Archives of the Universe: A Treasury of Astronomy's Historic Works of Discovery

by Marcia Bartusiak

Book Overview

An unparalleled history of astronomy presented in the words of the scientists who made the discoveries. Here are the writings of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Halley, Hubble, and Einstein, as... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 037542170X
• ISBN13: 9780375421709
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 704 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

An Amazing, Wonderful Book

This book is a masterpiece! It presents excerpts from 100 seminal works from the ancient Greeks to Newton, to Einstein, and up to the last decade. Many of the excerpts are only a couple of pages long, and most or all of the math has been removed. Each group of excerpts are preceded by a short, concise piece written by the author that sets the stage for that series. Amazing! This book brings you into the discovery process. You can read pieces of the early papers on quasars, and sense the incredulity at these amazing objects. You can read Einstein work around the mass-energy equivalence, but not quite get to E=MC^^2. You'll read how Fred Hoyle, proponent of the Steady State Universe, inadvertently coined the term for the "other side" of the debate with "Big Bang." This book is full of gems. Because each section is so short, you won't have to wade far down a tunnel of complex notions--instead you'll get instant gratification. It makes for a great read when you only have a few minutes because you can follow one thread to its conclusion. Wow. If you have any interest in astronomy or cosmology this book is simply a must read!

Seeing the past and present in the heavens

Back during my undergraduate days, one of the most interesting courses that I took was the history of astronomy, and I wish this book had been available. While that course was very good at introducing the different ways in which the universe was perceived and conceived through the different cultures and periods of history, we were often reading second-hand or third-hand accounts. So much of education these days seems to consist of second-hand and third-hand analyses and retellings, working on the assumption that the original texts are too difficult, too arcane, or too 'something' to be useful and understood. Sometimes this might be true; however, making allowances for translation from different languages, I still believe, as obviously the author of this text does, that there is much to be gained by reading the actual words of scientists and philosophers themselves as they first formulated and wrote down their ideas. This is a text of excerpts from primary documents that have had significant influence in the direction of astronomy and astrophysics in particular, and science and philosophy more generally. These are grouped into eight broad categories: The Ancient Sky, Revolutions, Taking Measure, Touching the Heavens, Einsteinian Cosmos, The Milky Way and Beyond, New Eyes, New Universe, and Accelerating Outward. These each include a half-dozen to a dozen different documents. Bartusiak introduces each document with a brief essay that sets context both in general history as well as the progress of science, and discusses the importance and influence of the documents for later developments. The groupings are not set in stone, but can be useful: 'The essays introducing each moment of discovery were written to stand alone, inviting the reader to peruse his or her interests in no particular order. Yet it can be profitable to read the sections in sequence to perceive how the questions that observers asked of the heavens evolved over time.' Some of the readings are heavy going. 'Many of the papers, particularly those from the modern era, are hardly narrative literature. The mathematics can often be unwieldy and the issues fairly complex.' Despite this, astronomy remains one of the more popular and captivating of the sciences, and Bartusiak has made a concession to the more general reader by simplifying some of the papers, omitting detail that might be of interest to professionals, but serve to cloud the view for the more general reader. This is a great volume for those who are interested in astronomy, the history of science, or cosmological development more generally - particularly the early part, when philosophy and science were not so separate as they are today, general readers may find a great deal of insight and interest.