it on the rack to force it to reveal its secrets....[p. 9]" Evidently, men don't qualify for an intuitive, aesthetic, feeling approach to science. Why? Evidently, she has only met brutes. She tells a sad story of a friend seduced by a serial Romeo, and so turns her passion toward the stars in a kind of post-modern feminist mythology of the heavens. She yearns for "a dynamic relationship with data, a dance between the knower and the known...to indulge in metaphors for our lives based on what we observe [p. 9]." Through her telescopes, she glimpses an erotic union between two heavenly bodies engaged in exquisite dance round their common center of gravity. An interesting if slender volume, which should sell well if only for the voluptuous cover photo (itself strangely antithetical to the feminist spirit of the book). One can only imagine her lectures, or wish her book had sampled her celestial music, discussed her philosophy and technology of processing interstellar electromagnetic signals into music, or pondered what that might mean to our understanding of the nature of the universe. Ever seen those faces and pyramids on Mars imaged by Voyager then filtered away by NASA computer programmers? One need not believe they are "really," physically there to wonder who determines how such signals are filtered and processed, anyway? And why? Would that this author had delved a little deeper into such mysteries, we would have had a far finer work.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Poetic Vision of the Universe that Touches Your Soul, June 6, 1999

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[e-mail] (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Heavenly Knowledge:: An Astrophysicist Seeks Wisdom In The Stars (Paperback)

I love this book. Fiorella writes beautifully to weave a synthesis of her personal experience, poetry, music, philosophy and metaphysics, all around her love for the great science, astrophysics. After we have studied the common thread throughout the arts, sciences, philosophies and theologies we turn to the Light of the stars for inspiration, for from it we have come and to it we shall return.