Astronomy Books

This is a great book, and an exciting book; readable, worth reading and enlightening; with a most fascinating cosmological story of time, expansion, and gravitation.
Sir Karl Popper
The greatest philosopher of modern science

'We are all Gal-Orians' Foundations of Physics
(Journal Editor)

Book recommended by Encyclopedia Britannica
"Nature, Philosophy of"

Gal-Or's book is really a tour de force, which I have no doubt will be widely read and appreciated by physicists and philosophers all round the world. A magnificent and sustained piece of work !
Sir Alan Cottrell, Cambridge University Chancellor
The works of scientists like Gal-Or, Bohm, and [Noble Prize-Winner] Prigogine provide important resources. Prigogine's formalisms do not really tell us how irreversible change emerges from reversible [mathematics]. (in this Gal-Or is superior).
· Gal-Or assigns priority instead to general relativity and to the gravitational processes which it describes.
· It is gravity which drives cosmic expansion and galaxy and star formation, and thus nucleosynthesis, and the emergence of chemistry, life, and intelligence. Philosophy of Science, Foundations of Social Progress
Professor Benjamin Gal-Or is a man with a message. (The Book) is audacious, ambitious and provocative, it will appeal to scientists of all disciplines who are prepared to open their minds. It shines a welcome light in some dark corners of science. Sir Karl Popper, in a foreword, correctly describes it "a great book". New Scientist
I do not know a better modern expression of science, philosophy and classical humanism than that of Gal-Or's book. Book Reviews, Haáretz Daily
Physics cosmology and the Universe by Benjamin Gal-Or is one of the most beautiful books that I have read. It beautifully combines and explores physics cosmology and Philosophy. "Outstanding Books List"


This book evokes a person heart! Following its publication, the book has generated a large number of responses from physicists and philosophers around the world. All respected journals in physics had published special reviews authored by highly noted physicists and philosophers.
· While maintaining that this book is of the highest professional level, some even declare it has turned them into `Gal-Orians'.
· In philosophical circles the book has also pioneered new and unique views of Spinoza and Kant, and has generated an unsubsiding argumentation in the West.
· Since the thought presented by this book is so rich and its contents cover so many disciplines, physicists, philosophers and translators of our country should recommend this book with all their intellectual power.
Chinese Academy of Sciences

Weisskopf in Scientific American quotes Cosmology, Physics and Philosophy, vis-a-vis "The Judeo-Christian tradition" :
"Most astrophysicists, cosmologists and astronomers agree that the biblical account of cosmic evolution, in stressing `a beginning' and the initial roles of `void,' `light' and a `structureless' state, may be uncannily close to the verified evidence with which modern science has already supplied us"


American Journal of Physics: Benjamin Gal-Or's remarkable book is an attempt to see and seize the world whole, in his own terms, "HAVAISM". He emphasizes that all scientists operate under some set of philosophical prejudices, and that failure to acknowledge this is self-delusion. Furthermore, he argues that a failure to attend to the philosophical base of physics leads to an empty scientism.
· Gal-Or's work is challenging on many levels, constituting a review 'with derivations' of general relativity 'as applied to cosmology', thermodynamics, the current state of theoretical particle physics, astrophysics, as well as a summary history of western philosophy, 'especially the philosophies of time and mind' and critiques of western society, the intelligentsia and the relationship between academic science and government.
· One 'and perhaps the central' theme explored, is that of the interplay between symmetry and asymmetry.
· His primary interest is not in the recent progress in the unification of forces in gauge theory, although he finds support in it for his Einsteinian outlook, but is rather time, time's arrow, and the asymmetry between past and future.
· Around time are accumulated discussions, both mathematical and philosophical, of thermodynamic reversibility, time reversibility, the nature of causality, and the use of advanced and retarded solutions to wave equations.
· The second major theme is that of gravity and its overwhelming domination of the actual form of the universe, at all scales.
· The combination of these themes is not accidental; they are point and counterpoint to his thesis that the time asymmetries are connectable to and perhaps even determined by the master asymmetry given by the gravity of general relativity: the remorseless cosmological expansion.
· He argues that only the expansion can provide the unification of time asymmetries.
· The expansion provides, among other things, an UNSATURABLE SINK for radiation, which, in turn, permits the establishment of gradients in temperature and density, which provide the basis for the physical process that leads to life.
· He also criticizes the sloppy and improper use of the concepts of entropy 'and the related notions in information theory' and quantum indeterminism, especially as covers for an inadequate understanding of temporal asymmetries.
· Taking an Einsteinian position on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, he looks forward to revitalization of Einstein's quest for a deterministic interpretation of quantum events.
· The value of this book lies in the challenging combination of ideas which Gal-Or presents, which goes far beyond what can be sensibly described in a review.
· [His] work may be too large to digest as a text in these days of the decline of academic institutions "as Gal-Or describes them", but that will be the loss of both the faculty and the students.
American Journal of Physics

