The Human Cosmos
Civilization and the Stars
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A Best Book of 2020 NPR
A Best Book of 2020 The Economist
A Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 Smithsonian
A Best Science & Technology Book of 2020 Library Journal
A Must-Read Book to Escape the Chaos of 2020 Newsweek
Starred review Booklist
Starred review Publishers Weekly
An historically unprecedented disconnect between humanity and the heavens has opened. Jo Marchant's book can begin to heal it.
For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are--our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost.
Our relationship to the stars and planets has moved from one of awe, wonder and superstition to one where technology is king--the cosmos is now explored through data on our screens, not by the naked eye observing the natural world. Indeed, in most countries modern light pollution obscures much of the night sky from view. Jo Marchant's spellbinding parade of the ways different cultures celebrated the majesty and mysteries of the night sky is a journey to the most awe inspiring view you can ever see--looking up on a clear dark night. That experience and the thoughts it has engendered have radically shaped human civilization across millennia. The cosmos is the source of our greatest creativity in art, in science, in life.
To show us how, Jo Marchant takes us to the Hall of the Bulls in the caves at Lascaux in France, and to the summer solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at New Grange in Ireland. We discover Chumash cosmology and visit medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same. A four-billion-year-old meteor inspires a search for extraterrestrial life. The cosmically liberating, summary revelation is that star-gazing made us human.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Marchant (Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body) takes a thought-provoking look at how human fascination with the night sky has influenced beliefs throughout history. For example, tablets from the seventh century BCE unearthed near Mosul show that the Assyrians believed that lunar eclipses coincided with the death of their king, the earliest known occurrence of astrology. Marchant goes back even further, about 20 millennia ago, to explore the Lascaux cave paintings and the contentious theory that they represent constellations, and also surveys current cutting-edge research into how stargazing can trigger transcendental states. The book's broad scope is made manageable by punchy storytelling; in explaining how cosmology influenced the American Revolution, Marchant begins by stating that Thomas Paine's journey toward radicalism started "with a pirate ship, some astronomy lectures and a pair of globes." Each section is informed by Marchant's belief that technology that separates people from the actual world, such as using GPS to navigate, or computers to map the sky, comes at a cost. Integrating science, history, philosophy, and religion, Marchant's epic account is one for readers to savor.
