The Book of the Cosmos

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: Dr. Danielson was actually my professor for first year Honors English here at UBC. He was an absolutly incredible prof, and his love for the cosmos really comes through in this book.

Rating:
Summary: review The Book of the Cosmos: Imagining the Universe from H
Review: great/lots of info/will refer to family and friends

Rating:
Summary: I'm STILL having fun with this book
Review: I really liked this book. It is fun reading and gets you thinking about very big questions.

As a science buff, I'm used to reading the latest books on physics, cosmology, etc. by modern-day leading scientists. But in this book, you get to see how the best thinkers of each age took what was known and put it together to explain the universe. And you get to see it in their own words, supplemented by Danielson's concise but insightful commentary.

This seems to me a book for both non-scientist and scientist. For the non-scientist, Danielson makes even the latest physics very understandable. For example, his description of Einsteinian gravity in the Wheeler chapter is as accessible an explanation of general relativity as I have seen in any popular book, and far better than those of my old introductory physics books. Any high schooler should understand it. Danielson seems to be able to draw out the essential ideas from both modern and ancient scientists and present them in a non-technical but accurate way. He also includes some very fun contributions, such as George Bernard Shaw's hilarious toast to Albert Einstein.

And I like the way each thinker's thoughts are presented in a short chapter-sort of bite-size stories. This means a person can pick it up and put it down without losing the thread. The chapters are presented almost exclusively in historical order, but I chose to hop around from era to era. In fact, the historical order lets you hop around without losing the sense of the historical context. I found it fun picking up the book and deciding which big name I was going to read next.

I think scientists should like the book too and find it valuable. Even though I have extensive science training and a degree in physics, I still did not have a good sense of the real contributions or views of most of the earlier scientists such as Copernicus, Descartes, etc., or of what was known about the universe and when, or how it all has come together in the modern view. To take just one example, I did not imagine that Ptolemy knew so much about the cosmos, including the facts that the earth is spherical and that it is a small, point-like object relative to the size of the "heavens." And he knew this based on a combination of careful observation and deep thinking that to me makes him the intellectual equal of virtually any modern cosmologist. I never viewed him this way before.

Mostly, though, it is fun having Feynman side by side with Copernicus, and Weinberg with Plato and even Milton, all struggling to come to terms with the nature of the universe. By his artful yet precisely constructed commentary, Danielson somehow brings them into a kind of conversation together. It makes for a surprisingly gripping read, and I continue to go back to certain chapters as I have discussions with friends (and think more) about what different thinkers thought way back when.

I personally would highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: I'm STILL having fun with this book
Review: I really liked this book. It is fun reading and gets you thinking about very big questions.

As a science buff, I'm used to reading the latest books on physics, cosmology, etc. by modern-day leading scientists. But in this book, you get to see how the best thinkers of each age took what was known and put it together to explain the universe. And you get to see it in their own words, supplemented by Danielson's concise but insightful commentary.

This seems to me a book for both non-scientist and scientist. For the non-scientist, Danielson makes even the latest physics very understandable. For example, his description of Einsteinian gravity in the Wheeler chapter is as accessible an explanation of general relativity as I have seen in any popular book, and far better than those of my old introductory physics books. Any high schooler should understand it. Danielson seems to be able to draw out the essential ideas from both modern and ancient scientists and present them in a non-technical but accurate way. He also includes some very fun contributions, such as George Bernard Shaw's hilarious toast to Albert Einstein.

And I like the way each thinker's thoughts are presented in a short chapter-sort of bite-size stories. This means a person can pick it up and put it down without losing the thread. The chapters are presented almost exclusively in historical order, but I chose to hop around from era to era. In fact, the historical order lets you hop around without losing the sense of the historical context. I found it fun picking up the book and deciding which big name I was going to read next.

I think scientists should like the book too and find it valuable. Even though I have extensive science training and a degree in physics, I still did not have a good sense of the real contributions or views of most of the earlier scientists such as Copernicus, Descartes, etc., or of what was known about the universe and when, or how it all has come together in the modern view. To take just one example, I did not imagine that Ptolemy knew so much about the cosmos, including the facts that the earth is spherical and that it is a small, point-like object relative to the size of the "heavens." And he knew this based on a combination of careful observation and deep thinking that to me makes him the intellectual equal of virtually any modern cosmologist. I never viewed him this way before.

Mostly, though, it is fun having Feynman side by side with Copernicus, and Weinberg with Plato and even Milton, all struggling to come to terms with the nature of the universe. By his artful yet precisely constructed commentary, Danielson somehow brings them into a kind of conversation together. It makes for a surprisingly gripping read, and I continue to go back to certain chapters as I have discussions with friends (and think more) about what different thinkers thought way back when.

I personally would highly recommend it.