Customer Reviews

The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (Compass)

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A physicist friend told me about this book, endorsing it as the best and most accurate treatment of the elucidation of the motions of the planets. When I picked it up, I found myself transported not just to the early Renaissance, but to Greece, where the story begins with Pythagoras and others. Koestler approached this as a lone intellectual, rather than an acacdemic, which means that he went back and read all the original sources to see things for himself rather than rely on secondary texts. That gave him a vivid feel for what these discoverers thought and did that is sadly absent from most survey histories available.

The result is a unique master work, in which you feel you get to know Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo as well as their classical predecessors. The science is explained as are the dead ends, and some harsh judgements made: Koestler was not timid! He also succeeds is putting the discoveries into context, as the standard against which scientific discovery has come to be measured.

Though I studied this in high school physics, this is what truly made this period come alive for me. I will reread this for years to come.

Arthur Koestler was one of the most remarkable intellects of the twentieth century. In the course of his life and career he experienced and wrote about most of the great movements and changes of his times. Typically, he perceived patterns long before others, inevitably with a truly unique understanding, and wrote about them beautifully.

In The Sleepwalkers, Koestler traced what he thought to be the mainstream of the development of science through exquisitely researched and written biographies of some of science's leading figures. There's no part of the book that isn't well worth reading, but I think that his treatments of Copernicus and Kepler are hair-raisingly insightful.

Readers can confidently expect to put down The Sleepwalkers with increased knowledge and new insights about the history of science and the stellar figures Koestler describes. Still, don't expect a quick read. Koestler thinks and writes in depth, and takes the time to guide readers where he wants to take them.

Robert Adler
Science Writer
Author of Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (John Wiley & Sons, 2002, ISBN 0471401749).

This is book on the history of cosmology - make no mistake. It tries to illustrate Koestlers masterly thesis in the epilogue on the nature of genius and creativity, and the path of scientific progress. The example he uses is the history of cosmology. Having begun his book so, and paying attention to this mode of thought in the introduction, Koestler soon sets down to business

He begins with the Pythagorean brotherhood and delves a little into the man that Pythagoras was, and speaks of the contributions of Plato and Aristotle in this arena. So rigid is Koestlers focus, that this is perhaps the first book which speaks of Plato and Aristotle with reference to only their works in astronomy and completely ignores Socrates, who had no contribution to this field. The book neglects more ancient theories and incorrect faiths. Rather it concentrates with laserlike intensity on the people who made the Science what it is, namely Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler and Galileo. Once we are through with the Greeks and the intermittent period, the book rapidly moves into a breathtaking narrative, almost biographical, about these giants, on whose shoulder Newton stood and saw further.

Koestler also brings to the reader correspondence and definitive evidence that debunks most of scientific history into the realm of folklore, and shows how different a path cosmological studies have taken. He debunks many old viewpoints and theories and shows the true history of science to be very different. He ends with Newtons arrival on the scene, and leaves us begging for more

In his epilogue, Koestler returns to his construct on sleepwalking and the nature of genius, and in a masterly flourish, the book suddenly picks up pace like never before, and ends leaving the reader wanting to read it all again!

Quite simply a must read, and a must-have book for any book lover

This is one of the most richly rewarding books I have ever read. It succeeds on several levels: as a history of the science of astronomy; as a series of very human biographies of the visionary astronomers who made landmark discoveries; and mostly as a brilliant discussion of the evolution of human thought as it comes to grips with the infinite. Koestler has a ferocious intellect-- the reader can almost warm his hands by the glow-- which he uses to illuminate and find meaning in a series of challenging topics. For me, this was a truly magic book, beautifully written.

How did I miss this masterpiece? Perhaps, because it is not referenced in all the histories of astonomy and cosmology I have read; it gets short shrift from the academics. Koestler was not an astronomer. Thank heavens! May we have more such amateurs!

This is the best history of asronomy and one of the wisest books I have ever read. . Koestler applies his knowledge, his life, his experiences, to this topic, and places the astonomy of each period beautifully within the context of the politics, religion and philosophy of the time. And shows, with crystalline clarity, how one (philosophy) could pollute the rest.

It is the best written book I have ever read on a scientific topic. On almost every page, the eloquence, intelligence and skill of Koestler illuminates a point obscured or ignored in other treatments. He brilliantly shows how astonomy suffered the same decline as the other sciences and technologies, for the same reasons, and puts this in the context of a collapsed Grecian and a collapsing Roman world seeking refuge in religious obscurantism for 1,200 years.

