Name: Cosmic Evolution
ISBN: 9780674009875

Cosmic Evolution

"We are connected to distant space and time not only by our imaginations but also through a common cosmic heritage. Emerging now from modern science is a unified scenario of the cosmos, including ourselves as sentient beings, based on the time-honored concept of change. From galaxies to snowflakes, from stars and planets to life itself, we are beginning to identify an underlying ubiquitous pattern penetrating the fabric of all the natural sciences - a sweepingly encompassing view of the order and structure of every known class of object in our richly endowed universe. This is the subject of Eric Chaisson's new book.". "In Cosmic Evolution Chaisson addresses some of the most basic issues we can contemplate: the origin of matter and the origin of life, and the ways matter, life, and radiation interact and change with time. Guided by notions of beauty and symmetry, by the search for simplicity and elegance, by the ambition to explain the widest range of phenomena with the fewest possible principles, Chaisson designs for us an expansive yet intricate model depicting the origin and evolution of all material structures. He shows us that neither new science nor appeals to nonscience are needed to understand the impressive hierarchy of the cosmic evolutionary story, from quark to quasar, from microbe to mind."--BOOK JACKET.

What Hacker News says

arc_of_descentMar 2016

I'm currently reading - Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson, so I immediately recommend it.

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zxexzSep 2014

David Christian's concept, especially the "thresholds", reminds me of an excellent course[0]/book[1]/website[2] written/taught by the wonderful astrophysicist Eric Chaisson[3]. Not exactly focused on "history" in the traditional sense, but on the history of the universe, focusing on different "epochs", from the big bang, to present day and beyond. I highly recommend the readings (and the course for those who are monetarily and geographically able to do so [Boston area]).

[0] http://www.extension.harvard.edu/courses/cosmic-evolution-or... [1] http://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Evolution-Rise-Complexity-Natur... [2] https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~ejchaisson/cosmic_evolution/doc... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Chaisson

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BlahahAug 2015

A good option is to look for winners of science book prizes.

The Royal Society Winton Prize is excellent: http://www.theguardian.com/books/royal-society-science-book-....

Some personal favourites:

The Incredible Unlikeliness Of Being by Alice Roberts is a wonderful book that describes how a human being develops from conception to adulthood in minute biological detail.

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh is fantastic, if a little out of date by now.

Cosmos: The Story of Cosmic Evolution, Science and Civilisation by Carl Sagan.

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unquietcodeDec 2014

What about Eric Chaisson's Cosmic Evolution, Goodwin's Signs of Life, Shrodinger's What is Life?, Stuart Kauffman's At Home in the Universe? All of these books I've read which argue the same damn thing as this guy, so what's new? That last book by Kauffman is probably the most simialr, and I highly recommend it to those interested.

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