Cosmos
1980
- ouvrages de vulgarisation
- astronomie
- astronomy
- popular works
- history
- science
- cosmology
- planetary science
- astronomy, popular works
- kosmos
The story
This book is about science in its broadest human context, how science and civilization grew up together. It is the story of our long journey of discovery and the forces and individuals who helped to shape modern science, including Democritus, Hypatia, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Champollion, Lowell and Humason. The book also explores spacecraft missions of discovery of the nearby planets, the research in the Library of ancient Alexandria, the human brain, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the origin of life, the death of the Sun, the evolution of galaxies and the origins of matter, suns and worlds. The author retraces the fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution that have transformed matter into life and consciousness, enabling the cosmos to wonder about itself. He considers the latest findings on life elsewhere and how we might communicate with the beings of other worlds. ~ WorldCat.org
What it’s like
Wide, unhurried prose that moves like a slow camera drifting across the night sky: long passages of plain, lucid sentences that pause to let a single idea breathe, then open out to vast stretches of time and space. The voice is warm, earnest and conversational, more a patient guide walking beside you than a lecturer at a podium, with frequent small wonders about starlight, ancient libraries, hieroglyphs and the chemistry inside a human body. Its atmosphere is hopeful and reflective, with a soft undertone of awe rather than urgency, and the sensory world it builds is one of clean observatory nights, dusty scrolls, and the quiet blue of planetary photographs. Chapters are self-contained, so it reads well in short sittings with a cup of tea on a slow evening, or as a companion on a long train ride. Nothing here is graphic or frightening; the only weight comes from contemplating deep time and the fragility of the small pale world we live on. It suits curious readers who want to feel expansive and calm, who enjoy history of ideas told with generosity, and anyone seeking gentle, uplifting nonfiction about the universe and our place within it.
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