Customer Reviews:
Wonderful Illustrations and Explanations!.......2004-01-31
My copy of this book is well-loved, annotated, and flagged in many places. It is not a perfect book (see commentary in "Early China" on certain issues, such as Major's portrayal of the Xing-de text from Mawangdui) but overall it is far more information than has been available in English to a wide audience.
Contrary to the other reviewer's comments, I relished the footnotes for their explanations and areas of further study. If you are looking for one book to understand Daoism, especially the Daoist adepts at the court of Liu An, this is the book. It blows away the pop-Daoism you find in the typical feng-shui book, and sheds light on some of that practice as well.
How to read the unreadable.......2000-04-05
John S. Major takes the impenetrable Huainan Zi and penetrates it. The book is very academic and crawls with footnotes, but then I don't think there's any other way to deal with a 2,000 year old encyclopedia from a culture we know almost nothing about. If you're after cool, cosmic Dao, this ain't the book. But if you want to know how and what the inventors of Daoism were really thinking, it definitely is.
Book Description
The Early Universe has become the standard reference on forefront topics in cosmology, particularly to the early history of the Universe. Subjects covered include primordial nubleosynthesis, baryogenesis, phases transitions, inflation, dark matter, and galaxy formation, relics such as axions, neutrinos and monopoles, and speculations about the Universe at the Planck time. The book includes more than ninety figures as well as a five-page update discussing recent developments such as the COBE results.
Customer Reviews:
Very good introduction to cosmology.......2006-05-09
The Early Universe provides an excellent introduction to the topics it covers, including the standard big bang cosmology, baryogenesis and inflation. I read Dodelson's Modern Cosmology before this text, and the two compliment each other. The Early Universe provides a more complete and physically intuitive description of the standard big bang cosmology, including the role of thermodynamics, nucleosynthesis and out-of-equilibrium dynamics. Because of the attention to the "background" dynamics, and also to baryogenesis, phase transitions, inflation, and other applications of high energy physics, one gets a better sense of the "bigger picture" with Kolb and Turner's text. On the other hand, The Early Universe lacks any technical discussion of metric perturbations and CMB analysis, which are important components of much current research. These are highly emphasized in Dodelson's text. For appropriate topics, I have found The Early Universe to be a very good reference.
Please create an audio adaptation ..........1999-06-02
To the publisher I would appreciate it if the publisher could produce an audio adaptation of this book. I would love to listen to this while I drive to work and to let my 16 month old son listen to it as a bedtime story. Arnold D Veness
Average customer rating:
- A fascinating account of early astronomical records
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Observations and Predictions of Eclipse Times by Early Astronomers (Archimedes)
J.M. Steele
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0792362985 |
Book Description
Eclipses have long been seen as important celestial phenomena, whether as omens affecting the future of kingdoms, or as useful astronomical events to help in deriving essential parameters for theories of the motion of the moon and sun. This is the first book to collect together all presently known records of timed eclipse observations and predictions from antiquity to the time of the invention of the telescope. In addition to cataloguing and assessing the accuracy of the various records, which come from regions as diverse as Ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Europe, the sources in which they are found are described in detail. Related questions such as what type of clocks were used to time the observations, how the eclipse predictions were made, and how these prediction schemes were derived from the available observations are also considered. The results of this investigation have important consequences for how we understand the relationship between observation and theory in early science and the role of astronomy in early cultures, and will be of interest to historians of science, astronomers, and ancient and medieval historians.
Customer Reviews:
A fascinating account of early astronomical records.......2000-08-05
A fascinating and readable account of astronomy in the ancient and mediaeval world. This book contains an detailed description of eclipse records and their place in early societies. Highly recommended.
Average customer rating:
- "Fruity" mixed with good science
- Rave Rave Rave
- Incredibly interesting to both reader and child
- Insanely Brilliant!
