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Books > Science & Mathematics > Astronomy, space & time > Cosmology & the universe
For most of human history, we have led not just an earthly
existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of
our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who
we are - our religious beliefs, power structures, scientific
advances and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we
have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. And
that disconnect comes at a cost. In The Human Cosmos Jo Marchant
takes us on a tour through the history of humanity's relationship
with the heavens. We travel to the Hall of the Bulls in Lascaux and
witness the winter solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at Newgrange.
We visit Medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and
Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light
reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with
Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same.
A four-billion-year-old meteor inspires a search for
extraterrestrial life. And we discover why stargazing can be
really, really good for us. It is time for us to rediscover the
full potential of the universe we inhabit, its wonder, its effect
on our health, and its potential for inspiration and revelation.
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Eureka
(Paperback)
Edgar Allan Poe
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R183
R166
Discovery Miles 1 660
Save R17 (9%)
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Ships in 9 - 17 working days
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Initially composed by Poe as a public lecture towards the end his
career and considered by him the culmination of all his life's
work, Eureka is an extended treatise about the creation, existence
and the ultimate end of the world. An idiosyncratic blend of
creative writing and scientific discourse, with unexpected forays
into comedy and wordplay, this self-styled "prose poem" is a
genre-defying masterpiece. Although it baffled the reading public
of its time, Eureka found many prominent admirers, from Charles
Baudelaire to W.H. Auden, and has since assembled an audience
receptive to its unique appeal as a compendium of European thought
that anticipated many current theories and discoveries while also
pioneering many elements of science-fiction aesthetics.
Paul Davies' The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right
for Life? gets to the heart of what makes the universe tick - and
what makes our place in it so special. It's not too hot, it's not
too cold, and its forces act together in a way that's just right:
why does the universe seem so perfectly tailor-made for life to
exist? Paul Davies, one of the world's most acclaimed science
writers, shows how everything from the humble carbon atom to the
speed of light and the laws of physics themselves interact. He
asks: is there a theory of everything within our grasp? If there
was a big bang, what happened before it? Is there on universe or
many? Could we exist within an endless time loop? 'This is popular
science as home to the really big questions' Independent Books of
the Year 'Beautifully judged' Guardian 'Britain's most eminent
cosmologist ... Davies is effortlessly at home in the scale of the
impossibly large, hundreds of billions of miles' Observer 'He leads
the reader gently by the hand through the basics of what we are
sure we understand about space, time and the universe' John Gribbin
'Paul Davies is undoubtedly one of the most important modern
scientific authors ... his most significant contribution to date'
Patrick Moore Paul Davies is Director of the BEYOND Center for
Fundamental Concepts in Science, and co-Director of the Cosmology
Initiative, both at Arizona State University. An
internationally-acclaimed physicist, writer and broadcaster, Davies
is the author of some twenty award-winning books, including The
Eerie Silence: Searching for Ourselves in the Universe, The
Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? and The
Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning.
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