On the Nature of the Universe (Penguin Classics)

Customer Reviews:

Nothing can ever be created out of nothing, even by divine power.......2006-12-18

Lucretius's book is an important text in the history of mankind.
Its basic philosophy is Epicureanism: `If a man would guide his life by true philosophy, he will find ample riches in a modest livelihood enjoyed with a tranquil mind', because `greed and lust of power make man unhappy. The kings were killed!'
Lucretius adopts the method of logical deduction in his scientific research (e.g., why a centaur cannot exist).
He is a perfect materialist, even a physicalist. For him, there was never a body/mind problem: `the mind, which we often call the intellect, is part of man, no less than hand or foot or eyes.' Mind and spirit are both composed of matter only. `Vain is the suggestion that the spirit is immortal.'
He was even a proto-Darwinist: `monstrous and misshapen births were created. Nature debarred them from increase', and an anti-creationist (see title).
He was fiercely against religion, which he called pure superstition: `Iphigenia, a sinless victim to a sinful rite. Such are the heights of wickedness to which men are driven by superstition.'
`The universe was certainly not created for us by divine power. It is so full of imperfections. Why do changing seasons bring pestilence?'
Piety is pure Phariseism: `This is not piety, this kowtowing and prostration on the ground. For all his prayers, the tornado does not relax.'
He is a fine psychologist: `Look at man in the midst of doubt and danger and you will learn in his hour of adversity what he really is. The mask is torn off.'
His forceful painting of the Athenian plague in 430 B.C. is worth a Boccaccio.

Of course, this book is partly very naïve. But it constitutes a milestone in Western philosophy, as it is the product of totally independent, religion-free speculation, written by a superb free mind.
A must read for all historians of science and philosophy, and lovers of classical literature.

From the Heart and Mind of a Latin Student.......2005-02-02

Having undertaken the task of translating large chunks of De Rerum Natura, I was directed to this translation of the text in order to help me fill in the gaps present in the Latin selections. (And this means that I have not only translated much of the text myself, but have been forced to submit COMMENTARY on my understanding of Lucretius.) This translation by Latham fulfils my needs well and is good on several levels: it is close to the literal (and very raw) translation from the original Latin text, while at the same time providing the reader with an...aura of poetic mastery present in Lucretius' writing. This text can only seem boring when compared to contemporary "fluff"--in truth, it is a masterful translation of the most exhilarating work, one that deals not only with the issue of Death, but with the difficulty of Existence. Read for yourself!

Very interesting, very well written and translated........2003-12-15

Lucretius' work "On the Nature of the Universe" is surely one of the seminal works in the history of science. His analysis (some of which was deductive, some inductive) anticipated modern scientific theories by about 1800 years. His statement of what became the First and Second laws of Thermodynamics, his anticipation of the Cosmological Principle, along with some of the Laws of Motion (if I remember correctly), are absolutely astounding. It just goes to show that people living 2000 years ago were just as observant and intelligible as people are today (if not more so). On top of the science that is contained in the work, the fact that it was originally composed in poetic form makes it even more praiseworthy. Furthermore, the prose translation is outstanding. I've never read a translation of an ancient philosophical work that was as easy to read as this one was. Being a Christian, I cannot accept his atheistic presuppositions, but I can certainly appreciate his work as being vital to the development of philosophy. He certainly raised some very interesting and important questions that people have struggled to answer and come to grips with since Lucretius' time. I would recommend this book to anybody with an interest in philosophy and science.

Modern Science or Ancient Philosophy?.......2003-07-15

This book was a real eye-opener. I went into it expecting to read something ancient, but instead found something that sounded suspiciously modern. It was like reading an ancient prophecy of the worldview of many of today's scientists.

This makes me wonder. If the view that all things are the unplanned results of blind forces is a discovery of modern science, then why were people like Lucretius proclaiming it 2000 years ago? Far from making Lucretius prophetic, this makes some of modern science seem like a type of Epicureanism. It would be interesting to know how much of science's view of the nature of the universe owes its origin to philosophy as opposed to observation.

I appreciate Penguin Classics for putting out a very easy and readable prose version of Lucretius's poem. Unlike some of the other reviewers of this version, I recommend it highly. It's the right choice for anyone who's interested in getting to what Lucretius said without having to wade through a bunch of poetry to do it.

Great Book, Bad Edition [Penguin].......2002-08-29

This is my favorite book. I've been through three different copies: a now out-of-print Classics Club copy, the Loeb Classics Library copy with the original Latin facing the English text, and this Penguin edition. The Penguin is by far the worst of those three. Among its faults is the fact that it's translated into prose, which makes for an easier read but in the end dumbs down the text and reduces it in beauty; and while the footnotes are sometimes informative, most of them I find insulting to both the reader's and Lucretius's intelligence. Go with the Loeb, or some other edition; chances are it's better than this one.

