Coming of Age in the Milky Way

Rating:
Summary: Informative and FUN
Review: Ferris puts humanity back into science with his fantastic tale of astronomy and the people who study it. Man looked up in awe and wonder at the stars for centuries, but modern education lost sight of that along the way. Ferris gives it all back to us. Highly recommend!

Rating:
Summary: Fun and Educational
Review: Ferris writes this for the average Joe and Jane that knows little about cosmology and physics. He makes it an enjoyable read, with great stories about the lives of so many great thinkers. The read is smooth and easy, but so full of handy and interesting information. I want to thank him for making difficult subjects accessible to all people. It gets a little complicated once he hits quantum physics and string theory, but a good read.

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Summary: The more we know, the more we see how little we know
Review: In charting the place of mankind in the universe Timothy Ferris explores as different topics as history, evolution, physics, mathematics, cosmology, theology or philosophy and that from the Big Bang over the Greeks to the end of the 20th century.
Within this tour-de-force I would like to emphasize a few extremely important statements.
First, the importance of Godel's incompleteness theorem:'there is not and never will be a complete and comprehensive scientific account of the universe that can be proved valid'.(p. 374)
Secondly, the killing of the 'monstrous' philosophy of determinism (Einstein's belief) by quantum physics:'Quantum indeterminacy ... celebrates the return of chance to the fundamental affairs of the world.' (p.291)
Thirdly, the all importance of symmetry in the gauge field theory with force as a medium to maintain the invariance and particles as messengers of symmetry.
When one reads a book about the fate of mankind in (or and) the universe, one encounters nearly always approaches from new angles. Timothy Ferris' book is in that league.
I have only one small remark: the short personal biography of Einstein is not correct.
Not to be missed.
I also recommend strongly the works of Lee Smolin and Richard Dawkins.

Rating:
Summary: I loved this book!
Review: One of the most enjoyable books I've read. Ferris has sparked my new-found interest in science and physics. I liked this book even better than "A Brief History of Time".

Rating:
Summary: Physics and Story-Telling
Review: Physics that reads like a story; prose that runs like a musical comp: traits not often found together in the best of literature are found here. You will want to take years to read this text of the very discoverable majesties of our each own universe.

Rating:
Summary: Old Ideas in science revisited, New ideas introduced
Review: Professor Ferris 1988 work is absolutely worth of pursuing - beautiful writing style, fantastic read. He researched historical details about voyages, discoveries and lives of the greatest philosophers and scientists. He tells us how people started to observe and realize the depth of the Universe.
Final chapters depict selected important subjects of particle physics, quantum mysteries and SETI dilemma. I have rarely seen topics like: symmetry-invariance, gauge field theory, description of particle accelerator, vacuum inflation (just to mention a few) so brilliantly presented. Topped with practical glossary - book ends where Alan Guth proposed his inflation hypothesis. This book is better than Hawking's original "The Brief History of Time" and would be better (if not a date of publishing) than Fred Adams "Origins of Existence". Robert Kirshner's "Extravagant Universe" would be the good choice to get more updated and ready to absorb whatever new is coming from the space - unless professor Feriss updates his great masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: No better book on the history of science
Review: Simply put, this is the best book on cosmology--in fact, the history of scientific thought itself--that I've ever read (and re-read!) Engrossing, poetic, insightful, with nary a math equation to get in the way, the book is breathtaking in its scope yet highly readable. Full of anecdotes about famous thinkers through the centuries, it leads the reader on an adventure into the minds of brilliant and eccentric trendsetters in science, while vividly presenting the ideas that changed our understanding of the cosmos.The author, well-versed in the latest cosmological theories as well as the historical precedences leading to modern-day science as we know it, presents it all with such panache that both the layman AND the scientifically astute will come away enchanted. Highly recommended for astronomy buffs as well as anyone interested in the fundamental foundations of science.

Rating:
Summary: Coming of Age
Review: The book Coming of Age in the Milky Way is a spectacular accomplishment in science writing. Even though this is a history, it is as interesting and enthralling as any adventure novel. This book is excellent for people who are interested in many different topics including ancient Greece, modern physics, and astronomy.

The main topic of Coming of Age is the advance of science as we know it today, from the Earth centred universe, to the Heliocentric, and all the way up to the Expanding. Though the author may draw some conclusions I do not agree with, each of the ideas and theories are presented equally, whether they came from Eienstein or Aristotle. The way that the information is introduced is both easy to understand and interesting, and Timothy Ferris's style is pleasing to read. Since diagrams and pictures are used frequently throughout the book, some of the most difficult concepts are easier to grasp. For example, Kepler's Three Laws are extremely difficult to understand in a purely written format, but simpler when displayed visually. The facts and information are accurate, and plentiful. Over all, Coming of Age was a fantastic book loaded with interesting information.

Rating:
Summary: A good history of the sciences and Astronomy in particular.
Review: This book is an excellent tour through history of astronomy and astronomers quest to uncover our place (and time) in the universe. Ferris goes into quite a bit of detail and does not treat his readers with kid gloves. There are many interesting anecdotes about various astronomers and Ferris sometimes gives mini biographies of the more interesting/eccentric of them. Ferris starts with the greek astonomers such has hypocratus, goes through copernicus, kepler, galileo, newton, and then onto the astronmers of the last 200 years. But in his final section, he also talks about how the geosciences, and the theory of evolution began to give us a better perspective of where we fit in the universe not just in space but in time. The last chapters are devoted to the cutting edge of science - quantum physics. Ferris reports discoveries up to the point practically that this book was published! All in all, a good read for anyone interested in science and particularly in Astronomy.

Rating:
Summary: A brief history of cosmology...
Review: Timothy Ferris's book presents us with a very interesting and sweeping account of those events in our history which shaped and modified our understanding of our world, our solar system and the cosmos and our place in this mind boggling expanse of our universe. Of course these developments were made possible by the men of sciences, explorers, inventors and the discoverers whose curiosities and determination led the human race to wonder and understand our world of the very large(cosmology) and the very small(quantum physics).

2,400 years back Aristotle thought of the universe as earth-centered and the planets and stars embedded in crystal spheres. This geocentric model of universe by Aristotle/Ptolemy remained unchallenged for almost 2,000 years until Copernicus offered us the more correct heliocentric model which was somewhat flawed in the sense that the planets' orbits were circular and not elliptic and the sun being at THE centre of the whole universe. Later on it was corrected by Kepler (greatly helped by Tycho Brahe's observational data) and proved by Galileo through his telescope.

This book then takes us to further developments in cosmology - the discovery that there are myriad more galaxies in our universe than just our Milky Way as previously understood, the study of the origin of our universe i.e. cosmogony, the expanding universe, big bang, inflationary universe, astrophysics, other stellar objects like nebulae, quasars, pulsars, black holes etc.. Mr. Ferris will also take the readers on a brief tour of relativity theory, quantum theory, standard model/gauge theory and superstrings.

The writing style is interesting and easy to understand and meant for general readers as well as cosmology enthusiasts. This is definitely one of the few popular books to deal with the history of sciences especially cosmology. Very enriching!!