Edward Harrison (1)Besprekingen

Comprehensive, from a scientific perspective, and provocative from a philosophical perspective.

Not a bad book by any means, but kind of a frustrating one: I expected a bit more rigor from Harrison, whose *Cosmology* is a very good text. I was less than happy with his coverage of ancient views of the Universe, and found the central theme of the puzzle of the dark night sky swamped a bit by a thumbnail history of astronomy. The book feels padded - I wish he had spent more time with each of the "solutions" to the dark sky riddle and less time on general astronomy - for which there are many good books. Finally, the editing (and proofreading) is pretty bad in places. The book winds up feeling a little like a rush job.½

Picked it up for casual reading. The first half was lots of fun. The second half was way over my head, deep heavily laden with mathematical arguments.½

A wonderful book. The standard descriptions of the big bang, inflation etc, which most popular science writers are spending too much time on repeating, are very brief here. Instead Harrison goes directly to the big questions about cosmology, alternative cosmogenesis and metaphysics.

Says that the universe can't be fully comprehended by humans and that today's model of it is as sure to be superseded as earlier ages' models were. Skates too close to the edge of mysticism and talks about religion too much. Any book whose introduction says that "Much of modern science consists of magic disciplined by a calculus of mythic laws" is not going to get a full reading from me. Some good chapters on space and time. (Am I damning it with faint praise or praising it with faint damnation?)