Impossibility : The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits

Average customer rating:

The End of Science
The impossible dream...
Rich in interesting ideas Understanding through understanding what we cannot understand
Very unimpressive
A torturous text on paradoxes of knowing what is unknowable

Impossibility : The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits
John D. Barrow
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0198518900

Amazon.com

Perhaps it's a harbinger of the end of science that so much attention is being paid to the impossible. In Impossibility, astronomer John D. Barrow outlines a maturation pattern for areas of deep human inquiry that includes an adolescence of exciting discoveries, new formulas, and unusual predictions. As science has matured, our confidence in it has grown. We expect that science has answers, that its predictive powers are mostly accurate. But what happens when the science gets old? Oddly enough, it seems to have started trying to find the end of its own usefulness--its formulas "predict that there are things which they cannot predict, observations which cannot be made, statements whose truth they can neither affirm nor deny."

Barrow's book is a fairly tough read, delving into topics as varied as theology, art, mathematics, and cosmology in its quest to define impossibility. But for those who have noticed that, "Scientists seem no longer content merely to describe what they have done or what Nature is like; they are keen to tell their audience what their discoveries mean for an ever-widening range of deep philosophical questions," Impossibility is an intriguing look at the evolution of our thoughts on knowing everything. Without limits, there would be no science, and though our imaginations may roam freely through the realms of impossibility, we may find in the end that "what cannot be known is more revealing than what can." --Therese Littleton

Book Description

John Barrow is increasingly recognized as one of our most elegant and accomplished science writers, a brilliant commentator on cosmology, mathematics, and modern physics. Barrow now tackles the heady topic of impossibility, in perhaps his strongest book yet.
Writing with grace and insight, Barrow argues convincingly that there are limits to human discovery, that there are things that are ultimately unknowable, undoable, or unreachable. He first examines the limits on scientific inquiry imposed by the deficiencies of the human mind: our brain
evolved to meet the demands of our immediate environment, Barrow notes, and much that lies outside this small circle may also lie outside our understanding. Barrow investigates practical impossibilities, such as those imposed by complexity, uncomputability, or the finiteness of time, space, and
resources. Is the universe finite or infinite? Can information be transmitted faster than the speed of light? The book also examines the deeper theoretical restrictions on our ability to know, including Godel's theorem--which proved that there were things that could not be proved--and Arrow's
Impossibility theorem about democratic voting systems. Finally, having explored the limits imposed on us from without, Barrow considers whether there are limits we should impose upon ourselves. For instance, if the secrets of the atom are to be found only by recreating extreme environments at great
financial cost, just how much should we devote to that quest?
Weaving together this intriguing tapestry, he illuminates some of the most profound questions of science, from the possibility of time travel to the very structure of the universe.

Customer Reviews:

The End of Science.......2007-09-22

This work is informative, but far less profound/informative/entertaining (in my opinion)than the easily read/understood "opus" by John Horgan entitled...."The End of Science."

The impossible dream..........2007-04-16

"I believe that knowledge is fractal. Whatever we learn -- what remains however small it seems -- is infinitely complex."

Isaac Asimov, from his autobiography "I Asimov"

In 1896, the US Patent Office seriously considered closing down on the theory that everything that was to be discovered had already been discovered. One need not look merely at the past one hundred or so years to see that there is no danger that plans to close the patent office will not soon be resurrected.

In this book, Oxford University's John Barrow considers the inherent limits of knowability...an endeavor particularly germaine in the wake of Heisenberg's uncertainty, Einstein's relativity and of course Godel's incompleteness theorem...a subject DEFINATELY separate and apart from the closure of the US Patent Office because the whereas the closure of the US Patent Office would denote a completion of discovery, considerations of impossibility denote the limits of knowledge itself.

Significantly, Barrow recognizes and addresses three key areas wherein a "the science limits and the limits of science" play a role:

1) Observer bias: In other words, the inherent limits of the human ability to percieve. In this regard, our partial view of the spectrum of visible light, auditory sound, and experiential feeling are but three examples;

2) The limits of technology: In other words, the inherent limits of the tools we use to devine truth. Our microscopes only view so microscopically. Our technologies only piece reality so deeply.

3) The limits of knowability itself: In this regard, Heisenberg's uncertainty priniciple that we cannot know both a subatomic particles speed and location is an easy example. However for Barrow, Godel's incompleteness theorem is a harder example.

According to Barrow while its true that Godel's theorem says that any system sufficiently complicated to involve Godelian arithematic would suffer the production of formally unprovable propositions, for Barrow it is not a given that an ultimate theory of everything as denoted by modern physics would constitute such a "theory of everthing." As he puts it, even Euclidian geomotry would not constitute such a system.

Barrow's understandable conservatism aside, it seems unlikely to be gainsaid that modern string theory -- consisting of anywhere from 10 to 26 dimensions -- let alone Einsteinian relativism would constitute such a system.

In other words, while covering the main points, perhaps Barrow is a tad to conservative in hedging his bets that ultimate truth -- as would posited by a theory of everything -- is unknowable.

In his closing chapters, Barrow addresses impossibility in relation to free will. If complete knowledge is unknowable then certainly such unknowability impacts free will.

Perhaps Barrow himself or others will return to write on this important topic and when they do perhaps they will find that free will observes the same parementers outlined by choas theory...that the disorder yields itself to predictable patterns or order.

In that sense, perhaps a complete survey of impossibility will outline the outer contours of what, itself, ultimately is.