One of the best books on the totality of the sciences & the universe is the book called 'Cosmology, Physics and philosophy' by Benjamin Gal-Or. It was one of the favorite books of Sir Karl Popper. It looks at physics and the universe as a totality of the mathematical philosophical understanding. It also combines the physical concept of time with human psychological perception and brain understanding of languages.
Robin (forumhub.com/expr/@ 202.54.92.222), Nov 24, 2000
A comprehensive explication of a large area of Physical science which the reader may study in many subjects, such as astrophysics, fluid mechanics, and general relativity. All tied into philosophy. Highly recommended to the philosopher of science.
Contemporary Philosophy
inescapably fascinating .. Stern und Weltraum
This is a tome for the reader. Volume two is very much concerned with sociology and philosophy. It introduces such topics as a consideration of whether universities are adequate or otherwise, the assessment of priorities, development of philosophical thought and problems of decision making, etc. ... it is a book for those with time to stop and think. In stimulating such ideas, this book will do much to open great vistas in contemporary thought for large numbers of its readers. Space Education
Interesting to read, .. integrating much of scientific material, .. good introduction to relativity theory, quantum mechanics and theoretical cosmology for readers interested in natural sciences in general Deutsche Literaturzeitung
The red thread that runs through everything is the conception of the author that present-day research (and education) in physics, like our view about men and society, is harmed because it is not enough guided by philosophy, where he sees it as the task of philosophy to construct a coherent and comprehensive vision of the world, starting from the results of diverse scientific specialism.
Nederlands Tijdscrift voor Natuurkunde

It is a most excellent and thoughtful essay on one aspect of the foundations of modern thought in physics. Gal-Or may well launch a new spirit of inquiry by his excellent and thought provoking writings. I would recommend awarding a prize and would hope that this would serve to focus attention on a most important subject. T. Gold, Cornell University
An interesting and original book, ..easy to read, interesting and fascinating. Nouvo Cimento
richness of ideas and structures Physikalische Blatter
most thought provoking J. A. Wheeler
Once gravity driven phenomena are taken into account, it becomes clear that the direction of evolution is not towards chaos, but rather towards even higher degrees of organization, understood as complexity (an increased diversity of elements) coupled with "centreity"- i.e., the closing of these elements in on themselves.
· The doctrine of Benjamin Gal-Or is rather more promising. He brings a "dialectical" understanding of the process of unification, as "a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principle of all inquiries" (Aristotle in Gal-Or 1987: 47).
· This dialectic leads Gal-Or to the conclusion that it is necessary to unify theories of reversible and irreversible change first (i.e., dynamics and thermodynamics), before attempting to unify relativity and quantum mechanics.
· He rejects, furthermore, attempts at unification which give a leading role to quantum mechanics and to an information-theoretical understanding of organization.
· [According to Gal-Or] all of chemistry, beyond hydrogen and helium, and, therefore, all of life, has been formed by stellar evolution.
· In other words, with the exception of hydrogen, "everything in our bodies and brains has been produced in the thermonuclear reactions within stars which later exploded in galactic space." (Gal-Or, 1987: 352ff)
· Gal-Or re-theorizes thermodynamics in a way which is free of the "subjectivist" concept of entropy, so that science terminates in a recognition of the ultimate unity and organization of all things - what he calls HAVAISM, after the Hebrew word for the whole.
Philosophy of Science, Foundations of Social Progress
One noted scientist [B. Gal-Or], even affirms that the stress placed by Genesis, Chapter one, on `beginning' and the initial roles of `void', `light' and a "structureless" state, "may be uncannily close to the verified evidence with which modern science has already supplied us." H. N. Ostrander, Christian Apologetics, Journal, Vol. 2, No.1, Spring 1999
Einstein's time-symmetric tensor was elevated by [Gal-Or's] "New Astronomical School of Unified Thermodynamics" ... to the status of the source of "master asymmetry" controlling not only irreversible thermodynamics, but all physical and biological phenomena!
· Gal-Or calls "GRAVITISM" [his philosophy] that gravitation is the prime cause of structures, irreversibility, time, geo-chemical and biological evolution -- that the expansion of the universe is the cause of the second law of thermodynamics -- that microscopic physics, and thermodynamics in particular, cannot be understood without reference to cosmology.
· Gal-Or ties "irreversibility" to the "expansion of space itself", i.e. as far as space is expanding, the contribution of all kinds of radiation in space is weakened "irreversibly" due to the expansion phenomenon itself.
· Such loss, or "degradation" of energy in the depth of intergalactic expanding space, may then be considered as a universal sink for all the radiation flowing out of the material bodies in the expanding universe.

