Seeing and Believing: The Story of the Telescope, or how we found our place in the universe - Softcover

Panek, Richard

3.92

106 ratings by Goodreads

9781841153797: Seeing and Believing: The Story of the Telescope, or how we found our place in the universe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841153796 ISBN 13: 9781841153797

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2001

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

‘Richard Panek’s eye-popping book – brief enough to be gobbled at one sitting, rich enough to re-open immediately – is a story of ever-expanding horizons.’ Guardian

In 1609, Galileo fits two lenses inside a cylindrical tube, aims the tube at the sky, and forever changes the world. Seeing and Believing tells the story, discovery by discovery, of the telescope, one of the few inventions that have revolutionised our view of the universe and how we fit in to it. From Galileo himself to William Herschel who discovered Uranus, to George Ellery Hale who found both Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar observatories. Most fascinating is the character of the telescope itself, which designed solely to help us determine our place in the scheme of things, is an evolving metaphor for how we see ourselves.

Richard Panek brings us an engaging and spirited chronicle of the humbling journey that has made humans smaller and the universe infinitely vaster than we ever imagined.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Publishers 4th Estate have been cornering the market in fascinating little hardbacks for some while now and Panek's history of the telescope is a more than worthy addition to their list. Much of his story is a familiar one: Dava Sobel's biography of Galileo and his daughter covers the instrument's early history well; John Gribbin's The Birth of Time offers many of the same insights into the latest findings, in particular those from the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. But Panek's sympathetic understanding of the cosmological thinking of past ages is quite equal to Sobel's and more terse; and his willingness to suppose our own thinking labours under equal though different preconceptions is reminiscent of Gribbin at his most iconoclastic. "Whenever we couldn't conceive of what's out there", Panek writes, "whenever we couldn't even begin to guess, it wasn't only because we still lacked the technology but it was because we didn't yet understand what the preconceptions might be that were restricting our view."

Without the telescope, the stars would have remained unimportant to our world view and the universe no larger than our own solar system. Now, it seems, the universe detectable through telescopes represents a mere fraction of what's out there: and so an instrument that seemed to promise perfect understanding is now, after all, only one instrument among many, and our trust in it merely one of "the givens that give us away".

Panek's history is remarkable for its economy and focus, its lively treatment of historical figures and especially for its enthusiasm: "once we'd glimpsed the telescope's potential, its purpose has never not been to seek the boundaries of the universe", Panek declares. It's stirring stuff. --Simon Ings

Review:

‘Richard Panek’s eye-popping book – brief enough to be gobbled at one sitting, rich enough to reopen immediately – is a story of ever-expanding horizons.’ Guardian

‘This book is a winner.’ New Scientist

‘A truly cosmic yarn is wonderfully told in Seeing and Believing. Richard Panek’s book is part of a welcome publishing phenomenon that includes Longitude and Fermat’s Last Theorem: pocket-sized, wide-ranging and stylishly written.’ Financial Times

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.