Rich in interesting ideas Understanding through understanding what we cannot understand.......2006-04-10

I read a text like this with the understanding that I am not going to understand everything in it. I read a text like this also with the understanding that I will probably at certain points disagree with it.
But I first and above all read a text like this to extend my own thought, to learn new ideas, to go beyond the understanding I have previously had of the subject.
The subject of ' impossibility' has been with me since I was a small child. I have always tried to understand how God could understand and know everything, when 'everything' seemed to me to be often so tremendously small and trivial, as if for instance the size and weight as they are changing of every particule of dirt and dust. The famous paradoxes of ' impossibility' relating to God are analyzed by Barrow in this book , the question of whether God can create a stone too heavy for God to lift - The answers which would seem to make God's existence and omniscence incompatible, it seems to me can always be trumped by the idea that our logic and our thought may simply not comprehend a 'dimension' of being , which is God's alone.
In any case Barrow studies the idea of impossibility here in a variety of different contexts. In one he wants to show how crucial it is to the development of scientific inquiry and the establishing of laws of Nature.
In all of this work I find Barrow's tone and intelligence admirable. He shows a great deal of modesty despite his great grasp of very complicated subjects. I will just cite one sample of this from his concluding chapter.
"All the great questions about the nature of the Universe- from its beginning to its end- turn out to be unanswerable. There is a fundamental divide between the part of the Universe that we can observe, and the entire, possibly, infinite whole. There is a visusal horizon beyoned which we cannot see or know. Again there is a positive side to this limitation. If it did not exist, then nor would we: every movement of every star and galaxy would be felt here and now."
His fundamental idea is in a sense that our limitations in knowledge add to our world and being. As he concludes, "Ultimately, we may even find that the fractal edge of our knowledge of the Universe defines its character more precisely than its contents, that what cannot be known is more revealing than what can"
This is wonderfully rich work of thought, and most highly recommended to all who would better understand our world, through understanding what we cannot understand about it .

Very unimpressive.......2005-11-30

There are plenty of science books for the layman that I like. This sure isn't one of them.

We start by discovering that there are some things which are impossible! For example, given the definitions of two, four, and five, two plus two can't equal five and not four. You may reply that since I'm only human, can I be sure of this? After all, humans can be wrong. Well, yes, if you say that two plus two is five, um, I know which human will be wrong!

Similarly, nobody can make two plus two into five. Or pi into five. We may need to be a little more careful with pi, and define it as four times the arctangent of 1, because the measured circumferences of real circles (in curved space) are often something other than pi times their measured diameters, of course. But nobody can make pi into 5, not even God. Um, does that mean that God is not really all-powerful?

If you think that what I've said so far is profound, maybe this book is for you!

We also learn some more elementary stuff, such as c being the maximum speed, and that there is a limit to the accuracy with which we can simultaneously know both a particle's position and its momentum.

The author then makes fun of Comte, the originator of Positivism. Comte sure had some really silly ideas. Still, the basic idea of basing one's knowledge on empirical data is totally sound, and I think we ought to give him some credit for that. Barrow then talks about three of the problems that Du Bois-Raymond said were unsolvable, back in 1880. These are the origin of natural forces and the nature of matter, the origin and nature of consciousness and sensation, and the problem of free will. Obviously, we've made plenty of progress on the first two problems (using empirical data, no less!) and the third problem may turn out to be mostly semantic.

After that, the book goes downhill. We see discussions of the limits of science, of complexity, of possibilities for manipulating our environment, and of the difficulty of predicting an unambiguous future given a set of initial conditions. But I found all this very unimpressive.

The sixth chapter is on cosmology, and it's certainly the best chapter of the book. It even gets into questions such as the natural selection of universes and whether the Universe had a beginning.

Unfortunately, we then get into an amazingly weak and idiotic chapter on time travel. Look, folks, going into the past is totally impossible, for semantic reasons. Even if we could appear to do it, we'd have to call it something else in order to communicate in an unambiguous manner. In theory, we might be able to go into something similar to the past (but different, since we were not part of it originally). Or bring the past into the present. But it isn't English to say we could go into the past. Barrow ignores all this, and wonders about "grandfather paradoxes!" If you went into the something like the past, could you kill what appeared to be your now dead grandfather? Well, obviously you could. Would that be a paradox? No. If we changed the "past" would it ever have existed? Yes. After all, people die, but we do not claim that they never existed! Barrow is simply out of his depth in this chapter.

The book concludes with a discussion of Godel's incompleteness theorem. Godel showed that some truth of some mathematical statements can not be ascertained. Now, does this stymie Physics? To his credit, Barrow speculates that it may not, and he has a reasonable argument here. And there is some discussion of implications about free will, which also seems reasonable. Still, this book has remarkably little content, and I did not like it. Nor do I recommend it. Barrow and Tipler's "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle," although it has some problems as well, is a much better book

A torturous text on paradoxes of knowing what is unknowable.......2003-09-12

Is science fast coming to an end? Can we arrive at a so-called theory of everything? Are there limits to our abilities to discover the nature of reality?

