Sunday, September 2, 2012

I am looking for a Summary of "The day the Universe changed"

“The Day the Universe Changed” is a book based on a British documentary series of the same name that initially aired in 1985. Both the series and book were created by science historian James Burke. The book/series investigates key moments in history and how the world was altered through philosophical, economic, and scientific discoveries. Key moments in Western history are covered including the ancient Greeks; faith and reason; science in the Renaissance; the printing press; mathematics and astronomy; the impact of the marketplace; medical science; evolutionary theory; Newtonian physics; and changing realities.
Burke’s thesis is that the universe was altered through the above events. By "altered," I am referring to the way in which people’s perceptions of themselves and their perspective toward everything around them changed. Changes in mathematics and astronomy or the introduction of Darwinian evolutionary theory altered how people viewed themselves in relation to the universe. People no longer saw themselves as the center of everything but as a species inhabiting a planet that was in motion around a star. This revolution in perception/perspective opened new ways of understanding the universe and forever changed the way Western civilizations functioned.
History is not a hodgepodge of events and unrelated happenings but a series of patterns that can be analyzed and defined. Burke focused on the above events to demonstrate that at certain points in time, people in the West transformed the way they understood the universe. Once these changes in perception/perspective occurred, the universe essentially changed as humans’ view of reality—why they are here, what is the nature of life—moved from a subjective to objective point of view.
http://siouxfallsscientists.com/the-day-the-universe-changed.html

https://www.mkltesthead.com/2010/06/wednesday-book-review-day-universe.html

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