Joel R. Primack

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Abrams-Destin-cosmique/889232

> Joel R. Primack, Nancy Ellen Abrams. — DESTIN COSMIQUE, éditions Robert Laffont. — “Pourquoi la nouvelle cosmologie place l’homme au centre de l’Univers.” Ce n’est pas une question, c’est une affirmation. Elle a des chances d’agacer scientifiques et écologistes, estimant que le problème de l’humanité est justement d'avoir été jusqu’ici trop arrogante. Mais venant d’un universitaire spécialise en cosmologie, science de la naissance de l’univers et de son évolution jusqu'à nous, l’argumentation frappe. Certains passages demandent un effort, mais l’ensemble est accompagné d’un tel humour, d'une telle culture et d’une telle invitation à “vivre le mythe”, que la lecture de ce livre vous plongera dans une étonnante méditation - sans verser dans la tentation du “dessein intelligent”. Nous, humains, sommes vieux de quatorze milliards d’années, fruits d’une évolution dont nous constituons l’aboutissement, la conscience créative, à la fois responsable et jubilante. (Patrice VAN EERSEL)
—Nouvelles Clés, no. 58, (Eté 2008), p. 152.… (meer)

I found this book patronising at first ("...imagine you are an ancient Egyptian sitting on a hilltop..."), and very American (monkey-in-the-middle, dollar bill), but as I read on, I found I was learning and understanding the physics I would have like to have been taught at school. Below is a highlight of the contents:
Part one serves as a brief outline of the history of human understanding of the cosmos; from the Huichol Indians of Mexico myths, cave paintings, Ancient Egyptian god's and goddesses (Nut, Geb, Seth, Osiris, Nun, etc), the Hebrew creation story, the Babylonian astronomers/astrologers, the Ancient Greeks (Thales of Miletus, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Plato, Euclid, etc), the Alexandrians (Eratosthenes, Archimedes, Ptolemy, etc), the Medieval Kabbalah (Jewish mystic movement), the Copernican revolution, the Cartesian Bargain, to the scientific astronomer, Pierre Simon Laplace.
Reference to Joseph Campbell's The Inner Reaches of Outer Space.
Part 2: galaxies, atoms, dark matter, Vera Rubin's speed of stars around a galaxy, gravitational lensing, Double Dark theory (Dark Energy plus Cold Dark Matter, aka LCDM), supersymmetry, neutrinos and WIMPs, dark energy and the increasingly faster expansion of the universe. Authors provide suggested artwork to illustrate the new scientific discoveries (they argue that in the past, theories of the cosmos had mythological and religion to portray them) - a pyramid composed of matter at the top, and dark matter at the bottom. Legend of the capstone of Egypt's Great Pyramid. Time.
The outer boundary of our visible universe is the Cosmic Horizon
Description of the chronological events from the big bang on the subatomic level. The Violent Relaxation of dark matter. The difference between pure mathematics (being infinite in powers of 10), and physics (minimum mass is about 10 to the minus 33 - the Planck length, is the smallest possible size). The largest size is 10 to the power of 28 - the distance to our cosmic horizon. Uroboros - ancient Greek for a serpent swallowing its tail. The effects of gravity on size - fluctuates from strong to weak on large to small, but then weak to strong on small to very small. Entropy - behaviour of a movie of two snooker balls striking cannot be distinguished playing forwards or backwards, but snooker ball hitting a triangle of balls can only play one way: Second law of thermodynamics the tendency towards increasing disorder.
Reference to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, he was a cosmist. They believed that "consciousness exists in every particle in the universe, including every star and galaxy, and that humans and intelligent aliens have the highest concentration of consciousness and therefore the greatest responsibility to further the peaceful development of still higher consciousness".
End of chapter 6 (part 2) puts into poetic perspective the relative distances between stars, between galaxies, between atoms, cells, humans, the earth, the sun, etc., Eternal Inflation (The inflation that occurred before the big bang), relating it to the Kabbalah teaching that creation happened in ten stages, called Sephirot.
References to Stephen Jay Gould, and Simon Conway Morris on evolution
SETI
Part 3 how we rely on metaphors to understand everything. Population explosion.… (meer)

I was really disappointed with this book, as it promised to deliver far more than it was able. The book couldn't decide whether it was a science book or a philosophy book, and ultimately failed to do either very well. The authors were attempting to use modern science to give mankind a sense of meaning that's was taken away with the Copernican Revolution, but I felt it failed to actually provide any meaning.

We live about halfway through the lifespan of our planet. There's no center to the universe, so you might as well pretend you're the center. Our size is in the middle (in terms of orders of magnitude) of the size scales of the universe (between the quantum world and galaxy clusters). Therefore, you should feel meaningful! I don't think that follows at all.

The science was decently interesting, but you can find far better if you're interested in the developments of modern physics or cosmology. The philosophy was unconvincing, and also included long sections on past cosmologies that gave people significance in the world (i.e. myths) and proposed new ways of viewing the world. For example, a great (I'm being sarcastic) New Year's tradition would be to have The Cosmic Dessert: a pyramid-shaped dessert of 70% chocolate cake (representing dark energy), 25% chocolate ice cream (dark matter), 4% chopped nuts (invisible mixed atoms), 0.5% whipped cream (hydrogen/helium), a bit of cinnamon (stardust/heavy elements), and a cherry on top (intelligent life, not to scale). Clever I guess, but are we really this desperate for holiday events? And if we are... do you really want your value to come from being made of stardust instead of dark energy?… (meer)