In trying to tackle such questions, Astronomer John D. Barrow invites readers to an intriguing journey which I understood as twofold. First, it promises to show how the notion of impossibility is far subtler than everyday language suggests and to demonstrate how fundamental are the limitations to science (in the broadest sense of human capability to discover and know things). To support this contention, he serves up a menu of what seems like disjointed readings into the limits of human endeavor as demonstrated in findings in different fields such as astronomy, mathematics, psychology, economics, and others. Each of these readings, which are sub-sections of chapters, is individually interesting and the book overall is not deeply technical, -- and thus remains accessible to the truly curious generalist reader. It covers some familiar basic ideas in different fields, which all depict the notions of limits and impossibility, whether in scientific discovery or in social decision-making. The topics range from the technical bounds to scientific experiments, such the speed of light and difficulties of producing the extremely high temperatures not found on earth which are needed to test our version of the forces of nature, to Arrow's impossibility theorem on the inability to generate a consistent ranking of social preferences based on an aggregation of ranking of individual preferences.

Unfortunately, these sub-sections of chapters, while individually very interesting and clearly written, tend to conflate different ideas of impossibility rather than leading to a straightforward conclusion on the fundamental limitations of human endeavors of creation and discovery.

The secondary thrust of the book is on the nature of reality itself. Barrow argues that the kind of limitations he enumerates defines the universe more powerfully than a list of what we think is possible. In fact, he contends that this ?impossible? nature of the universe is what itself allows the self-reflection consciousness of humans, a rather intriguing, if not entirely novel, proposition.

My judgment on this book is a complex as the range of subjects the author attempts to cover. It is without doubt an intriguing set of propositions loosely connected with some related discussion on the history of scientific thought. I found the discussion of nineteenth century notions of impossibility very informative. However, the book may achieve its appeal by overstating its case (QUOTE the astronomers? desire to understand the structure of the universe is doomed merely to scratch the surface of the cosmological problem UNQUOTE) and resorting to fast and loose comparisons of paradoxes and limits which are well-known to practitioners in a number of different fields. Ultimately, the book gives a sense of having covered too much, and thus providing too little in any given area.

I confess that notwithstanding these reservations, I enjoyed reading this somewhat unusual book. If you do have the stamina to complete this book, you might choose to do so in a non-linear fashion by working through the clear summaries of each chapter first, and then going through the chapters in your order of preference. If you manage to do all this, you are likely to enjoy another book on a different but related topic on the nature of the human mind entitled ?Figments of Reality? by Stewart and Cohen which I have also reviewed on this site.

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Good job!

Everything Works!

Spinning Through the Universe
Helen Frost
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0374371598

Book Description

Engrossing tales from the fifth grade

Every child is like
A little world with ever-changing weather,
Nights and mornings. And somehow, here we are,
Spinning through the universe together.

Unforgettable students in this fifth-grade classroom reveal their private feelings about birth and death, a missing bicycle and a first kiss, as well as their thoughts about recess, report cards, fitting in, and family.

Using a rich array of traditional poetic forms, such as sonnets, sestinas, and acrostics, Helen Frost interweaves the stories of the kids in Room 214 and their teacher. A final section giving detailed analyses of the twenty-two forms will be of special interest.

Customer Reviews:

Good job!.......2005-02-18

Spinning Through the Universe is a great book. It shows readers that not everyone has a perfect life. It shows different personalities from different points of view. We are 5th graders. We know what 5th graders are like. We think this is a great book for us to read. It is interesting, and it is beautiful. We like the poetry directions in the back.

Everything Works!.......2004-05-28

Everything works! The level of language, the teasing complexities, the discovery of personalities and little plot situations, the balanceof affirmations which also acknowledge life complexities at the 5th grade level--all of it works and is audience appropriate.

I also like the challenge of the forms and the occasional "strategic" placement of a metaphor that a young reader might have to chew in order to figure out.

Naomi is a stroke of brilliance.
In an age of kid-bashing and especially teacher-bashing, this book is such a powerful affirmation. It does not talk down to readers, and I can imagine a good teacher generating a whole sequence of discussions,assignements and projects from it.

Even though aimed at 5th graders, I could (and would love to have the opportunity to) teach a college intro. creative writing class from this book! It is an eloquent demonstration why form matters, and what form can achieve. Without pretentiousness, each poem's achievement affirms that "emoting on paper" and the alleged sacredness of one's first inspiration/ draft (typical student writer assumptions) is all a bunch of bunk.

Whether one is a 5th grader or not, teacher or not, if good poetry is in your diet, this book will nourish and feed you well.

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For lovers of poetry and prose poetry.

Models of the Universe : An Anthology of the Prose Poem

Manufacturer: Oberlin College Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

A comprehensive anthology of one of the world's most fascinating literary hybrids, from its beginnings up to the present day. Drawing both on the prose poem's chronological development and on its polylingual and multicultural manifestations, this book assembles the best examples that can be found, from Turgenev and Baudelaire through Stein and Kafka to Simic and Edson and beyond. This collection should give pleasure and insight to its readers for years to come.