- From a cosmologist working in the field: this book is a *gem*
|
Born With a Bang: The Universe Tells Our Cosmic Story : Book 1 (Sharing Nature With Children Book)
Jennifer Morgan
Manufacturer: Dawn Publications (CA)
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Similar Items:
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From Lava to Life: The Universe Tells Our Earth's Story (Sharing Nature With Children Book)
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Mammals Who Morph: The Universe Tells Our Evolution Story (Sharing Nature With Children Book)
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Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution
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The Tree Of Life: The Wonders Of Evolution
ASIN: 1584690321 |
Book Description
In this first of a trilogy, the Universe tells its own life story of chaos and creativity, science and struggle. Time after time the Universe nearly perishes, then bravely triumphs and turns itself into new and even more spectacular forms. Eventually it turns stardust into you. This story begins in the very beginning, and ends with the formation of Earth. The second book
From Lava to Life: The Universe Tells Our Earth Story tells of tiny new living things and ends with giant dinosaurs. In the third book, mammals rise and so do you (available spring 2005).
Customer Reviews:
"Fruity" mixed with good science.......2007-03-16
I didn't realize what people meant by refering to this book as "New Age" - basically the "Universe" is narrating the story and "dreams" of people and trees and planets. The timeline and discription of big bang and star life cycles is great - but I am uncomfortable with the "wishes" and "dreams" and "feelings" of a universe.
I was looking for an age appropriate book to explain the formation of the universe to my 5 year old - and it has captured his imagination. As an atheist trying to build a good basis of science over superstition, I felt that the narration was over the top, when the science is way cool and didn't need the whole dream/wish/creator overtones.
Rave Rave Rave.......2007-03-13
I have raved about this book to everyone I know. Actually there are two in the series. As a parent, it feels good to give my child lessons on how we are all cosmically connected. These books are stunningly beautiful, rich with meaning, truth, science and laced with spirituality.
Incredibly interesting to both reader and child.......2007-02-05
It takes a great deal of skill to reduce as complex a concept as the creation of the universe to a form a five year old child can understand. My grandson was captivated and asked many questions and I learned a few things also. We promptly read the second book in the series and have ordered the third.
Insanely Brilliant!.......2006-11-11
Jennifer Morgan is a brilliantly eccentric writer.
I read this book with my daughters when they were in kindergarten - I helped with the big words, of course, and with some of the scientific concepts. Morgan's unusual idea of introducing cosmology to young children by treating the origin and development of the universe as an autobiographical tale, narrated in first person by the Universe herself, actually works. The brilliantly colorful illustrations are a great complement to the text, and kids (and, I suspect, most adults) can acquire some serious knowledge while enjoying themselves by going through this book.
Most importantly, the book is startlingly accurate. It is all too tempting for children's authors to cut corners and present over-simplified half-truths when trying to explain serious science to young kids. Morgan avoids that trap.
I have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Stanford, and I looked through the book carefully for any scientific errors.
I found none.
I do wish Morgan had discussed the "inflationary scenario," now generally favored by cosmologists, that suggests that the Big Bang was precipitated out of the frenetic expansion of a much larger super-universe. But, Morgan might reasonably object that the inflationary theory is still speculative, whereas the information she presents in this book is solidly established science.
Some parents might also object that treating the Universe as a person reeks too much of New Age nature-worship pantheism. Such a criticism would be unwarranted - Morgan, after all, knows that the Universe is not actually a human being, and even young readers should be able to see this as simply an engaging storytelling device. Any child who enjoys watching talking planes or a purple dinosaur on TV, while knowing that neither is real, can appreciate Morgan's narrative approach. This book should be of value to any family, regardless of religious or philosophical orientation, who possess a serious interest in science or nature.
The educational theorist Kieran Egan has argued that the best way to educate children is to center their education around grand stories. It is hard to imagine any story grander than the birth and development of the universe.
Our kids learn all sorts of stories in school and through popular culture. But too few of those stories serve one of the central needs of education - encouraging the student to transcend his own childish egocentrism and acquire a broader, transcendent perspective. To become an educated person, indeed to become a mature adult, requires such a perspective, but our society and our educational system too rarely nurture it, despite the fact that children are hungry for grand and exotic stories that transcend their own narrow lives.
It is all too easy to graduate even from a prestigious university in America with no comprehension of the stupendous discoveries human beings have made during the last hundred years concerning the nature of our universe.
That is horribly sad - we are depriving our children of grand and exciting truths.
