Super Vision: A New View of Nature [Hardcover]

Ivan Amato (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0810945452 | ISBN-13: 978-0810945456

What does nature really look like? Scientific instruments enable us to see far more of the physical world than ever before. These devices can register millions of invisible colours, look back in cosmic time some 12 billion years, peer behind and within seemingly opaque barriers such as skin and bone, and capture events that last a mere trillionth of a second. In this volume, images of scientific interest and of beauty are accompanied by Ivan Amato's descriptions, which shed light on the images themselves as well as the technologies that created them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the incomprehensibly minute movements of subatomic particles to the equally incomprehensible curve of the universe, Science News associate editor Amato has gathered a selection of images of processes, objects and beings that give the external world's inhuman scales their close-up. From a human immunodeficiency virus rising "like a sun over turbulent waters" over a lymph tissue cell to an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar image of Washington, D.C., and back down to "the smallest guitar in the world"-a silicon guitar 10-millionths of a meter long, with guitar strings only about 100 atoms wide-Amato tours the limits of representation, and the many techniques scientists and other specialists have developed for rendering the invisible and the monumental. Fractals, microchips, biotechnology and global warming all make appearances. In many cases, the images have been garishly colored in order to highlight the details, sometimes too much so, and the author is obviously interested in comparing art to nature, directly so in a comparison of cancerous dog skin to Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night (plausible) and a cross-section of a dog's skin mole to a Picasso (less so). A series of black-and-white photographs of snowflakes (each one of which is indeed unique) have all the somber documentary power of a Walker Evans. The "Visible Human Project," uses X-rays and magnetic resonance techniques to completely represent the human body, in meaty tissue tones that make the neck look like a piece of chuck. The accompanying text is non-patronizing, introducing technical terms and processes carefully and making this set of visions super indeed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Many scientists are inspired by the beauty of the natural world and have a strong desire to bring all of life into crisp focus, hence the creation of such devices and technologies as the telescope, microscope, spectroscopy, X rays, radar, and particle accelerators, all of which greatly extend our visual range, and grant us what prolific science writer Amato calls supervision. Thanks to this capacity, science has become increasingly image driven, a fact celebrated to splendid effect in this gorgeously produced volume. The startling images--the bizarrely pretty budding of a deadly virus, the elegance of a polymer helix, the astonishing complexity of a single heart cell, the surprisingly rough texture of a rose petal, the intricacies of a microchip--are arresting in their richness and grace, resembling in their patterns everything from mandalas to a Van Gogh sky, abstractions by Jackson Pollock, and fantastic landscapes. As nanotechnologies evolve and more images of the universe are beamed back to earth, we'll continue to acquire new perspectives, and, hopefully, new insights. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810945452
• ISBN-13: 978-0810945456
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 9.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #446,056 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Electron Microscopy

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spectacular photo book, March 20, 2004

By 

magellan (Santa Clara, CA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Super Vision: A New View of Nature (Hardcover)

This is one of the most beautifully illustrated photo books I've ever seen. Ranging from the submicroscopic to the macroscopic and even cosmic in scale, the book presents hundreds of spectacular photos of different aspects of our world and universe. They range from the geometrical perfection of a matrix of metallic crystals, to the delicate tracery of a microbial colony, to amorphous, bloblike, and menacing looking cancer cells, to the graceful symmetry of a galaxy floating in the vastness of space.

Every photographic method you can think of is represented (including many I couldn't have thought of), including ordinary light photography, x-ray, infrared, plane-polarized, electron microscopy, magnetic resonance imaging, and a photo of Washington, D.C. using something called Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar.

In addition to size, the time scales range from subatomic particles that only last a few trillionths of a second to photos of distant galaxies whose light has been travelling for 14 billion years to reach earth. The text is also clear and concise and non-obtrusive and doesn't detract from the visual presentation of the photos. Overall a beautifully illustrated photo book just to browse encompassing the many wonders, young and old, big and small, and animate or inanimate, of our world.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning book about a beautiful world, December 9, 2003

By 

David Voss (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Super Vision: A New View of Nature (Hardcover)

From protons to parsecs, Ivan Amato's "Super Vision" reveals what many scientists know: the universe is a visually stunning place. This remarkable collection of images, coupled with Amato's compelling captions, shows the art that can be found in science. Thanks to advances in instruments ranging from atom smashers to telescopes, combined with unprecedented computer power, the phenomena of the cosmos can be painted in vivid color. Scientists use these images in their daily effort to understand the universe; we can enjoy them for pure aesthetic pleasure. Covering 42 orders of magnitude (powers of ten), "Super Vision" shows us the abstract swirls of a decaying particle, the eerie machinery of a spider's spinnerets, how zebrafish scales can look like a Balinese hillside, and the tortured faces of distant planets. For a guide to the art in our natural world, this is the book. It's as beautiful as the universe it describes.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Science, January 1, 2004

By 

William D. Cahill (Merced, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Super Vision: A New View of Nature (Hardcover)

I can't remember another book combining scientific insight with artistic beauty quite this way. The author has painstakingly selected, arranged, and captioned stunning scientific images. Whether for the coffee table or to actually read and learn something, Super Vision is a winner.