Customer Reviews:

For lovers of poetry and prose poetry........1996-05-25

The prose poem, as noted in the introduction to this wonderful anthology, has had a long and varied history. Widely regarded as an outsider to poetry, and rejected by many critics, the prose poem reminds us that the nature of poetry itself is the continual act of questioning and pushing the boundaries of definition. With examples from the very first prose poet, Aloysius Bertrand, all the way to the present, this anthology deserves a prominent place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the past, present, and future of poetry.

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Thank you, Professor, for a charming book
Shape and Form - Geometry and Cosmology
Perhaps Osserman bit off more than he could chew...
comes up short
A Meaty Lil' Package

Poetry of the Universe
Robert Osserman
Manufacturer: Anchor
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385474296
Release Date: 1996-01-15

Customer Reviews:

Thank you, Professor, for a charming book.......2004-04-13

This is a charming book, with a graceful pace and engaging illustrations. The transparency and accessibility of this book are a gift to the reader, who is brought through complex material in a gentle way. I suspect that technically advanced readers may find some of the material fairly elementary, but may still find pleasure in the beauty of this book.

I should here confess that as a math major I took a course from Professor Osserman on linear algebra about 30 years ago. His teaching style then mirrored his writing style in this book--calm, understated, confident.

Additionally, I probably never thanked him at the time for giving me a great math experience during that course. (For non-mathematicians who haven't had such an experience, let me assure you that there is exhilaration in struggling with an initially complicated mathematical idea that suddenly becomes crystal clear.)

So, belatedly, if you're reading this review, Professor, THANK YOU!

Shape and Form - Geometry and Cosmology.......2003-10-13

This is a story of shape and form. The Poetry of the Universe answers two related questions: What is the shape of the universe and what do we mean by the curvature of space?

During the great period of global exploration the Europeans placed rigorous demands on maps, demands that stretched the capabilities of mathematicians. Robert Osserman offers a striking parallel between that endeavor and our modern efforts to unravel the form and structure of the universe.

Osserman's description of the evolution of abstract geometries is fascinating. We learn about the remarkable contributions of the combined genius of Euler, Gauss, Lobachevsky, Bolyai, Riemann, Minkowski, and Einstein to our new understanding of cosmology. Gradually, Osserman brings us full circle from the problem of representing a spherical (or elliptical) earth on a Euclidian flat map to the more difficult problem of representing an expanding universe characterized as a hypersphere.

This is a good little book and I can recommend it to a wide audience. Osserman conveys the beauty and excitement of mathematics without delving into equations. In parallel, he provides expanded footnotes in an appendix for the mathematically inclined. I suggest reading the appendix after completing each chapter, mathematically inclined or not.

In keeping with his title, he offers pertinent, often poetic quotes in each chapter such as: Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. The most distinct and beautiful statement of any truth must take at last the mathematical form. (By Edna St. Vincent Millay, Albert Einstein, and Henry David Thoreau.)

Perhaps Osserman bit off more than he could chew..........2003-10-01

I had the feeling while reading this book that Osserman had simply taken upon himself something that couldn't be done: describing the entire universe in 170 pages with sufficient clarity so that any layman could understand it.

Being one of those laymen, I must admit that I learned quite a bit from this book. Nevertheless, Osserman's jumpy writing style with frequent digressions makes for a sometimes frustrating read. I also noted a certain effort to make the "story" of the book conform to the title (which should have been something along the lines of "Curvature of the Universe").

In any case, for those (like myself) with a passive interest in cosmology and very little prior knowledge, this book is not a bad starting point. Having finished the book, I at least know where to begin looking for more information about the topic.

comes up short.......2003-02-28

The hype on the back cover, from the publisher, likens this book to the "literary bestsellers" of Watson and Thomas. However, the great shame is that this book won't last. Ultimately, the book is quite exasperating, not for the conceptual challenges it poses, but for the sloppiness of the writing a key junctures: often it is impossible to understand what is meant from what is written. On at least three occasions, I am certain that Osserman used inappropriate words. I entirely blame the editors for this failure. It is a shame because it ultimately renders the book incomprehensible to the non-specialist. I would recommend Brian Greene's recent book over this one, though the subject matter differs somewhat: Greene takes in string theory and the unified field challenge, while Osserman focuses on multidimensional space and cosmogony. Maybe it is worth reading Osserman to get a sense of the art of such books, to appreciate the quiet brilliance of Lewis Thomas. Sort of like drinking bad wine in order to really appreciate the good.

A Meaty Lil' Package.......2000-12-07

This is a marvelous little tour through the development of geometry and its ties with our ever-evolving conception of space. In fact, what tickled my cortex most here was Osserman's adeptness at conveying the strength of this tie. One feels a definite Yin-Yang interplay here, an enlightening example of how ideas are born of real-life problems, the solutions to which beget further physical inconsistencies that in turn spawn further ideas, and so on, and so on. And after being guided through the history of this mathematical development, it becomes easily clear as to why it is so difficult (in fact practically meaningless) for us to visualize a shape for our Universe. You understand why it is pointless to use conventional three-dimensional thought (what we all live with day-to-day) as a lever to comprehend the bigger picture. All of this is sewn so well into this neat little pocketbook, that it is practically a reference you wish to carry with you at all times. He misses the mark in at least one place when he stretches his discussions to include and touch upon other branches of science. His comment that our ability to see in a narrow swatch of the electromagnetic spectrum is a "quirk of physiology" is an air ball demonstrating his ignorance of photochemistry. But such shortcomings, which are extremely few, do not taint the grand picture that he has painted for us. The style is very approachable and I would highly recommend this work to anyone who seeks to grasp the whole enchilada.

