Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution

Rating:
Summary: A good starting point
Review: "Origins", Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith's new book, subtitled -the search for ourselves in the universe, has attempted much in tackling the real `biggest story ever told'. It is largely successful. It presents a general survey of cosmologic history from the `big bang' through the formation of galaxies, planets, and life with most of the emphasis on the earliest period. All of this is accomplished almost entirely without math, with some humor, and is a good starting point for the high school or college undergraduate student without a scientific background. It presents a more detailed scientific picture with less `wonder' than the late Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" but some readers may want more depth. For those I would recommend Steven Weinberg's "The First Three Minutes", or from the biologist's viewpoint, Morowitz's "The Emergence of Everything" which starts with the `big bang' and continues the story step-wise to explain complexity and emergence. For the general reader "Origins" presents an introduction to much mind-opening material including the mysterious `dark matter', isotropism, discussions about the curvature of space-time and the inflationary model of the universe that has the potential to stimulate further study or simply be enjoyed for itself.

Rating:
Summary: Terrific read
Review: I have come to appreciate Niel De Grasse Tyson's clear writing in Natural History magazine. And I also had enjoyed Donald Goldsmith's Runaway Universe. They did not disappoint me with Origins.

It is clearly written and provides a great summary of what we know about the Universe now. It also clarified for me a lot of topics which I had read about before but never really "got". An example is the curvature of space and how it relates to the expansion of the Universe.

An easy read but with enough substance to make it worthwhile.

Rating:
Summary: A Delightful Challenge for Non-Scientists
Review: If you saw the PBS special on "Origins," you know that Neil DeGrasse Tyson does a great job of translating astrophysics into normal human language. This book goes into much greater detail and merits a gradual reading by non-scientists like myself. The Preface is a clear introduction to the issues. The next section, Overture, is intentionally overwhelming with its "Greatest Story Ever Told." If you are not frustrated by this chapter, you know a lot more about physics than I do! Ah, but that is the point. Hang in there, because the rest of the book explains the Overture, one topic at a time. I am reading part of a chapter each day at lunch and find something amazing each day. This is a good book for people who want to challenge their assumptions about reality.

Rating:
Summary: Birth of the Universe: From Life or Nonlife? You decide
Review: The cornerstone of ORIGINS is the ingrained premise of contemporary cosmology that nonlife managed to generate the structures of the universe and life over billions of years. But if nonlife is the cause of structure formation in the universe, it ought to be demonstrated that at one time life did not exist, or that nonlife on its own - i.e. in the total absence of life - can generate life. The authors do not even attempt to make that point. So their unconditional bias in favor of nonlife's imagined self-organizing capabilities is most evident. They maintain this bias in face of the fact that in our experience structure formation is the basic quality of life and not that of nonlife. So instead of rehashing cosmology's divorced-from-reality mathematical models, on my part I would be delighted to see what makes them think that life did not play an intimate part in the creation of the universe. It is evident beyond any reasonable doubt that the cosmic system yields life, and it is equally evident that in our experience any natural system that yields life is itself the product of life. To illustrate my point with nature's model: over 97 percent of a giant Sequoia' mass is considered to be dead, yet it yields leaves, flowers, and millions of tiny winged seeds. We know it yields seeds as its output because a seed generated that tree structure for the purpose of self-reproduction. What makes the authors believe that the universe is the sole exception to this most basic principle of nature? Or did they manage to refute, without our knowledge, the principles of biogenesis and causality? (Namely that life comes only from life akin to itself and can never originate from nonlife, and that a cause cannot produce an effect superior to itself because the difference between the cause and the superior effect would have to come from nothing.) Only when they can refute these principles of nature should we join them in the celebration of nonlife's incredible creative potentials. In the meantime we should study nature's life-giving systems and based on those observations infer that the universe yields life because the cosmic system itself is the product of life. Since that initial seed or genotype of the phenotype universe is both the input and the output of the universe, the authors and the rest of the pro-nonlife cosmologists ignore its existence. After all the seed or final cause of the universe exists beyond the self-imposed limitations of science, and those who remain in that box will pretend it does not exist. Metaphorically speaking, it is like the seeds of a giant Sequoia pretending that the seed which created their tree for the purpose of self-reproduction does not exist. Instead of ending with the search for extraterrestrial life, the book should begin with the realization that life is immortal, which immortal life created the universe for the production of life in its own image. I recommend the book for those readers who want to embrace and to worship nonlife as the creator of the universe, and want to read more about the mushrooming crank theories that posit multiple hidden dimensions and universes. On the other hand this book is definitely not for "out of the box" thinkers, or for rational thinkers.

Rating:
Summary: Reflects Current Thinking and expresses it Clearly
Review: There is no way we can think of for the elements that make up most of the world we know such as oxygen and carbon to exist except for them to have been 'cooked' in the center of stars. This is not exactly a simple concept, and the story of how we have learned this is remarkable in its own right.

In this companion to the PBS 'Nova' four hour special, the story of the origin of everything is explained by two excellent writers. Some years Carl Sagan did a similar book/show called 'Cosmos.' This new story is Cosmos brought up to date with the latest discoveries and theories, and done without so much of the 'Wow, how marvelous' that Sagan used.

Of particular interest to me was the discussion on the likelyhood of extra-terrestrial life in the Universe. Obviously no conclusion can be reached because we have not made contact with any other civilization, but on the other hand, it is impossible to prove a negative. The approach in this book is strictly scientific. Here is the Drake equasion, here is what the terms mean, we really have no idea of the answer.

Rating:
Summary: Exceptional!
Review: This book was fantastic in terms of it's scope and presentation of astrophysics. It's easy to follow style and plain language make it a good read for even the most amateur science lover. Mr. Tyson does a great job of showing us how insignificant we really are in this galaxy (let alone the universe as a whole).

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Science
Review: Tyson and Goldsmith distill a complex subject of both immense philosophical and physical implications into 300 pages of readable text. The format is interesting, although it poses some material early on that is fairly daunting. The introduction to this subject I received by watching the 4-hour PBS production motivated me, however, to push through the tough stuff. As it turned out, the authors used the first chapter as an overview of everything, then used subsequent chapters to expand on individual concepts presented in the first chapter. I would have preferred the first chapter at the end, allowing the Preface to suffice as an introduction to the material. You may want to try reading the preface, then skipping ahead to the second chapter, saving the first chapter for last. This may keep you from tossing the book aside before giving it a fair chance. Just a thought. The title "Origins" threw me because I assumed it focused on Darwin's theory; however, this book is more than that, and combines elements of astrophysics, biology, and geology to describe how the universe was created, and the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. As Sagan would say, there appears to be billions and billions of opportunities for life in the universe.

For the serious scientist, I would further recommend: Steven Weinberg, author of several books on the subject, including: the "Quantam Theory of Fields" Volumes I and II, and "The First Three Minutes." Also, B. Reed's book "Quantam Mechanics: A 1st Course," and Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe," seem to be popular. These books give a more detailed, math-heavy version of Origins.


As an amateur scientist, rather weak in mathematics, I am happy with the depth of studying Origins, and enjoyed the color photos in this book. Carl Sagan's books "Cosmos" and "Billions and Billions" are good supplements to this book, written at a similar level, approachable by non-scientists.