The Grand Contraption: The World as Myth, Number, and Chance

Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University, 2007. Book. New. Trade Paperback. Reprint. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Reprint, stated first paperback edition. 8vo. Trade paperback, 331 pp including index. Finalist of the 2006 Independent Publisher Book Awards. "Here physicist David Park, the author of The Fire Within the Eye, takes us on a 4,000-year journey to illuminate the multitude of elaborate metaphysical "contraptions" by which humans in the Western world have imagined the earth they inhabit and what lies beyond. "There is no practical way, of course, to pack all human understanding into a single volume, and Park doesn't try. Instead, he traces our evolving lines of reasoning, at least those emerging in the Western world, from early myth through the emergence of modern philosophy to the establishment of scientific method.... From person to person, period to period, Park threads together how myths were jettisoned for fact, how fact turned out to be more fabulous than myth." San Diego Union-Tribune "Bring Homer and Einstein, Aristotle and Columbus into one timeless room (with translators), and their conversation would likely turn to the themes of this astonishingly capacious history of cosmology: How do the stars and planets, the moon and the earth fit together? What is the human place in the grand scheme? Moving adroitly from the earliest biblical and Akkadian accounts of creation to the very latest scientific investigations of the dark energy that will finally pull the galaxies apart, Park weaves together the fascinating story of human efforts to fathom the universe. Joining, by turns, the voices of religious mystics, materialist philosophers, and quantum physicists, the story entails radical shifts in human perspective as philosophy replaces mythology and then science replaces philosophy. With lucid economy, Park chronicles the dramatic revolutions in cultural exchange and in technology that accelerated new thinking. Readers see, for instance, how thirteenth-century Franciscan emissaries to the Great Kahn hastened the exploration of the earth and how eighteenth-century telescopes allowed astronomers to start mapping the Milky Way. But for all the dramatic changes, Park limns remarkable continuities: Newton interprets his epoch-making discoveries by referring to revelations received by biblical patriarchs; twentieth-century environmentalists revive primal Earth Mother myths; pioneering astronomers revisit ancient Greek speculations about life on other planets. An exhilarating intellectual adventure." Booklist (starred review)" A new book..