Verse & Universe: Poems About Science and Mathematics

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Read My Mind
Great Book Thanks!
Science enhances Art

Verse & Universe: Poems About Science and Mathematics

Manufacturer: Milkweed Editions
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1571314075

Customer Reviews:

Read My Mind.......2004-10-25

I am a student at a magnet school for science and math. The editor of this anthology, Kurt Brown, visited my English class today. We read a good portion of the book in preparation for this visit. Though I haven't finished it yet, what I have read has left me feeling as if these poets read my mind. I have always seen the beauty in mathematics and science, which is why I go to the school I do. But language has always been a love of mine. Words, poems, they hold their own truth. Neither science nor poetry are the absolute truth, but together, as this book shows, they become something wonderful.

Great Book Thanks!.......2001-04-23

Science enhances Art, January 20, 2000 Verse & Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics edited by Kurt Brown, Milkweed Publications, 1998

In this anthology, 80 contemporary American poets react with the right sides of their brains to some of the knowledge generated by the left sides of those of their counterparts across the abyss. Science and Mathematics (S&M) has produced some dazzling conclusions about the nature of the universe. But you don't have to be one of them to be awed by black holes or double twists of DNA or the fact that your own body, like the rest of the universe, is mostly empty space . . "and for an instant, the terror of flying apart rushes through me like a close call on the interstate" (Alison Hawthorne Demming), or to be skeptical about the outrageous claim that . . "everything came from the same infinitesimal seed, about the size they say, of the dot at the end of this sentence" (Dinah Berland), or to be able to picture the universe expanding . . "like the pores of Dizzy Gillespie's cheeks when he blew his horn" (John Sokol).

The more than 250 poems in this collection illustrate how the dimensions of artistic perception have expanded as science reveals underlying and overlaying beauty, invisible to the naked eye but increasingly amenable to anyone willing to peer thorough a scope or merely read a newspaper, as did Nancy Kassel, who took a NY Times article about embryology as the inspiration for her poem Architecture. Scientists themselves are as apt to first learn of a breakthrough by reading The Post as by reading academic journals. And, as this volume shows, the language of S&M is rich with metaphoric potential, words and sounds that in the context of a poem become even more evocative . . "Its an injustice that only neuro-doctors get to say these words" (Thomas Lux). And now, S&M has given us computer graphics, as if . . "to prove its theory with a work of art" (Maura Stanton).

Most of these poems are not "about" but rather "inspired by" S&M. A few wander so far from these subjects that I wonder why they were included. Others keep to the point in a way that one can easily learn from them. I didn't know for example that the species identity of a spider can be inferred from the uniqueness of its web no matter where its built . . "it is wonderful how things work: I will tell you about it because it is interesting" (A. R. Ammons), or that the function of the pineal gland remained obscure . . "til Aaron Lerner, awash in kilos of bovine pineals, extracted melatonin . . a hormone that did bleach tadpoles" (Roald Hoffman). Rather than be educated, you might be titillated as was I by escapades recalled in Gloria Vando's depiction of a planetary nebula . . "pulsating red giant with a small hot companion". In Facing my Amygdala, Denise Duhamel elaborates an intimate list of personal fears as she imagines examining that part of her brain where they reside . . "so crowded they pile on top of each other". Pattiann Rogers, in Rights of Passage, takes us through the steps of frog embryogenesis, telling in her distinctive voice how . . "the growing blastula turns itself inside out unassisted and becomes a gut . . even as . . the sound of the Heron jerks across the lake". There is gravity, "the way it keeps everybody close to the ground" (Tim Seibles), Newton's apple . . "still falling . . lawfully . . and wasn't that one of her prize worms we saw crawling off into the unthinkable" (Charles Simic), as well as levity . . "imagine squatting in the wasteland of Pluto, all five tons of you, or wandering around Mercury wondering what to do with your ounce" (Billy Collins). And poor number zero . . "born to live a life of emptiness, only child of plus and minus" (Sue Owen).

Science enhances Art.......2000-01-21

Verse & Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics edited by Kurt Brown, Milkweed Publications, 1998

Understanding these poems, like the subjects they address, requires effort. I found the experience worth while and was left with the impression that the cultural gap between science and art may be narrowing. But if TRUTH is defined as the absence of unanswered questions, we have far to go. For it seems that every question answered by our left lobes only generates new ones on our right. Verse and Universe represents an honest attempt at collaboration.

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sometimes sad, sometimes scary, but always stunning...

A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics)
Fernando Pessoa
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics)

Education Of The Stoic, The

Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems

The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

Poems of Fernando Pessoa

ASIN: 0143039555

Book Description

The poetry of “the greatest twentieth century writer you have never heard of ” (Los Angeles Times)

Writing obsessively in French, English, and Portuguese, Fernando Pessoa left a prodigious body of work, much of it under “heteronyms”—fully fleshed alter egos with startlingly different styles and points of view. Offering a unique sampling of all his most famous voices, this collection features poems that have never before been translated alongside many originally composed in English. In addition to such major works as “Maritime Ode of Campos” and his Goethe-inspired Faust, written in blank verse, there are several stunning poems that have only come to light in the last five years. Selected and translated by leading Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, this is the finest introduction available to the breadth of Pessoa's genius.

