Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilisation

Product Information

Even some of his factoids are housed in unnecessary fiction that really does not drive his point home hard. For example, he says that male reindeer shed their antlers in November, therefore Santa's reindeer are actually female and have been mis-gendered for countless years. Except, they're fictional reindeer. They can fly, so can't it be said that they magically keep their antlers? I understand that he's merely attempting to make the science "fun," but I also believe that basing your factual statements on something fictional undermines the fact itself. I can understand this being effective for very young audiences, but it seems like this book is not targeted towards them (considering the profanity). Linda Hall Library has a scanned first edition, as well as a scanned pirated edition from Frankfurt, also from 1610. I've liked Neil deGrasse Tyson for a long time. He's a scientist, married to another scientist, has served in the White House, is the director of the Hayden Planetarium, founded the department of astrophysics at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, hosted various TV programmes as well as his own podcast and more. He has an abundance of love and passion for science and it is infectious! He is also one hell of an educator (he himself considers himself more of an educator than a scientist) and has a wonderful way of breaking down the most complex topics so anyone can understand them. Moreover, he seems to consider it his mission to bring science to the masses. His books are usually serving exactly this purpose. century scientist Leonard Digges was described as pointing an early reflector/refractor device at the sky to see "myriads of stars" and Thomas Harriot made moon observations several months before Galileo's. See Telescope400 and The Three Galileos Moreover, personally, I also despair when I look at how little people nowadays actually KNOW. We have more access to more knowledge than any other human in the history of mankind, yet we are too lazy to LEARN. Why? Because we can always google it, I guess. *snorts* We have smartphones and know what button to press for what feature but we don't understand the tech itself. Most people don't even know that the computing power contained in a musical greeting card is all we had and all it took to take us to the Moon! Has the computing power of an iPhone gotten us to Mars? Nope! I feel stagnation and it's driving me up the walls.

This book, additionally to educating us about how certain aspects of our current world work, teaches us to look at the world and see how far we've come. What we wouldn't have (creature comforts as well as the so-called bare necessities of modern life) if it wasn't for science and research. For instance, in an example of the evolution of criminal trials, Tyson observes that some historic cultures let God decide guilt or innocence. So the accused might be pushed underwater; forced to walk through fire; have boiling oil poured on their chest; or made to drink poison. Those who survived must be innocent because God protected them. This type of thing eventually evolved to trial by crowd; trial by random individuals; then trial by a jury of your peers. Tyson points out that even this last method is far from foolproof because eyewitnesses are unreliable, and - worse yet - attorneys are trained to make their case regardless of the truth. Objective truths exist independent of that five-sense perception of reality. With proper tools, they can be verified by anybody at any time at any place.” For five seasons, beginning in the fall of 2006, Tyson appeared as the on-camera host of PBS NOVA’s spinoff program NOVA ScienceNOW, which is an accessible look at the frontier of all the science that shapes the understanding of our place in the universe. Galileo reported that he saw at least ten times more stars through the telescope than are visible to the naked eye, and he published star charts of the belt of Orion and the star cluster Pleiades showing some of the newly observed stars. With the naked eye observers could see only six stars in the Taurus cluster; through his telescope, however, Galileo was capable of seeing thirty-five – almost six times as many. When he turned his telescope on Orion, he was capable of seeing eighty stars, rather than the previously observed nine – almost nine times more. In Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo revised and reproduced these two star groups by distinguishing between the stars seen without the telescope and those seen with it. [10] Also, when he observed some of the "nebulous" stars in the Ptolemaic star catalogue, he saw that rather than being cloudy, they were made of many small stars. From this he deduced that the nebulae and the Milky Way were "congeries of innumerable stars grouped together in clusters" too small and distant to be resolved into individual stars by the naked eye. [9] Galileo's drawings of Jupiter and its Medicean Stars from Sidereus Nuncius. Image courtesy of the History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries. Medicean Stars (Moons of Jupiter) [ edit ]a b c d e Mazzotti, Massimo (25 June 2014). "Faking Galileo". LARB Quarterly Journal: Spring 2014. Los Angeles Review of Books . Retrieved 3 July 2019. This is an ideas book. Aside from "question your assumptions and biases, and put your trust in objective truth based on confirmed and tested evidence", NDT isn't actually trying to say anything here. The entire book is premised on questioning our perspectives and biases and how that can make us blind to other perspectives. The aim of thisproject is to make available electronically some aspects of the early history ofastronomy for the use of students studying the History and Philosophy ofScience in the University. The project has aspired to be 'educational' in another sense in that graduate students in the Department havecontributed to its construction. By drawing on the rich collection ofinstruments and books in the Whipple Collection, the University Library andthe Wren Library, we have sought to produce a history of astronomy whichfocuses on the uses of astronomy and its instruments, as well as on thepractitioners of astronomy. We hope that this project goes some way towardsillustrating the variety of uses (astrology, weather prediction, calendarreform) and inspirations (e.g. poetry), people in past societies andcultures found in astronomy.