Soc. for the Advancement of Physics,
APEIRON, Vol. 3, #3-4, 1996, Germany


For the historian of science, Benjamin Gal-Or's "beauty" has always been the object of science, which, he lyrically observes as
"a most fundamental aesthetic frame of mind, a longing for the run-away horizons of truth and symmetry that we always try to reach."
Matthew Wickman, Brigham Young University; Order Amidst Chaos: Enlightenment Aesthetics after Post-Modernity

The doctrine of Israeli physicist Benjamin Gal-Or is rather more promising. Gal-Or brings a "dialectical" understanding of the process of unification, as "a process of criticism wherein lies the path to the principle of all inquiries (Aristotle in Gal-Or 1987: 47)." This dialectic leads Gal-Or to the conclusion that it is necessary to unify theories of reversible and irreversible change first (i.e., dynamics and thermodynamics), before attempting to unify relativity and quantum mechanics (Gal-Or 1987: 29ff, 47-48). He rejects, furthermore, attempts at unification which give a leading role to quantum mechanics and to an information-theoretical understanding of organization. Quantum mechanics and information theory both treat the universe as first and foremost a statistical ensemble. Order and disorder are, in this context, fundamentally subjective concepts, and the expectation of an evolution towards maximum "entropy" or chaos is already given in the statistical underpinnings. Quantum mechanics, furthermore, cannot theorize even this sort of change, since it has an irreducibly reversible understanding of time, and can by made to yield time asymmetries only by imposing unexplained boundary conditions. Because of this, he argues, it must be treated strictly as a local theory and not as the matrix for unification (Gal-Or 1987: 47-48, 261-262, 374).
Gal-Or assigns priority instead to general relativity and to the gravitational processes which it describes. It is gravity which drives cosmic expansion and galaxy and star formation, and thus nucleosynthesis, and the emergence of chemistry, life, and intelligence (Gal-Or 1987: 41-46, 154). Once gravity driven phenomena are taken into account, furthermore, it becomes clear that the direction of evolution is not towards chaos, but rather towards even higher degrees of organization, understood as complexity (an increased diversity of elements) coupled with "centreity"-i.e., the closing of these elements in on themselves (Gal-Or 1987: 382). Gal-Or retheorizes thermodynamics in a way which is free of the "subjectivist" concept of entropy, so that science terminates in a recognition of the ultimate unity and organization of all things-what he calls Hayavism, after the Hebrew word for the whole (Gal-Or 1987: 348ff).
The strengths of this approach notwithstanding, there are problems. First of all, while Gal-Or's critique of quantum mechanics is powerful, he does not show exactly what we should do with it. It is one thing to relegate it to the status of a special theory and quite another thing to unify that special theory with his larger relativistic and thermodynamic framework. Gal-Or's synthesis, furthermore, is dependent on the larger Big-Bang cosmology, the empirical problems of which he seems unaware, or at least chooses not to address. Gal-Or's understanding of organization, finally, is seriously constrained by his insistence on the priority of physical concepts. While gravity can produce an objective structuring, he does not show how it produces purposefulness, nor does he ever really settle the question of the ultimate purposefulness of the universe, remaining caught, as it were, between Aristotle, to whom he aspires, and Spinoza, with whom he is ultimately more comfortable.

