From GPO Bookstore's Website: Authors with diverse backgrounds in science, history, anthropology, and more, consider culture in the context of the cosmos. How does our knowledge of cosmic evolution affect terrestrial culture? Conversely, how does our knowledge of cultural evolution affect our thinking about possible cultures in the cosmos? Are life, mind, and culture of fundamental significance to the grand story of the cosmos that has generated its own self-understanding through science, rational reasoning, and mathematics? Book includes bibliographical references and an index.
NOTE: NO FURTHER DISCOUNT FOR THIS PRINT PRODUCT--OVERSTOCK SALE -- Significantly reduced list price During the last 50 years, coincident with the Space Age, cosmic evolution has been recognized as the master narrative of the universe, history writ large. Cosmic evolution includes physical, biological, and cultural evolution, and of these the latter is by far the most rapid. In this volume, authors with diverse backgrounds in science, history, anthropology, and more, consider culture in the context of the cosmos. How does our knowledge of cosmic evolution affect terrestrial culture? Conversely, how does our knowledge of cultural evolution affect our thinking about possible cultures in the cosmos? Are life, mind, and culture of fundamental significance to the grand story of the cosmos that has generated its own self-understanding through science, rational reasoning, and mathematics? Might this lead to cultural evolution on a large enough scale to allow the universe to both create and steer itself toward its own destiny? Related products: NASA's First 50 Years: Historical Perspectives; NASA 50 Anniversary Proceedings can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/033-000-01336-1 Bringing the Future Within Reach: Celebrating 75 Years of the NASA John H. Glenn Research Center, 1941-2016 can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/033-000-01377-9 Other products produced by National Aerounautics and Space Administration (NASA) can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/550
The launch of the Sputnik satellite in October 1957 changed the course of human history. In the span of a few years, Soviets sent the first animal into space, the first man, and the first woman. These events were a direct challenge to the United States and the capitalist model that claimed ownership of scientific aspiration and achievement. The success of the space program captured the hopes and dreams of nearly every Soviet citizen and became a critical cultural vehicle in the country's emergence from Stalinism and the devastation of World War II. It also proved to be an invaluable tool in a worldwide propaganda campaign for socialism, a political system that could now seemingly accomplish anything it set its mind to. Into the Cosmos shows us the fascinating interplay of Soviet politics, science, and culture during the Khrushchev era, and how the space program became a binding force between these elements. The chapters examine the ill-fitted use of cosmonauts as propaganda props, the manipulation of gender politics after Valentina Tereshkova's flight, and the use of public interest in cosmology as a tool for promoting atheism. Other chapters explore the dichotomy of promoting the space program while maintaining extreme secrecy over its operations, space animals as media darlings, the history of Russian space culture, and the popularity of space-themed memorabilia that celebrated Soviet achievement and planted the seeds of consumerism.
This book traces the development of diverse British cultures of outer space, utilizing key geographical concepts such as landscape, place, and national identity. It examines the early visionary ideas of writers H. G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon, the ambitious British space programme of the 1960s, and narrations of British cultural identity that accompanied the space missions of Helen Sharman, Beagle 2 and Tim Peake. The exploration of British cultures of outer space throughout the book helps understand the emergence of the British Interplanetary Society. It also explains its significance in pre-war and post-war periods through an analysis of the roles of influential figures such as Arthur C. Clarke and Patrick Moore. The chapters explore utopian and dystopian representations of space exploration, examine the mysterious phenomenon of UFO culture, and consider plans for humanity’s imagined future across interstellar space. Throughout the book geography is advocated as a home for critical studies of outer space, illuminating its significance in terms of the reciprocal relationships between exploration and the sublime, science and the imagination, Earth and cosmos. As an emergent field of research in the social sciences, this book makes an excellent contribution to the study of the outer space in Britain and abroad developing a distinctive kind of outer spatial geography with major implications for future teaching and research.
New transdisciplinary studies have been appearing not only in such established areas as biochemistry or social psychology; there are presently emerging inter-scientific fields such as sociobiology, econophysics and last but not least sociophysics. The latter is a renewed attempt to combine the latest natural and social science theories and come up with significant generalisations for both. Using the powerful physics metaphor as an inertial guidance system, sociophysics emphasises the underlying similarities between all systems. This new scientific hybrid is raising much controversy as well as revealing great promise; for this reason, it has been chosen to provide the core and focus for this book. The holistic scope of this book makes it an appropriate reference work in many courses, such as: Global Ecology; Evolutionary Biology; Macroeconomics; Sociological Theory; Philosophy of Social Science; Theoretical Physics; Thermodynamics; Macro-history; Behavioural Science; General Systems Theory; and Interdisciplinary Studies.
A “creatively captivating and intellectually challenging” existential mystery from the great Polish author—“sly, funny, and . . . lovingly translated” (The New York Times). Winner of the 1967 International Prize for Literature Milan Kundera called Witold Gombrowicz “one of the great novelists of our century.” Now his most famous novel, Cosmos, is available in a critically acclaimed translation by the award-winning translator Danuta Borchardt. Cosmos is a metaphysical noir thriller narrated by Witold, a seedy, pathetic, and witty student, who is charming and appalling by turns. In need of a quiet place to study, Witold and his melancholy friend Fuks head to a boarding house in the mountains. Along the way, they discover a dead bird hanging from a string. Is this a strange but meaningless occurrence or is it the first clue to a sinister mystery? As the young men become embroiled in the Chekhovian travails of the family that runs the boarding house, Grombrowicz creates a gripping narrative where the reader questions who is sane and who is safe. “Probably the most important 20th-century novelist most Western readers have never heard of.” —Benjamin Paloff, Words Without Borders
To the ancient Greeks the universe consisted of earth, air, fire, and water. To Saint Augustine it was the Word of God. To many modern scientists it is the dance of atoms and waves, and in years to come it may be different again. What then is the real Universe? History shows that in every age each society constructs its own universe, believing it to be the real and final Universe. Yet each universe is only a model or mask of the unknown Universe. Originally published in 2003, this book brings together fundamental scientific, philosophical, and religious issues in cosmology, raising thought-provoking questions. In every age people have pitied the universes of their ancestors, convinced that they have at last discovered the ultimate truth. Does the modern model stand at the threshold of discovering everything, or will it, like all the rest, come to be pitied?
“A mock self-help book designed not to help but to provoke . . . to inveigle us into thinking about who we are and how we got into this mess.” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Filled with quizzes, essays, short stories, and diagrams, Lost in the Cosmos is National Book Award–winning author Walker Percy’s humorous take on a familiar genre—as well as an invitation to serious contemplation of life’s biggest questions. One part parody and two parts philosophy, Lost in the Cosmos is an enlightening guide to the dilemmas of human existence, and an unrivaled spin on self-help manuals by one of modern America’s greatest literary masters.
A groundbreaking scholarly publication, accompanying an exhibition organized by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, African Cosmos: Stellar Arts brings together exceptional works of art, dating from ancient times to the present, and essays by leading scholars and contemporary artists to consider African cultural astronomy: creativity and artistic practice in Africa as it is linked to celestial bodies and atmospheric phenomena. African concepts of the universe are intensely personal, placing human beings in relation to the earth and sky, and with the sun, moon, and stars. At the core of creation myths and the foundation of moral values, celestial bodies are often accorded sacred capacities and are part of the “cosmological map” that allows humans to chart their course through life.