Isabelle Pantin. Sidereus Nuncius: Le Messager Celeste. Paris: Belles Lettres, 1992. ASIN B0028S7JLK. The real problem arises when the sense of superiority applies not to an individual....but to an entire demographic. This can lead to war, genocide, and other atrocities. Tyson notes that fields of study like mathematics and physical sciences resist human bias, so are less susceptible to feelings of superiority. Tyson admits the researchers themselves can be racist, sexist, misanthropes. However, the scientists' prejudices won't be in textbooks, because published results MUST be reproducible to be considered valid. From 1960 to 1990, transistors allow consumer electronics to miniaturize; women enter the workforce in large numbers, especially in professional fields; the modern gay rights movement takes off due to the AIDS epidemic; computers go from expensive room-size machines to desktop models; widespread use of MRIs help doctors diagnose illness without surgery; and humans go to the Moon. Really enjoyed this. I love the concept of looking at the world, and at things that we take for granted, as an outsider might, and re-examining our assumptions and thoughts about what is "normal" or "accepted".Incluso en algunos temas sentí que me dio una mirada superficial o que lo desvió a una arista que no me parecía tan interesante. Por ejemplo, en el primero sobre la belleza me hubiera gustado más, pero la enfocó en "la verdad es la belleza" y solo habló sobre la verdad objetiva, verdad personal y todo eso. Por eso siento que fue algo muy personal para él, pero que para una persona externa se sintió como solo anecdótico y no un libro que aportara algo. Personal truths have the power to command your mind, body, and soul, but are not evidence-based. Personal truths are what you’re sure is true, even if you can’t—especially if you can’t—prove it. Some of these ideas derive from what you want to be true. Others take shape from charismatic leaders or sacred doctrines, either ancient or contemporary. For some, especially in monotheistic traditions, God and Truth are synonymous. […] Personal truths are what you may hold dear but have no real way of convincing others who disagree, except by heated argument, coercion, or force. These are the foundations of most people’s opinions and are normally harmless when kept to yourself or argued over a beer.”

William R. Shea and Tiziana Bascelli; translated from the Latin by William R. Shea, introduction and notes by William R. Shea and Tiziana Bascelli. Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius or Sidereal Message. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications/USA, 2009. viii + 115 pp. ISBN 978-0-88135-375-4. In the autumn of 1609, the Italian mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei turned his telescope to the heavens, deciphering the cratered face of the moon, the four satellites of Jupiter, and other previously opaque features of the heavens. When, in 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius, or Starry Messenger, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler responded with enthusiasm, praising the significance of Galileo’s observations with his own Dissertatio cum Nuncio Sidereo, or, Conversations with the Starry Messenger (1610). To whom else did the stars speak in the early modern period? The first astronomer to publicly support Galileo's findings was Johannes Kepler, who published an open letter in April 1610, enthusiastically endorsing Galileo's credibility. It was not until August 1610 that Kepler was able to publish his independent confirmation of Galileo's findings, due to the scarcity of sufficiently powerful telescopes. [16]This book is a great example of how to bring facts and analysis to the task of solving problems while also debunking myths about stereotypes about people’s politics. And while science makes mistakes, the scientific process is geared towards challenging ideas so that those mistakes surface. Galileo's drawings of an imperfect Moon directly contradicted Ptolemy's and Aristotle's cosmological descriptions of perfect and unchanging heavenly bodies made of quintessence (the fifth element in ancient and medieval philosophy of which the celestial bodies are composed). While deGrasse Tyson make it clear that he has a liberal belief system, this isn’t a collection of anti-conservative screeds. We learn that Liberals and Conservatives can all be science deniers in their own ways, and that members of each group can set critical thinking aside when calling for policy change when an issue touches on one their core values. Tyson is also arguably the G.O.A.T when it comes to reducing complex scientific or mathematical issues to terms that "lay" individuals can understand. But I question his assertion that scientific principals can be easily applied to research in psychology, sociology or anthropology, thus making obvious what should be the "rational" decisions in these areas. Often, empirical studies in these fields can only go so far without confirmation bias and other systemic problems creeping in. It's quite short, it's tiny data points all trying to express the magic, and it lightly flits over so many areas in a charming way.