Emerging Cosmology

Előszó

Convergence
by
Ruth Nanda Anshen
"There is no use trying," said Alice; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
This commitment is an inherent part of human nature and an aspect of our creativity. Each advance of science brings increased comprehension and appreciation of the nature, meaning and wonder of the creative forces that move the cosmos and created man. Such openness and confidence lead to faith in the reality of possibility and eventually to the following truth: "The mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility."
When Einstein uttered that challenging statement, he could have been speaking about our relationship with the universe. The old division of the Earth and the Cosmos into objective processes in space and time and mind in which they are mirrored is no longer a suitable starting point for understanding the universe, science, or ourselves. Science now begins to focus on the convergence of man and nature, on the framework which makes us, as living beings, dependent parts of nature and simultaneously makes nature the object of our thoughts and actions. Scientists can no longer confront the universe as objective observers. Science recognizes the participation of
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CONVERGENCE
Founded, Planned, and Edited by RUTH NANDA ANSHEN
EMERGING COSMOLOGY BERNARD LOVELL
"It is doubtful whether any other conceptual development in the history of civilization," writes Sir Bernard Lovell in the introduction to Emerging Cosmology, "has crossed and recrossed so many frontiers of human knowledge. Cosmology has always emerged holding a delicate balance between observation of the natural world, philosophical disputation, belief in the validity of theological dogma, and the perennial attitude of man that, however far his vision has been extended, the human being occupies a privileged position in the universe."
Cosmology—the science that aims at a comprehensive theory of the creation, evolution, and present structure of the entire physical universe—is the subject of this compelling book by one of the world's preeminent astronomers. Written especially for the general reader—but propounding an argument specialists would be wise to heed— Emerging Cosmology traces the history of what is perhaps the first science from the earliest surviving evidence of cosmological thought, circa 3000 B.C., to the present. Sir Bernard Lovell discusses such topics as the geocentric world view, the influence of the Church on the scientific community, the heliocentric hypothesis, Newtonian mechanics, and the emergence of modern cosmology. He examines in detail the roles played by such thinkers as Aristotle, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Above all, Sir Bernard Lovell emphasizes man's unity with the Universe.
Robert Jastrow calls Emerging Cosmology "an eminently readable and absorbing account of the greatest revolution in human thought since the dawn of time—growing awareness that space is vast and the world of
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man is small. [Lovell] tells the story with a rare grace and insight that reveal the touch of a master writer on science for the layman."
THE AUTHOR Sir Bernard Lovell, O.B.E., LL.D., D.Sc., and Fellow of the Royal Society of Great Britain, is Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester and Director of the Experimental Station at the Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories, Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England. He is the author of several books and many articles dealing with space exploration, the nature of the universe, the origins of life and man's relationship to, and convergence with, the cosmos. He also lectures widely on the implications of scientific growth and the consequences for man and the universe.
THE FOUNDER OF THIS SERIES Ruth Nanda Anshen, Ph.D., philosopher, author, and editor, founded, plans, and edits several distinguished series, including World Perspectives, Religious Perspectives. Credo Perspectives. Perspectives in Humanism. The Science of Culture Series, and The Tree of Life Series. She also writes and lectures on the relationship of knowledge to the nature and meaning of man and to his understanding of and place in the universe. Dr. Anshen's book. The Reality of the Devil: Evil in Man, is a study in the phenomenology of evil. She is a member of the American Philosophical Association, the History of Science Society, the International Philosophical Society, and the Metaphysical Society of America. Vissza