He laments the same point Carl Sagan makes in "Cosmos"; Plato and Aristotle cost us a thousand years of technical progress..Sagan points out that the people who built the medieval cathedrals lived in housing and health conditions worse than the Greeks. Koestler wryly observes that we were delayed the benefits of Satellites and Hydrogen bombs for the same interval.

He treats evenly with all the icons we have learned to revere. Copernicus was a coward and a lecherouos churchman, who opens his great book with a clumsy lie. Kepler was almost a raving lunatic (for good reason). Galileo is described as one of the truly offensive and annoying men of science, rarely giving credit, treated better than he deserved by the Church, and finally caught up by his defence of a book which he probably did not read. Amazingly, Galileo was no astonomer at all; just one who happened to do some early telescopic observations, and then attempted to establish a monopoly on observations for himself.

My eternal thanks to Owen Gingerich for his reference to this book. The jury is out, in my mind, on the other two volumes of his technical triptych, but this is an undoubted masterpiece.

Fascinating account of the history of astronomy through the discovery of classical mechanics by Kepler, Galileo and Newton. We may see it as the history of the replacement of religious-based dogmatism by what physicists today call the Galilean approach: the discovery and consequent mathematical description of nature throughy repeated, identical experiments or observations. This is the book that wheted my appetite for the history of physics. For the serious reader, there are also Julian Barbour's Absolute or Relative Motion and Fred Hoyle's history of Copernicus's contribution. Of interest as well, if less exciting, are Galileo's Dialogues.

The book begins with an interesting account of the development of modern astronomy with particular emphasis on Copernicus and Kepler. The section on the trial of Galileo brought up valid points on Galileo's "martyrdom".

Unfortunately, the epilogue drew some questionable conclusions. First, Koestler cast doubt on quantum theory and compared it to the epicycles of the Ptolemaic and Copernican theories. He seems to have ignored some of the lessons pointed out earlier in the book. It was the careful and systematic observations of Tycho Brahe that provided crucial data in the development of Newtonian gravity. Likewise, quantum theory is based on numerous careful and systematic measurements on many different systems. This was true even back when the book was written. I would say that he sounds like the Aristotelian looking at Kepler's ellipses and asserting, "This is not what a good theory looks like."

Second, Koestler seems to have believed strongly in ESP and similar psychic phenomena. He claims that evidence exists validating these beliefs. He did not provide any references, probably because real trials just can't find any such thing.

In spite of these problems, the book is worth reading for the historical points that he brings up.

In all, "Sleepwalkers" is a great read, and provides a wonderful tall vista from which we can gaze into our new millennium and negotiate its challenges.

Written in 1958 from a literate, masterful perspective, it would not surprise me that Koestler was a correspondent with Marshall McLuhan. Certainly they we're both scholars of their age, shared the vision of evolutionary forces acting on human intelligence/media.

The first section of the Epilogue might be read as a part of the Preface so the reader can fully enjoy the thesis as moving through sometimes particularly characterful para-biographies of the Sleepwalkers, appreciating the personalizations as refractions in a larger tapestry. It is in the human character of each of the Sleepwalkers that Koestler finds the clues to support fractal (a word coined after Koestler's decade, I believe) ideological development.

My link to this work came from Grossinger's 1982 "The Night Sky", a poetic anthropological treatment of cosmology. I go from "Sleepwakers" on to Kurzweil's "The Spiritual Age of Machines", following Koestler's vector of cognitive evolution, tantalizing cast into his future with the closing text - "...worshippers of the new Baal, lording it over the moral vacuum with his electronic brain." - a nutshell statement holding his premise that we now live within a cosmological cul-de-sac, a relativistic quantum universe that the future will enjoy as we hold Ptolemy's epi-circular framework. Koestler makes a striking case for inclusion of "purpose" in modern physics, an argument that is both historically supported and prospectively adept.

Historical treatment is at its best a narratization of humanity. From Babylon to Hiroshima, the author engaged me and gave me a new view our way here.

Koestler has written a superb summary of the early history of science. The views expressed are certainly partial but it is almost impossible not to be transported by Koestler's prose into a world inhabited by Aristotle, Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler and Galileo. It is a wonderful exploration of the progress of science and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history and philosophy of science.

A great read for those interested in the way our view of the universe influences our way of relating with ourselves and the earth. Great reading, rare presentation of ancient texts and a narrative move and drama that only the likes of Koestler can perform. The best of his science- philsophy books.

Like Orwell and Huxley, Koestler deserves a second look these days. Like `Darkness At Noon', the title `Sleepwlakers' is always relevant.