Cosmic Imagery : Key Images in the History of Science

Author(s): John Barrow

General

We live in a visual age - an age of images: iconic, instant and influential. In this remarkable book John Barrow traces their history in order to tell the story of modern science. Certain key images embody our understanding of life and the universe we inhabit. Some, like Robert Hooke's first microscopic views of the natural world, or the stunning images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, were made possible by our new technical capabilities. Others, like the first graph, were breathtakingly simple but perennially useful. Vesalius' haunting pictures of the human anatomy were nothing less than works of art, while the simple diagram now known as Pythagoras' Theorem - proved by the ancient Babylonians, Chinese, Indians and Egyptians long before the Greeks themselves - lay the foundations for modern mathematics.Many of these images have shattered our preconceptions about the limits and nature of existence: the first breathtaking pictures of the Earth from space stimulated an environmental consciousness that has grown ever since; the mushroom cloud from atomic and nuclear explosions became the ultimate symbol of death and destruction; the flying saucer came to represent the possibility of extraterrestrial life; while Mercator's flat map of the Earth coordinated an entire world-view.

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Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9780224075237
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : joncape
  • : 1.838
  • : June 2008
  • : 4.6 Centimeters X 17.5 Centimeters X 24.2 Centimeters
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : John Barrow
  • : Hardback
  • : 6-Aug
  • : 608