Get "Born With a Bang" for your kids (or grandkids). It's a wonderful book. Jennifer Morgan did a great job.
From a cosmologist working in the field: this book is a *gem*.......2006-10-15
I'll preface this by saying that i'm an experimental cosmologist (working on weak gravitational lensing to determine galaxy cluster dark matter profiles) and have also worked in high energy particle physics, so i come at this book from a particular angle of having a fairly in-depth background of the subject matter.
Having said this, i want to *strongly applaud* this book, and would like to point out that of the several reviews given above, most are quite positive, and the only two highly negative ones are simply *missing the point* of the book -- it is *not* supposed to give anyone a detailed explanation of cosmology as we understand it scientifically today. there are plenty of other books to do that. rather -- this book is supposed to try to make some sense of what our current picture is in a much more organic, humane, emotional, spiritual, and yea, *cosmic* sense than most of the popular or scientific literature of cosmology out there today does.
For those familiar with Carl Sagan's work, and particularly "Cosmos" from the 1980's -- this is very much done in that vein, and i am pretty sure Carl would have heartily approved.
As a reader might gather from my words, i do *not* fit into the classical stereotype of scientist with a mechanistic, rational, Universe-as-clockwork type view that has been the primary paradigm in science since Cartesian times, but then, neither did Carl, and neither do more and more modern scientists. and Carl's manner of conveying science resonated with the public and inspired them likely more than *any* other modern physical scientist.
Further, i have thought deeply about the human aspects of science also in my journey along the scientific path, and it's clear to me that the paradigm one uses to describe whatever our scientific picture of the Universe and how it came into being and how it evolved up until today is, at any given time in human history, is critical in how we approach not only science, but every aspect of our lives, from our interactions with Nature, to how we treat non-human animals, to our picture of and dealings with others of our own species. when it comes down to it, how we picture the non-living aspects of our Universe and its whole history, *matters*, a lot.
And i love the way that J. Morgan and D. Andersen picture it in this book (and i also hope to communicate directly with them sometime). i love how they interpret and explain their understanding of everything from the Big Bang itself, and what came "before", to the limitations in our current picture of cosmology, to the specific aspects of BBN (Big Bang Nucleosynthesis), initial star formation, galaxy evolution, and supernova processes, leading ultimately to *us*.
No, this is not going to appeal to every scientist out there, nor every person -- but i would suggest this is from not a lack in the *book*, but from some measure of the imagination needed in our species and society to evolve to a more mature species in our wondrous Universe.
Also, the glossary, more detailed cosmic timeline history, book references, and quotes from working scientists in the back are also quite appreciated and helpful to point people in good directions for more in-depth understanding and further reading.
There could be much more said about many of these topics, but let me simply close by saying that i came across this book while dropping in on a sustainability conference of a local environmental group in my area, and the title intrigued me enough to start paging through it. and even after realizing it was a children's book, the flow of the words and the wonderful evocative paintings drew me in to continue reading it. and it is a *rare* book or paper on cosmology (and believe me, i have occasion to read a good number) that brings tears to my eyes with their beauty and power to stir the soul, as certain lines in this book did.
In Adventure-
MSSG
(ps. any feedback is welcomed!)
Book Description
Starting with the description of our home galaxy the Milky Way, this cogently written textbook introduces the reader to the astronomy of galaxies, their structure, active galactic nuclei, evolution and large scale distribution. Then, from the extensive and thorough introduction to modern observational and theoretical cosmology, the text turns to the formation of structures and astronomical objects in the early universe. The basics of classical astronomy and stellar astrophysics needed for extragalactic astronomy are given in the appendix.
In particular, Peter Schneider’s Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology has the goal of imparting the fundamental knowledge of this fascinating subfield of astronomy, while leading readers to the forefront of astronomical research. But it seeks to accomplish this not only with extensive textual information and insights. In addition, the author’s evident admiration for the workings of the universe that shines through the lines and the many supporting color illustrations will deeply inspire the reader.
While this book has grown out of introductory university courses on astronomy and astrophysics, it will not only be appreciated by undergraduate students and lecturers. Through the comprehensive coverage of the field, even graduate students and researchers specializing in related fields will appreciate it as reliable reference.
