The Human Cosmos PDF Download

Author: Jo Marchant
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593183029
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
A Best Book of 2020 NPR A Best Book of 2020 The Economist A Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Smithsonian A Best Science & Technology Book of 2020 Library Journal A Must-Read Book to Escape the Chaos of 2020 Newsweek Starred review Booklist Starred review Publishers Weekly An historically unprecedented disconnect between humanity and the heavens has opened. Jo Marchant's book can begin to heal it. For at least 20,000 years, 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 art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost. Our relationship to the stars and planets has moved from one of awe, wonder and superstition to one where technology is king--the cosmos is now explored through data on our screens, not by the naked eye observing the natural world. Indeed, in most countries modern light pollution obscures much of the night sky from view. Jo Marchant's spellbinding parade of the ways different cultures celebrated the majesty and mysteries of the night sky is a journey to the most awe inspiring view you can ever see--looking up on a clear dark night. That experience and the thoughts it has engendered have radically shaped human civilization across millennia. The cosmos is the source of our greatest creativity in art, in science, in life. To show us how, Jo Marchant takes us to the Hall of the Bulls in the caves at Lascaux in France, and to the summer solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at New Grange in Ireland. We discover Chumash cosmology and 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. The cosmically liberating, summary revelation is that star-gazing made us human.

Author: Jo Marchant
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 178689405X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
For most of human history, we have had a close relationship with the stars. Once they shaped 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 it comes at a cost. The Human Cosmos is a tour of this history: from the Hall of the Bulls in Lascaux to Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars; from medieval monks grappling with the nature of time to Einstein realising that space and time are the same. It shows we need to rediscover the universe we inhabit, its effect on our health, and its potential for inspiration and revelation.

Author: Manasvi Lingam
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674987578
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1089

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Book Description
A rigorous and scientific analysis of the myriad possibilities of life beyond our planet. ÒAre we alone in the universe?Ó This tantalizing question has captivated humanity over millennia, but seldom has it been approached rigorously. Today the search for signatures of extraterrestrial life and intelligence has become a rapidly advancing scientific endeavor. Missions to Mars, Europa, and Titan seek evidence of life. Laboratory experiments have made great strides in creating synthetic life, deepening our understanding of conditions that give rise to living entities. And on the horizon are sophisticated telescopes to detect and characterize exoplanets most likely to harbor life. Life in the Cosmos offers a thorough overview of the burgeoning field of astrobiology, including the salient methods and paradigms involved in the search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence. Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb tackle three areas of interest in hunting for life Òout thereÓ: first, the pathways by which life originates and evolves; second, planetary and stellar factors that affect the habitability of worlds, with an eye on the biomarkers that may reveal the presence of microbial life; and finally, the detection of technological signals that could be indicative of intelligence. Drawing on empirical data from observations and experiments, as well as the latest theoretical and computational developments, the authors make a compelling scientific case for the search for life beyond what we can currently see. Meticulous and comprehensive, Life in the Cosmos is a master class from top researchers in astrobiology, suggesting that the answer to our age-old question is closer than ever before.

Author: Max Scheler
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810164116
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 105

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Book Description
Upon Scheler’s death in 1928, Martin Heidegger remarked that he was the most important force in philosophy at the time. Jose Ortega y Gasset called Scheler "the first man of the philosophical paradise." The Human Place in the Cosmos, the last of his works Scheler completed, is a pivotal piece in the development of his writing as a whole, marking a peculiar shift in his approach and thought. He had been asked to provide an initial sketch of his much larger works on philosophical anthropology and metaphysics--works he was not able to complete because of his early demise. Frings' new translation of this key work allows us to read and understand Scheler's thought within current philosophical debates and interests. The book addresses two main questions: What is the human being? And what is the place of the human being in the universe? Scheler responds to these questions within contexts of said two projected much larger works but not without reference to scientific research. He covers various levels of being: inorganic reality, organic reality (including plant life and psychological life), all the way up to practical intelligence and the spiritual dimension of human beings, and touching upon the holy. Negotiating two intertwined levels of being, life-energy ("impulsion") and "spirit," this work marks not only a critical moment in the development of his own philosophy but also a significant contribution to the current discussions of continental and analytic philosophers on the nature of the person.

Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0593081323
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.