A master piece ... Any good library must have a copy ..,
The well-known author bases his philosophy on a very sound knowledge of present-day scientific knowledge.
Indian Journal of Physics

Shaw is a pioneer blazing trails for earth scientists into real applications of the popular but rarely applied theories of dynamical system behavior. This text is a landmark in science that opens doors to new ways of thinking, challenges many scared cows of the science, and points to better paths. Anyone interested in Choas, fractals, system dynamics or earth processes in general will find this book a deep intellectual keystone to scienctific thoughts.

Shaw sets a new standard for synthesis in the sciences, not just the earth and planetary sciences.His profound and compelling theory provides a wholly new view of earth history and dynamics through the medium of nonlinear dynamics. This is a tremendously exciting, landmark work around which seminars in several different disciplines should be organized.

This book is a fascinating study of the calendars of ancient Mesopotamia, from the third millennium B.C. to the first millennium B.C. Each section begins with a synopsis of what is known about the calendar from that place and time (e.g. Nippur's calendar versus Ur's), and then launches into a month-by-month list of the festivals associated with that month (complete with the known name of the month). The final chapter focuses of festival themes, and is of general interest.

This is a fascinating book, containing a wealth of information that I didn't realize was available. Sadly, the book is written in a somewhat dry and academic tone, which means that it is not good bedtime reading. That said, though, this book offers a fascinating look into the Mesopotamian's view of the year, and what it offered to them. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the daily life in ancient Mesopotamia.

I greatly enjoyed reading Prof. Cohen's book. It is certainly technical and of special interest to students of the ancient near east, but it is also quite lucid and accessible. The author has mastered and explained an immense amount of information about ancient religion and sacred times. This is an interesting way to learn about religious practices in ancient Mesopotamia and Palestine.

I've been something of a minor astronomy geek all of my life, but until a few years ago, I'd never thought of the riddle we usually call "Olbers' paradox": if the universe is infinite, and contains an infinite number of stars, why is the sky dark at night? In other words, why is every spot in the night (or day) sky not filled with stars, if starlight should be coming at us from every point.

I first encountered this when reading a piece by a young-earth astronomer, and have been fascinated by it ever since.

This is a problem that goes back at least to Aristotle. Dr. Olbers (an ophthalmologist who was born in 1758) merely gave a name to this problem. And while if you've never thought about it, the issue may sound trivial, it's not. There are even some who consider this one of the primary concerns for cosmology.

Edward Harrison has done a bang-up job in covering this question. Harrison is a professor of physics and astronomy -- fields not noted for their lucid writing style -- but he writes clearly, interestingly, and well. He combines the ability to write well with a thorough (obviously) knowledge of the subject of which he's writing. It's a good read, a good well-written overview, and accessible to even a relatively ignorant lay reader like myself. It's a fun read, too.

A masterly review of the history and science of a celebrated problem in the history of astronomy. Every chance I get I go out at night and look up at the dark sky and try to take in all that it means.+++

Un gran clásico de la literatura. Un obra emocionante ambientada en el siglo XIX.

Julio Verne muestra en este excelente libro su capacidad para la anticipación y su exactitud y rigor científico. Verne investigo cuidadosamente antes de emprender esta obra, y a pesar que la misma cuenta con algunos errores (por ejemplo, la tripulación parte a la Luna en una gigantesca bala de cañón, lo cual mataria instantáneamente a los tripulantes debido a la aceleración) pero en suma es una obra interesante y de agradable lectura, con pasajes divertidos y un gran desenlace. Verne también se adelanto a su tiempo y de alguna manera predijo algunos de los eventos que se harían realidad muchosaños mas tarde. Por ejemplo, Verne pronosticó que su nave espacial sería lanzada desde la Florida (USA) cuando en realidad el vuelo del Apollo 11 salio de este mismo estado (Verne predijo Tampa, y en realidad salió desde en Centro Espacial Kennedy en Merritt Island). Además el predijo tres astronautas, dos norte-americanos y uno europeo (en la realidad hubo 3 norteamericanos, pero Collins nació en Italia, o sea que acertó!) el hecho que la capsula descendiera en el agua etc,etc. Estos y muchas otras coincidencias nos muestran la increible visión de este hombre, que junto con 20,000 Leguas de Viaje Submarino o La Vuelta al Mundo en 80 Dias,o Dueño del Mundo se adelanta a su tiempo y es fiel reflejo de una época de invenciones y esperanza en la inventiva humana.Para finalizar lo recomiendo ampliamente a los amantes de los viajes espaciales, no olviden que Konstantin Tsiolkovski y otros pioneros se inspiraron en los libros de Verne para definir el futuro del espacio.-

How do you know if you can see an object with your small telescope? This book is the answer. Deep sky objects are listed on a Sky Atlas but it do not show how bright they are. This book not only lists the objects but lists the brightness (magnitude) and provides helpful hints about oberving some of them. The book is arranged by type of object then by constellation for easy reference. This book was invaluable when I completed the Herschel 400 object list.

