pickMy enthusiasm for this book is only slightly dimmed by not really understanding most of its almost 100 years old contents!
Eddington was responsible for championing Einstein's theory of relativity at a time when supporting a German citizen's work could be seen as unpatriotic, if not treasonous, especially as Eddington was a Quaker and a WWI conscientious objector. He was the first to experimentally prove Einstein's theory's ability to predict ⬇️
"That part of our conscious experience representable by physical symbols ought not to claim to be the whole. As a conscious being *you* are not one of my symbols; your domain is not circumscribed by my spatial measurements. If, like Hamlet, you count yourself king of an infinite space, I do not challenge your sovereignty. I only invite attention to certain disquieting rumours which have arisen as to the state of Your Majesty's nutshell.”
“I can see no more reason for preferring the theories of fifty years ago than for preferring the observational data of fifty years ago.”
I'm pleasantly surprised to find that far from giving a dry, heavy exposition of maths & physics, Eddington leavens his book with thoughts on the philosophy of science, & with quotes from Shakespeare & Dante. He was a popular communicator of science to the general public, and if this adaptation of a lecture ⬇️
First published in 1933, my edition is a Pelican reprint dated November 1941, describing the then fairly novel theory that the universe is expanding. Concepts of the form of expansion already included the Big Bang Theory and the Steady State Theory, though it was a few more years before either of those terms were coined. It will be interesting to see whether Sir Arthur backed the winning horse, TBBT 🎇 (sorry, spoilers again! 😄)
so-soSplit decision. Half of this (speculative) nonfiction book makes a strong case for focusing space resources on Titan rather than Mars. The less interesting half is an attempt to predict future decades of American/world culture and history (as relevant to space) that reads like a fever dream cooked up in some ivory tower jam session. In any event, they sold me on Titan, except Mars is where Calvin and Hobbes went in their cardboard box. Mars wins!
I‘ve been in a funk of anxiety and depression and doom scrolling for so long. I am ready to retreat into books again. Got these two books with my birthday gift card. I am going to make an effort to stay off the cesspool of social media (except Litsy of course!) and see if I can reignite my passion for reading.
so-so77/150 I think the title was misleading. The author does do a good job of keeping the science simple, while discussing heady topics like cosmology, astrophysics, plate tectonics, geological history and the origins of mankind. I did find the author's attempts at humor kind of heavy handed, but I understand not wanting to make the science too heavy and dull. 3 ⭐⭐⭐
so-soI love astrophysics/cosmology stuff, so I thought this would be a decent read, and it is. Sometimes, my eyes glazed over with some of the technical stuff, and it was published in 1997, so it's quite dated, but still a good read. I would enjoy a more modern version better now that we've got the JWST & a bit more understanding of some things we've since found thru that.