Author: Laura Dassow Walls
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226871843
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Explorer, scientist, writer, and humanist, Alexander von Humboldt was the most famous intellectual of the age that began with Napoleon and ended with Darwin. With Cosmos, the book that crowned his career, Humboldt offered to the world his vision of humans and nature as integrated halves of a single whole. In it, Humboldt espoused the idea that, while the universe of nature exists apart from human purpose, its beauty and order, the very idea of the whole it composes, are human achievements: cosmos comes into being in the dance of world and mind, subject and object, science and poetry. Humboldt’s science laid the foundations for ecology and inspired the theories of his most important scientific disciple, Charles Darwin. In the United States, his ideas shaped the work of Emerson, Thoreau, Poe, and Whitman. They helped spark the American environmental movement through followers like John Muir and George Perkins Marsh. And they even bolstered efforts to free the slaves and honor the rights of Indians. Laura Dassow Walls here traces Humboldt’s ideas for Cosmos to his 1799 journey to the Americas, where he first experienced the diversity of nature and of the world’s peoples—and envisioned a new cosmopolitanism that would link ideas, disciplines, and nations into a global web of knowledge and cultures. In reclaiming Humboldt’s transcultural and transdisciplinary project, Walls situates America in a lively and contested field of ideas, actions, and interests, and reaches beyond to a new worldview that integrates the natural and social sciences, the arts, and the humanities. To the end of his life, Humboldt called himself “half an American,” but ironically his legacy has largely faded in the United States. The Passage to Cosmos will reintroduce this seminal thinker to a new audience and return America to its rightful place in the story of his life, work, and enduring legacy.

Author: George V. Coyne
Publisher: Crossroad Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
With the embarrassing Galileo condemnation far, far behind them, the time is ripe for a book by Vatican officials about how the Official Church sees the staggering developments in modern astronomy. Coyne and Omizzolo take readers through the history of human understandings of heavens to arrive at a deep understanding of what many secular physicists are themselves saying about the cosmos: that a loving Creator stands behind it all.

Author: John Hands
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 146831324X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 711

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“A critical overview of scientific orthodoxy in an attempt to answer the fundamental questions “what are we?” and “why are we here?” (Kirkus Reviews). Specialist scientific fields are developing at incredibly swift speeds, but what can they really tell us about how the universe began and how we as humans evolved to play such a dominant role on Earth? John Hands’s extraordinarily ambitious book merges scientific knowledge from multiple disciplines and evaluates without bias or preconception all the theories and evidence about the origin and evolution of matter, consciousness, and mankind. The result, a “pearl of dialectical reasoning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), provides the most comprehensive account yet of current ideas such as cosmic inflation, dark energy, the selfish gene, and neurogenetic determinism. In the clearest possible prose, it differentiates the firmly established from the speculative and examines the claims of various fields to approach a unified theory of everything. In doing so it challenges the orthodox consensus in those branches of cosmology, biology, and neuroscience that have ossified into dogma. Its “shocking and invigorating” analysis (Daily Telegraph, A Best Science Book of 2015) reveals underlying patterns of cooperation, complexification, and convergence that lead to the unique emergence in humans of a self-reflective consciousness that enables us to determine our future evolution. This groundbreaking book is destined to become a classic of scientific thinking. Praise for Cosmosapiens “This is a truly exceptional piece of work.” —Tim Crane, Knightsbridge Professor of Philosophy, The University of Cambridge “A game-changer. In the tradition of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, this lucidly written, penetrating analysis challenges us to rethink many things we take for granted about ourselves, our society, and our universe. It will become a classic.” —Peter Dreier, E P Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental College “Hands is an astute observer of recent trends in scientific ideas bold enough to point out what he sees as sense and nonsense and intelligently explain why. Even in cases where one might disagree, the arguments are thought-provoking.” —Paul Steinhardt, Albert Einstein Professor in Science, Princeton University

Author: Dave Hunt
Publisher: Berean Call
ISBN: 9781681380124
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
Why are we here?And where are we going?Does science have an answer to these two most fundamental questions of human existence? Can mankind determine and direct the future of life on earth purely by scientific means? Plagued by the failure of modern science to explain the most pressing questions of human existence, many of today's postmoderns are once again boldly going where man has gone before in a desperate final quest for the hidden "holy grail" of cosmology.Erwin Schrödinger, the famed Austrian theoretical physicist who received the Nobel Prize in 1933 for his contributions to quantum mechanics, confided: "[Science] knows nothing of . . . good or bad, God and eternity. . . . Whence came I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question. . . . Science has no answer to it."Echoing this dilemma, British astrophysicist Sir Arthur S. Eddington, famous for his work on the theory of relativity in the early 20th century, also reasoned: "Thus, in the physical world, what a body does and what a body ought to do are equivalent; but we are well aware of another domain where they are anything but equivalent.... There is a clear distinction between natural law, which must be obeyed, and moral law, which ought to be obeyed. Ought takes us outside of physics and chemistry."Postmodern thinkers take pride in the perpetual pursuit ot knowledge--but the questions for readers now holding this book are clear: How will you recognize the seemingly elusive chalice of "ultimate truth" when it actually appears? And finally, what will you do with it when this coveted cup is within your grasp?In a sweeping panorama of inquiry and exploration, the timeless quest within these pages leads grail-seekers and skeptics alike to a destiny-altering consideration of the cosmos--and the question of human existence.

Author: Barbara A. Holmes
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781563383779
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Argues that theoretical physics and cosmology can provide a key to overcoming race-related problems, explaining how they enable a means for discussing individual and communal quests for fulfillment beyond racial, ethnic, class, and sexual barriers. Original.