I found this book to be very helpful in selecting objects to observe. The book is very well laid out and objects are classified into different categories, making it easy to navigate. I particularly liked Dave Eicher's eyepiece impressions and his description of objects. A very good guidebook for owners of small telescopes!!!

This was a Christmas present for our 5 yr old who has recently discovered the thrill of our solar system. He reads it continually and has many of Seymour Simon's other books about our solar system. He loves them so much and has started sharing them with some of his friends. He constantly relates planetary trivia to me which shows me that he's not just looking at the pictures.

This Jupiter book is written incredibly well. I'm amazed at how Seymour Simon can speak to a 5 yr old and adults. The artwork and photographs within the book are incredible. I love this and all of Mr. Simon's books we've seen so far. I highly recommend this as a reading tool for any kid that is interested in planets or space in general. If they love the book, they'll keep reading!

This book has fun and interesting information for any age readers. It also has great color pictures of the planet and moons!

I use this book frequently, because I always find what I want and it's good. The authors state their facts accurately and clearly. Top notch.

This book has been a lifesaver for me many times when I needed authoritative information in a hurry. If you are a teacher of astronomy--at any level from undergrad on up--you will never regret having this on your shelf! Many times, after searching in vain through half-a-dozen textbooks for some item of information, I have turned to Facts-on-File Astronomy and found the answer directly, without further ado. I believe this is a "must" for every serious teacher, student, or researcher in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

In the preface, Rosen explains that apeiron "is the Greek word for what is `limitless,' `boundless,' or `indeterminate.' The apeiron is variously interpreted as `the unintelligible; the many; the moving; the ugly; the bad...the inchoate flux of opposites or contraries...the principle of disorder or disharmony." Why write an entire book about something that probably should be left in a dark closet of consciousness? Because embracing it gives humanity the opportunity to bring to fruition our centuries-long quest for individuation. It's relevant for nothing less than the growth and development of our species. This disorderly face of Nature has been hidden, negated, and "tamed" for a long time, perhaps for reasons similar to the way the unruliness of childhood is banished to make way for adulthood. True wisdom does not follow adulthood unless the some of that apeiron is given expression.

Rosen meticulously documents how many of the advances in scientific theory since the mid-1800s have been attempts to keep apeiron from bursting out and splattering itself all over science's neat, orderly theories. Although he does not use this image, the graphic depiction of the individuation process that came to my mind was a bifurcation plot from chaos theory (see [...]). The first few bifurcations (individuations of the many from the one) are neat, clean, and identifiable. After a certain point, however, they become too numerous, too chaotic, if you will, even to be distinguishable from one another. Individuation gone wild. Is this the apeironic crisis in which humanity now finds itself?

Rosen shows how the assumption of the continutity of space and time have been key to keeping apeiron under wraps. Each time the continuity seemed to be breached, science has rewritten its understanding of space and time to preserve the continuity. I won't go into the details here except to bring out the fundamental assumption underlying all such activities, namely the assumption of the object-in-space-before-subject. When space as the container started to show signs of rupturing (i.e., being discontinuous) it was turned into the object within a more comprehensive (and continuous) container called space-time.

Rosen then shows how the upsurge of apeiron affected the culture at large through the art of the time. A tour through almost any modern art museum will reveal the increasing fragmentation felt in Western culture and depicted by its artists such as the cubists who "objectified perception." No longer is the perspective of the artist inferred; rather all perspectives are shown. The artist must objectify himself, see himself as an object in space before the painted object and the painting in order to put all the possible perspectives on the canvas. Photography then brought its own disturbing discontinuity, namely, temporal discontinuity. To restore the continuity of time, moving pictures and then television were soon thereafter invented.

So where does all this angst of discontinuity and our efforts to "repair" it lead us? To a different type of unity than that which is continuous and undistinguished, to one that brings subject and object together in a recursive union signified, for example, by the uruboros, the snake swallowing its own tail.