Customer Reviews:

sometimes sad, sometimes scary, but always stunning..........2007-07-15

The verses in this selection are hideously delicious and entertainingly sad. Pessoa is great. As W. S. Merwin put it, there's nobody like him - well, on earth.

Some may complain that Richard Zenith's translation is too colloquial, but who knows, probably this is the way the original is.

Buy this book and read The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics). It's a life-changing expereince.

News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness (Sierra Club Books Publication)

Average customer rating:

A call to stop using rational thought
Connecting with the Universe
Re-tuning to the UNIVERSE.
The Seat of the Soul

News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness (Sierra Club Books Publication)
Robert Bly
Manufacturer: Sierra Club Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

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ASIN: 0871563681

Book Description

Acclaimed poet and translator Robert Bly, known most recently for gatherings in which he guides men to greater self-knowledge, has created a unique multicultural collection of 150 poems that demonstrate the union of spirit between the poet and the natural world. Their "twofold" nature celebrates inner and outer consciousness, the participation of the object in the poetic vision.
In this splendid anthology, Bly introduces the poems with extensive commentary to show society's changing attitudes toward nature - a movement away from anthropocentric assumptions fostered by Descartes, the church, imperial ambitions, and the rise of technology. Those beliefs held that human thought was the only sentient force in the universe and resulted in the subjugation of the natural world to the designs of the human intellect.
Starting with the works of Pope, Swift, Milton, and others representing the "old position," the volume proceeds to the poetry of Blake, Hölderlin, Rilke, Goethe, Keats, and on to the enlightened sensibilities of Rexroth, Levertov, Berry, and, among many others, Bly himself. Bly's translations of Goethe, Rilke, Neruda, Lorca, Jiménez, Nerval, and others provide cross-cultural examples.
The news this poetry brings is good news - of consciousness operating outside our own, all around us, and universally available to receptive spirits.

Customer Reviews:

A call to stop using rational thought.......2005-09-04

Borges once quoted from a chinese encyclopedia: "...every animal falls within one of the following groups : a)property of the emperor, b)stuffed, c)trained, d)little pigs, e)mermaids, f)mythological, g)mongrel dogs, h)included in this list, i)shaking like crazy, j)too many to be counted, k)drawn with a very tiny brush, l)etc., m)just hatched and n)those that look like flies." We laugh, but all our orders, kingdoms, classes and phyla are just as silly and laughable. This book of poems is an invitation to put aside for a while the rational mind that creates encyclopedias and sets and classes (what Bly calls the old cartesian order) and to experience the universe like the animals do, to perceive nature as something new and strange.
This book helps us achieve that goal by means of poems that unsettle rational thought, for example: "In the Aztec design God crowds/ into the little pea that is rolling/ out of the picture. / All the rest extends bleaker/ because God has gone away.// In the White Man design, though,/ no pea is there./ God is everywhere,/ but hard to see./ The Aztecs frown at this.// How do you know he is everywhere?/ And how did he get out of the pea?"
If you enjow little shocks like that one (what pretentious people call epiphanies) buy this book, it is filled with them.

Connecting with the Universe.......2003-06-14

"The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap."

"News of the Universe" was originally issued as a Sierra Club book and contains poems selected (and sometimes translated) by Robert Bly. The book is worth buying just for Bly's introduction and his analysis of 'Dover Beach'. Frequently, I find myself dipping into "News of the Universe" for inspiration (like a Protestant choosing a random verse from the Bible). I keep this book at work for the times when I feel really out of touch with the Natural World. Then I open up "News of the Universe" and find (for instance):
_________________________________________________________________
In the heart of man/There sleeps a green worm/That has spun the heart about itself,/And that shall dream itself black wings/One day to break free into the beautiful black sky. - Galway Kinnell.
_________________________________________________________________

The poems that Bly selected for this book make me feel less isolated from the Universe. The poems ring true. They refresh. Since that was Bly's stated intention when he collected the poems, you ought to try them yourself and see if they work for you.

There is also a sense of the presence of Death in them--what Bly defines by the Spanish word "Duende" in another one of his anthologies--so much so, that many of the poems in this book can be used as elegies.

Re-tuning to the UNIVERSE........2001-05-12

Most of the books we read, no matter how startling they may be and no matter how much seeming "News" they may bring us, somehow end up fitting quite comfortably into our mind. We read them, we may be excited about them for a while, but they are soon set aside and we move on, quite unchanged, to fresh pastures.

Rarely, very rarely however, a book will happen along that truly rocks us, a book that has the power to shift our mind into a different register, to provide us with a whole new way of seeing. Such books have the effect of somehow altering our mind, re-structuring it, opening up new synapses, and thereby enabling or empowering us see the world in a wholly new and different light. These are golden books, bearers of striking truths, of real "News." Perhaps we need to be intellectually and emotionally ready for them, but when they do come they can effect a radical change in our outlook on life.