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Chaucer and the Universe of Learning
Ann W. Astell
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
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Geminos's "Introduction to the Phenomena": A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy
James Evans , and
J. Lennart Berggren
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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ASIN: 069112339X |
Book Description
This is the first complete English translation of Geminos's Introduction to the Phenomena--one of the most important and interesting astronomical works of its type to have survived from Greek antiquity. Gracefully and charmingly written, Geminos's first-century BC textbook for beginning students of astronomy can now be read straight through with understanding and enjoyment by a wider audience than ever before. James Evans and Lennart Berggren's accurate and readable translation is accompanied by a thorough introduction and commentary that set Geminos's work in its historical, scientific, and philosophical context. This book is generously illustrated with diagrams from medieval manuscripts of Geminos's text, as well as drawings and photographs of ancient astronomical instruments. It will be of great interest to students of the history of science, to classicists, and to professional and amateur astronomers who seek to learn more about the origins of their science.
Geminos provides a clear view of Greek astronomy in the period between Hipparchos and Ptolemy, treating such subjects as the zodiac, the constellations, the theory of the celestial sphere, lunar cycles, and eclipses. Most significantly, Geminos gives us the earliest detailed discussion of Babylonian astronomy by a Greek writer, thus offering valuable insight into the cross-cultural transmission of astronomical knowledge in antiquity.
Book Description
This is a textbook for graduate students in astrophysics. The author is extremely well known not only as an astrophysicist but also as a writer of superb talent. The presentation is clear and the book should become a favourite text for students. It deals with the matter and radiation content of the universe, and the formation of galaxies, and it gives a comprehensive introduction to relativistic astrophysics as needed for the clarification of cosmological ideas.
Customer Reviews:
Best single volume text for galaxy formation and the formation of structure.......2006-03-12
This is an oustanding text on the physics of the formation of structure in the Universe. It is written at the level of a beginning graduate student in physics or astronomy, and will provide sufficient background for the student to begin serious research in this area. The text is well written and the topics well chosen. It was written in 1998, so it is already a bit dated (it obviously contains nothing about the most recent advances in dark energy), but all the basics are here. This explains what we know and what we don't know about how and why clusters and galaxies form, dark matter, and the Big Bang.
Book Description
`Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind Not by the sun's rays, nor the bright shafts of day, Must be dispersed, as is most necessary, But by the face of nature and her laws.' Lucretius' poem On the Nature of the Universe combines a scientific and philosophical treatise with some of the greatest poetry ever written. With intense moral fervour Lucretius demonstrates to humanity that in death there is nothing to fear since the soul is mortal, and the world and everything in it is governed not by the gods, but by the mechanical laws of nature. By believing this, men can live in peace of mind and happiness. Lucretius bases his argument on the atomic theory expounded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus. His poem explores sensation, sex, cosmology, meteorology, and geology through acute observation of the beauties of the natural world and with moving sympathy for man's place in it. Sir Ronald Melville's accessible and accurate verse translation is complemented by an introduction and notes situating Lucretius' scientific theories within the thought of 1st century BCE Rome and discussing the Epicurean philosophy that was his inspiration and why the issues Lucretius' poem raisies about the scientific and poetical views of the world continue to be important.
Customer Reviews:
"Philosophy, Science, and Poetry".......2002-01-24
Lucretius, the Epicurean poet of the first century BC, was immortalized for his work "On the Nature of the Universe," which is a brilliant manifestation of Epicurius' atomic theory by a means of hexametrical verse tinged with lucid philosophy. This work has stood for so long as a classic monument of Latin poetry not only since it contains such a bounty of sweet verse and song, but also for the simple fact that Lucretius' work was the most modern for its time. This furthermore allowed "On the Nature of the Universe" to hold the reins of superiority--with regards to its modernity of course--for many subsequent generations. Lucretius' stark conviction that the world is not controlled by the gods, that man is solely in control of his destiny on earth, and that the soul perishes with the body, no doubt aroused the conservative sentiments of the time; and for this reason the work endures due to the epic and timeless battle between Science and Religion. For anyone interested in the Greco-Roman Classics, poetry, or just good literature, Lucretius' masterpiece will be an excellent choice.
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