The Grand Contraption: The World as Myth, Number, and Chance

Park, David

ISBN 10: 0691121338 / ISBN 13: 9780691121338

Editore: Princeton University Press, 2005

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Publisher: Princeton University Press, NJ, 2005. First Edition, First Printing. FINE hardcover book in FINE dust-jacket. PRISTINE. As New. Unread. Not remainder marked. Not price-clipped. Not a book club edition. Not an ex-library copy. All of our books with dust-jackets are shipped in fresh, archival-safe mylar protective sleeves.

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Grand Contraption: The World as Myth, Number, and Chance
• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0691121338
• ISBN 13: 9780691121338
• Rilegatura: Hardcover
• Condizione: Like New
• Peso: 22 once

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Riassunto

The story of humankind's attempts to make sense of the world, understand its physical nature, and know its real and imagined inhabitants is chronicled in an in-depth study that brings together the fields of history, philosophy, literature, religion, and the physical sciences in an analysis of four thousand years of written history in which humans have imagined the earth they inhabit.

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"The Grand Contraption is the long-needed antidote to all those top-heavy histories of scientific thought that pass brusquely over the philosophies of the ancient world, eager to find the sure footing of modernity. Park tells us not only what science now knows, but how it got to know it: from an enthralling mix of myth, genius, logic, careful observation, guesswork, invention, and a dash of inspired lunacy."--Philip Ball, author ofLife's Matrix and consultant editor, Nature

"This book literally grabs you. The facts presented, the stories told, the author's reflections on the information he presents, are rendered beautifully-and masterfully. This is a labor of love, and the passion with which David Park has written the book is readily apparent and makes one want to keep on reading. And in doing so one is richly rewarded with keen insights, judicious appraisals, and with questions regarding courses of action and consequences that are not only thought provoking but also relevant."--Silvan S. Schweber, Brandeis University and Harvard University, author of QED and the Men Who Made It (Princeton)

"The Grand Contraption is an impressive feat of scholarship in the history of science, and it is even more impressive if one considers that it is written in clear and unpretentious English. Park offers, in plain language, an attractive way to think about cosmological ideas from a single perspective. No one will put this book down without having their level of consciousness raised by a few notches."--Christian Wildberg, Princeton University

"Physics, astronomy, geology, and poetry all come together here in the grand quest to understand what out universe is and how it works. "Only a handful of authors have both the expertise and the courage to write a book of this sweep and depth. David Park has woven together a vast tapestry of humankind's vision of the cosmos, from ancient myths to our contemporary curiosity about intelligent life on other worlds."--Owen Gingerich. Professor of Astronomy & the History of Science, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

"An exceptional and well-written introduction to the history of ideas, viewed from the perspective of their creators, who were adapting their thinking to new facts and conceptions as they went. We found the book engrossing and illuminating."--Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T. Barber, coauthors of When They Severed Earth from Sky