The Speed of Light: Constancy and Cosmos - Hardcover

Grandy, David A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 025335322X ISBN 13: 9780253353221

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Light - our experience of light, our measurement of light, and the notion that light speed is constant - can be understood to mark our interface with the cosmos. David A. Grandy's book moves from the scientific to the existential, from Einstein to Merleau-Ponty, from light as a phenomenon to light as that which is constitutive of reality. To measure the speed of light is to measure something about the way we are measured or blended into the cosmos, and that universal blending predetermines our measurement of light speed in favour of a universal or constant value. It's quite a trip, one aimed at scientists who have pondered light speed constancy, philosophers inclined to question the idea that mind and world are distinct, and scientifically or philosophically inclined persons who enjoy stretching themselves in new ways.

About this title

Review:

"A brilliant and distinguished book ... Grandy introduces a trans-scientific understanding of light as a deep ordering principle within the universe." Thaddeus J. Trenn, University of Toronto

About the Author:

David A. Grandy is Professor of Philosophy at Brigham Young University and author (with Dan Burton) of Magic, Mystery, and Science (IUP, 2004) and Leo Szilard: Science as a Mode of Being. He lives in Orem, Utah.

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 025335322X
• ISBN 13: 9780253353221
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184