The View from the Center of the Universe: Discovering Our Extraordinary Place in the Cosmos - Hardcover

Primack, Joel R.; Abrams, Nancy Ellen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594489149 ISBN 13: 9781594489143

Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover, 2006

Synopsis

Draws on recent advances in astronomy, physics, and cosmology to present a theory of how to understand the universe and the role of our own world, in an account that offers insight into the origins and evolutionary coherence of the universe as well as its spiritual significance. 60,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Joel R. Primack, Ph.D., is an award-winning professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is one of the most respected researchers in his field. He was one of the principal originators and developers of the theory of Cold Dark Matter, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Nancy Ellen Abrams is an award-winning science philosopher, a writer, an artist, and a lawyer whose work has appeared in journals, magazines, and books.

Reviews

If greeting card poet Susan Polis Schultz wrote about physics and the universe, this is the book she would produce. Filled with simplistic observations ("In their hearts most people are still living in an imagined universe where... we humans have no special place and often feel insignificant") as well as romantic cheerleading ("We need to overflow with gratitude that our universe... is filled with light and possibilities"), it offers cosmology disguised as a self-help guide to the universe. The authors—Primack is a physicist at UC–Santa Cruz, and Abrams is a philosopher of science—contend that Newton's picture of the universe as shapeless and endless left humans feeling cosmically homeless, but in response they articulate a Peter Pan physics in which humans are intimately related to the universe because we are made of stardust, i.e., we're an integral part of the cosmos. Our place in the universe is extraordinary, they claim, because the universe will never be in this moment of time again, and we have a responsibility to take care of the Earth since there is still time to solve some of our cosmic problems. Attempting to weave science and spirituality into one cosmic fabric, the authors satisfy the reader in neither realm. B&w illus. (Apr.)
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In this thoughtful and original book, a husband-and-wife team presents a science-based cosmology aimed at allowing us to understand the universe as a whole and our place in it. "Most of us have grown up thinking that there is no basis for our feeling central or even important to the cosmos," they write. "But with the new evidence it turns out that this perspective is nothing but a prejudice. There is no geographic center to an expand-ing universe, but we are cent-ral in several unexpected ways that derive directly from physics and cosmology." Primack is professor of cosmology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an originator of the theory of cold dark matter; Abrams is a lawyer and a writer.

Editors of Scientific American

Edition details

• Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594489149
• ISBN 13: 9781594489143
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400