Individuation in this regard doesn't require only the separation inherent in object-in-space-before-subject, it requires that such subjectivity observe itself without objectifying itself. Rosen describes how this was attempted by phenomenology and how that project ultimately failed because it required consciousness to divide itself into a part doing the investigating and a part being investigated. Part of the subject still had to be objectified.

We get closer to understanding apeiron in Merleau-Ponty's notion of "the flesh of the world," i.e., Being that is not the pristine unmoved mover but the goddess that gives birth to herself. As we open our arms to embrace apeiron, we get closer and closer to paradox. The project now becomes one of unconcealing, clarifying, shining the light of Being onto Being itself. Such light in itself radiates and brings itself to light (i.e., clarifies itself).

Analytic thought gave us the object-in-space-before-subject. Rosen posits that proprioceptive thought in which consciousness becomes aware of its own activity (sheds light on itself) will enable Being to be aware not only of what it lights/clarifies but its own lighting process (loosely quoted). As Rosen clearly summarizes,

"When Being clarifies itself by concealing itself in this way [ie, in beings], it looks in the mirror of space and sees only beings, thereby confirming itself in the guise of the ontical. So it was that, in the second stage of Ontogeny, human life came to appear entirely dependent on the invariance of classical space, the seamlessness of the continuum. And with the breaching of this continuum in the middle of the nineteenth century, the mirror of ontical identity was broken. It was as if Being looked in the mirror fully expecting to see a being, an object-in-space, as it had for centuries before, and instead `saw its own seeing.' Regarding itself in this fashion, Being obtained a backward glimpse of what it really is: the dimension of process that first projects object-in-space-before-subject" (p. 163).

So now, like the wave that has crested, we move on, not by appealing to higher levels of abstraction, but by turning back on ourselves in what appears to be a reversal but which is a return that is not a regression. Such radical recursiveness is exemplified by the Mobius strip and Klein bottle. In the final chapter, entitled "Topology" (an appetizer for Rosen's latest book, Topologies of the Flesh), Rosen shows how Merleau-Ponty inaugurated the shift from Euclidean space to topological space, which enables us to find a way to hold together the "inchoate flux of opposites or contraries." First, Rosen shows the "mutual permeation of opposites" in the graphic work of M.C. Escher. Then he appeals to the paradoxical nature of the topological structure of the Klein bottle as a model to show how continuity/discontinuity, object-in-space-before subject, and the embodiment of Being can be integrated without being fused. This accomplishes the return of individuation (twoness) to its underlying unity (oneness) simultaneously and without its losing its distinctiveness. This ushers in the possibility for a new kind of logic that might indeed be a way out of the quicksand that our analytic thought practices have gotten us into (that's my reading and hope, at least).

As a tour guide of this phenomenal text, I have only done the minimum of saying "there's the Eiffel Tower and that's the Arc de Triomphe." At each reading, I find more detail, more depth, and more brilliance. I have done nothing here to convey the lovely nuance and thoughtfulness that Rosen brings to his exposition and argument. I invite you to experience that for yourself.

Apprehending any thought infinitely would lead to a proprioceptive self-surpassing, a turning of that thought upon itself and through itself to include its own origins and the infinite inter-relatedness that lies beyond. Apprehending any sensations infinitely would extend to the origins of those sensations and a turning-through to sensations of infinite immensities and scales of magnitude. Likewise, the infinite apprehending of feelings and intuitions-any functions of human consciousness-would lead to self-surpassing proprioceptions of origin and advance.

It is possible to describe such possibilities of embodied experience as topological by employing paradoxical structures like the Moebius strip and the Klein bottle. Philosopher-psychologist Steven M. Rosen, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, City University of New York, adeptly accomplishes such descriptions-and many more-in this book advancing more than thirty years of teaching and research. However, Rosen's achievements here are not only those of mathematical-philosophical abstraction. This book is an advanced guide to future consciousness, offering something of an emergency manual with tools for understanding the catastrophic global transformations the human race is now experiencing.

Rosen visits the origins of our consensus reality by integrating an ancient understanding all but lost to mental-rationalistic consciousness, namely, that of apeiron, which he defines thusly:

"To early Greek science and philosophy, nature in the wild is apeiron. This is the Greek word for what is 'limitless,'
'boundless' or 'indeterminate.'"