Despite many years of intensive reading, I can think of only two or three books that have affected me in this way. One of them was by the British writer, Douglas E. Harding. Another was the present book.

One of the things Bly's 'News of the Universe' taught me to see was that modern human beings are a very strange lot, a life-form that is totally and utterly obsessed with just one thing - itself. Most of our waking moments are occupied with people-related matters. We are almost manically people-obsessed. We read books about people, watch movies about people, think and talk incessantly about people. And we don't find this odd.

We are concerned with what people are saying, thinking, feeling, doing, wearing, drinking, eating, buying, building, plotting, loving, fearing, suffering, etc. But always it's people that our attention is focused on, and we often completely overlook the fact that people are just ONE among the many MILLIONS of earth's interesting life-forms, and that even the earth itself is just one of an infinite number of worlds.

In other words, in our constant people-centered busy-ness what we overlook is - THE UNIVERSE. People, of course, are important. But what about the rest of the universe? Robert Bly's invaluable book has been written to redress the balance. He seems to want us to see just how totally wrapped up we are in ourselves, and that this obsession is neither wholesome nor realistic. It is in fact a form of madness and extremely dangerous.

'News of the Universe' is a book of some 300 pages and is divided into six main parts. Each of these six parts consists of a brief essay followed by a generous selection of poems which serve to illustrate the themes of the essay.

Bly's book would be worth having for the poems alone. He has brought together a rich collection of both the familiar and the unfamiliar, from many periods and cultures, and the non-English poems have been very well-translated. I often return to my own well-thumbed copy, purchased about fifteen years ago, to re-read my favorites.

One of these is the poem 'GOLDEN LINES' by Gerard de Nerval, a poem which could serve as a manifesto for the book. It is preceded by this epigraph from Pythagoras : "Astonishing! Everything is intelligent!" Here are the opening lines, slightly adjusted since they should be set out as poetry:

"Free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker / on this earth in which life blazes inside all things? / Your liberty does what it wishes with the powers it controls, / but when you gather to plan, the universe is not there. // Look carefully in an animal at a spirit alive; / every flower is a soul opening out into nature; / a mystery touching love is asleep inside metal..." (page 38).

These lines bear careful pondering by our manically people-obsessed world, as do many others in Bly's carefully culled selection. But almost as impressive as the poems are Bly's introductory essays themselves. Personally I consider them to be minor masterpieces, and I find myself often returning to them also. Despite their brevity, it would be impossible here for me to convey an adequate idea of the sheer freight of true "News" content that they carry, real "News" that is vastly more important for us to become aware of than the trivia which passes for 'news' in our popular media.

Basically what the essays and poems set out to do, and they do it very effectively indeed, is to demonstrate that what Bly calls the "Old Position," the "pride in human reason" and "the conviction that nature is defective because it lacks reason" has had the effect of "deforming all poetry and culture" (page 3).

What we must learn to realize and to fully embrace is the notion that human consciousness is only one of the many kinds of consciousness operating in the universe. We cannot continue to deny consciousness, and therefore value, to the non-human, and on the basis of this fundamental error proceed to separate humans out and pretend that the rest of earth's living matrix doesn't matter. Such a procedure has led to a grotesque deformation of our civilization, and it can only end in the complete destruction of all life.

This, needless to say, is not the sort of news that most of the inhabitants of our media-befuddled world want to hear. And this because collisions with reality are usually painful. But for the few thoughtful and courageous and concerned who are still out there, and who would like to re-tune to the Universe, I would urge you to acquire a copy of Robert Bly's book. It's a luminous book, and definitely one of the most important books I've ever read. It may just give you a new and more realistic outlook on life.

The Seat of the Soul.......2000-07-05

"The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap."

"In the heart of man/There sleeps a green worm/That has spun the heart about itself,/And that shall dream itself black wings/One day to break free into the beautiful black sky" - Galway Kinnell.

Book Description

Wildly metaphysical and allegorical verses of the Indian poet Ramprasad on the Goddess Kali.

Customer Reviews:

Makes Ramprasad come alive.......2002-09-17

I was fortunate enough to attend readings from this book with Lex Hixon present. I was repeatedly struck by the way in which Ramprasad's poetry came alive through Lex's interpretations regardless of whose voice intoned the words. Lex avoided the trap of adhering to literal accuracy in translating poetry by emphasizing the accurate translation of meaning and meter. In hearing and reading this poetry it was easy to imagine myself sharing Ramprasad's ecstatic vision.

Inspirational, Ecstatic, Devotional Poetry.......2000-01-04

This is one of the most inspirational collections of devotional poetry I have ever read. Lex Hixon does an excellent job of expressing the essence of Yoga philosophy and Tantra in poetic English. The combination of the ecstatic musings of the 19th century Bengali poet, Ramprasad and the modern lively English of Lex Hixon has created a masterpiece. I would recommend this book to all interested in the devotional experience of Tantra as well as the Vedanta philosophy. The beauty of the book is that you need not be a scholar to experience the mystical vision of Tantra Yoga.

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