The Compact Cosmos

Download or read book Compact Cosmos written by Matt Tweed and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-07-01 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the macrocosm from colossal galactic superclusters to quiet backwater planets, Matt Tweed offers a primer on the cosmos for anyone fascinated by the heavens. Taking a guided tour through the universe, we ride past quasars, jets, and galaxies to land on a curious world and examine an array of ideas about space and time. Tweed traces the evolution of stars and formation of planets, describing our "light bubble" and why we can't see any farther than we do. For a concise and accessible description of extra-solar planetary systems, black holes, pulsars, nebulae, great walls, dark matter, red shifts, and much more, The Compact Cosmos is an indispensable guide. Data tables, lists of cosmological constants, and distances from Earth to other bodies in space form a useful appendix.

Download or read book Mind and Cosmos written by Thomas Nagel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Download or read book Sciencia written by Matt Tweed and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects six short illustrated volumes covering topics in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, and astronomy.

Download or read book The New Cosmos written by A. Unsold and published by . This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Sense of the Cosmos written by Jacob Needleman and published by Penguin (Non-Classics). This book was released on 1988 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos, and the Realm of the Gods written by David Lewis-Williams and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2005-10-01 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how brain structure and cultural content interacted in the Neolithic period 10,000 years ago to produce unique life patterns and belief systems. What do the headless figures found in the famous paintings at Catalhoyuk in Turkey have in common with the monumental tombs at Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland? How can the concepts of "birth," "death," and "wild" cast light on the archaeological enigma of the domestication of cattle? What generated the revolutionary social change that ended the Upper Palaeolithic? David Lewis-Williams's previous book, The Mind in the Cave, dealt with the remarkable Upper Palaeolithic paintings, carvings, and engravings of western Europe. Here Dr. Lewis-Williams and David Pearce examine the intricate web of belief, myth, and society in the succeeding Neolithic period, arguably the most significant turning point in all human history, when agriculture became a way of life and the fractious society that we know today was born. The authors focus on two contrasting times and places: the beginnings in the Near East, with its mud-brick and stone houses each piled on top of the ruins of another, and western Europe, with its massive stone monuments more ancient than the Egyptian pyramids. They argue that neurological patterns hardwired into the brain help explain the art and society that Neolithic people produced. Drawing on the latest research, the authors skillfully link material on human consciousness, imagery, and religious concepts to propose provocative new theories about the causes of an ancient revolution in cosmology and the origins of social complexity. In doing so they create a fascinating neurological bridge to the mysterious thought-lives of the past and reveal the essence of a momentous period in human history. 100 illustrations, 20 in color.

Download or read book God and the Cosmos written by Harry Lee Poe and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2012-02-16 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theologian Harry Lee Poe and chemist Jimmy H. Davis argue that God's interaction with our world is a possibility affirmed equally by the Bible and the contemporary scientific record. Rather than confirming that the cosmos is closed to the actions of the divine, advancing scientific knowledge seems to indicate that the nature of the universe is actually open to the unique type of divine activity portrayed in the Bible.