Applying this expression to the emerging integral consciousness (Jean Gebser) of our cataclysmic times and of times to come, Rosen observes that

"...from the outset Western culture has been spurred by the drive toward differentiated being or individuality, toward individuation. Achieving this end essentially has meant containing what at first appeared uncontainable: the boundless apeiron. The proposition I submit is that apeiron, after being held at bay for over two thousand years, has now returned with a vengeance.... What I intend to demonstrate...is that the upsurgence of apeiron-far from indelibly spelling the demise of human individuality, actually offers us the opportunity to bring it to fruition."


Part One explores the "The Rise and Fall of Classical Space" and "The Crisis of Discontinuity in the Broader Culture." With a disciplined narrative tracing early Greek ideas and their evolution through Descartes, the sciences, and the arts of recent centuries, Rosen tells the story of the emergence of modernity and its consequences. He finds that "the initial banishment of apeiron by the ancient Greeks was at bottom not the triumph of pure reason over an alien force, but signified instead apeiron's concealment of itself in the interest of its own maturation."


In Part Two, "The Return to Apeiron," Rosen masterfully attends to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Derrida, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Jung, process philosophy, and more, before expressing his own intuitions in the language of topology. His sense of topology joins place, proprioception, and life-in-the-flesh in an expression of the "poetical mathematics" that leads beyond the dichotomy of subject-and-object:

"It is our self-alienation then, I submit, that has brought us to the brink of catastrophe.... The reflective individual must break the centuries-old habit of moving away from himself toward his object, must move backward into himself to the prereflective source of his reflection. There he will find that he is not merely a free-standing subject after all, nor is he merely an object. Instead, 'he' is the embodied fusion of subject and object that constitutes the paradox of apeiron. So-if effectively addressing humankind's current crisis means gaining self-knowledge-it is apeiron we must come to know."

In this work, Rosen offers a highly disciplined and cogent approach to the future by a radical integration of the past with new consciousness of the limitless and boundless forces that are in fact ever-present and time-free. To understand apeiron is to understand that human consciousness has always and will always be ultimately indeterminate. While the forces that are overwhelming existing psychological and social structures are not completely predictable, they are describable with new awareness of the immense promises and grave dangers that are now emerging in personal and world life. Rosen's work serves that awareness.

Earlier essays in the progression of Rosen's life-work are available in the earlier companion volume, Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle; The Evolution of a "Transcultural" Approach to Wholeness (SUNY Press, 1994).

A detailed history of every accident with space hardware. From stratospheric balloon experiments and rocket planes to the space shuttle.

Includes extensive material on Soviet space history and accidents which may not be available elsewhere and may be worth the price of the book to those interested in space exploration.

The information is logically divided into training, launch, orbit and reentry with summaries and what was learned from it.

Is it possible to know too much about an accident? Well, I learned more than I wanted to about the Apollo 1 and Challenger accidents (I wanted to get past them because they were so tragic) but there is a great depth of detail to learn from here.

Stories of people reaching for that little extra bit of courage to deal with the worst case scenario. And what happens when space age technology doesn't quite work and what we can learn from it.

While the title of this book may seem a bit gruesome, I found this book to be one of the most interesting books related to manned spaceflight. Oftentimes, we hear about the great triumphs of the space program, but unless it is a great disaster, the problems encountered in spaceflight are often overlooked. This book covers all aspects of spaceflight (training, flight, EVA, etc.) from the early pioneering days right up to the present. The book includes a great deal on the Soviet space program that I have not seen before.

The book opens with the daring adventures of the early manned ballooning experiments and the goal of the setting a record altitude. I was quite impressed with what was accomplished in the 1920's and 1930's. The book then proceeds to the various experimental X-planes and the problems encountered with these projects.

After this brief, but very informative introduction, the book examines the era of manned spaceflight. The book is divided into four main areas: training, launch, space travel, and re-entry. Each of the main areas examines all the major and minor problems encountered with these aspects of spaceflight. As one would expect, the book covers the major spaceflight disasters, like Apollo 1, the Challenger explosion, Apollo 13, but it also includes even the smallest problems like the lunar explorers falling down or urine leaks in the shuttle EVA suits. It was interesting to see that the have been many more problems, though minor ones, in manned spaceflight than has been reported in the press.

The book contains numerous rarely seen photographs and drawings. If you're interested in manned space flight, this book provides a fascinating and unique view of the dangerous side of space travel.