TY - BOOK AU - Park,David TI - The Grand Contraption: The World as Myth, Number, and Chance SN - 9780691233185 U1 - 509 PY - 2021///] CY - Princeton, NJ : PB - Princeton University Press, KW - SCIENCE / History KW - bisacsh KW - Academy KW - Anaximander KW - Aristarchus KW - Baade, Walter, astronomer KW - Berossus KW - Boyle, Robert, chemist KW - Buddhist cosmos KW - Caligula, emperor KW - Carthage KW - Cepheid variables KW - Clazomenae KW - Democritus KW - Durkheim, Emile, "ed KW - Earth Mother KW - Empedocles KW - Eratosthenes KW - Eudoxus KW - Galaxy KW - Geb and Nut KW - Gilgamesh KW - Henry the Navigator KW - Heracleides KW - Heraclitus KW - Ionia KW - Ishtar KW - Justinian KW - Kepler, Johannes KW - Lactantius KW - Macrobius KW - Marduk KW - Mutakallimun KW - Nicomachus, mathematician KW - Oceanus KW - Origen KW - Paracelsus KW - anthropic argument KW - astronomical unit KW - chain of being KW - constellations KW - demon KW - eschatology KW - extinctions KW - firmament KW - inflation, theory KW - midrash KW - monotheism KW - omens KW - ozone layer KW - papyrus rolls KW - quintessence KW - rapture N1 - Frontmatter --; CONTENTS --; LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS --; PREFACE --; ONE Voices from the Sands --; TWO Managing the World --; THREE Guesswork --; FOUR Earth and Heaven --; FIVE Beginnings and Endings --; SIX Philosophy Continued --; INTERLUDE The World Map --; SEVEN Toward a New Astronomy --; EIGHT What Is the World Made Of? --; NINE The Universe Measured --; TEN The Exploding Universe --; ELEVEN The View from Here --; REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING --; BIBLIOGRAPHY --; INDEX; restricted access N2 - The Grand Contraption tells the story of humanity's attempts through 4,000 years of written history to make sense of the world in its cosmic totality, to understand its physical nature, and to know its real and imagined inhabitants. No other book has provided as coherent, compelling, and learned a narrative on this subject of subjects. David Park takes us on an incredible journey that illuminates the multitude of elaborate "contraptions" by which humans in the Western world have imagined the earth they inhabit--and what lies beyond. Intertwining history, religion, philosophy, literature, and the physical sciences, this eminently readable book is, ultimately, about the "grand contraption" we've constructed through the ages in an effort to understand and identify with the universe. According to Park, people long ago conceived of our world as a great rock slab inhabited by gods, devils, and people and crowned by stars. Thinkers imagined ether to fill the empty space, and in the comforting certainty of celestial movement they discerned numbers, and in numbers, order. Separate sections of the book tell the fascinating stories of measuring and mapping the Earth and Heavens, and later, the scientific exploration of the universe. The journey reveals many common threads stretching from ancient Mesopotamians and Greeks to peoples of today. For example, humans have tended to imagine Earth and Sky as living creatures. Not true, say science-savvy moderns. But truth isn't always the point. The point, says Park, is that Earth is indeed the fragile bubble we surmise, and we must treat it with the reverence it deserves UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691233185?locatt=mode:legacy UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780691233185 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/cover/covers/9780691233185.jpg ER -