The Invisible Pyramid: A Naturalist Analyses the Rocket Century

Eiseley, Loren

ISBN 10: 0684127326 / ISBN 13: 9780684127323

Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970

About this Item

Wraps are aging, light edgewear. Small amount of markings in text. Prior owner name on fep. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.

Seller Inventory # 008045

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Invisible Pyramid: A Naturalist Analyses the Rocket Century
• Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons
• Publication Date: 1970
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684127326
• ISBN 13: 9780684127323
• Binding: Soft Cover
• Illustrator: Walter Ferro
• Condition: Good
• Book Type: Ex-Libris

About this title

Synopsis

In 1910 young Loren Eiseley watched the passage of Halley's Comet with his father. The boy who became a famous naturalist was never again to see the spectacle except in his imagination. That childhood event contributed to the profound sense of time and space that marks The Invisible Pyramid. This collection of essays, first published shortly after Americans landed on the moon, explores inner and outer space, the vastness of the cosmos, and the limits of what can be known. Bringing poetic insight to scientific discipline, Eiseley makes connections between civilizations past and present, multiple universes, humankind, and nature.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

In July 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed on the surface of the moon, a feat millions of earthbound observers cheered. Loren Eiseley, an ecologist and conservationist, saw little cause for celebration in the astronauts' arrival, however. In a series of lectures delivered at the University of Washington later in 1969 and collected in this slender volume, Eiseley took the occasion of the lunar landing to consider how far humans had to go in understanding their own small corner of the universe, their home planet, much less what he called the "cosmic prison" of space. Likening humans to the microscopic phagocytes that dwell within our bodies, he grumpily remarks, "We know only a little more extended reality than the hypothetical creature below us. Above us may lie realms it is beyond our power to grasp." Science, he suggests, would be better put to examining that which lies immediately before us, although he allows that the quest to explore space is so firmly rooted in Western technological culture that it was unlikely to be abandoned simply because of his urging. Eiseley's opinion continues to be influential among certain environmentalists, and these graceful essays show why that should be so. --Gregory McNamee