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The Universe Within: Discovering The Common History Of Rocks, Planets, And People (2013)

by Neil Shubin(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

044901293X (ISBN13: 9780449012932)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Random House Audio

review 1: "Transformation is the order of the day for the world: bodies grow and die, species emerge and go extinct, while every feature of our plantetary and celestial home undergoes gradual change or episodes of catastrophic revolution." (p.14)"The fundamental atoms that make our hands, feet, and brains serve as fuel for the stars." (p.18)"Einstein's relation E=mc2 holds a key to the early events of the universe. The equation reveals the relationship between energy (E) and mass (m). Since the speed of light (c) is a huge number, it takes an enormous amount of energy to make one ounce of mass. The converse is also true: an infinitesimal amount of mass can be cenverted into a vast amount of energy." (p.26)"I write this book and you read it based on the energy released from these exc... morehanges. The molecules in our bodies exchange these tiny charged particlesas part of the daily business of their interactions...These daily trades define the reactions between the planet's atmosphere, its climate, and the metabolisms of every creature on Earth." (p.27)"Each galaxy, star, or person is the temporary owner of particles that have passed through the births and deaths of entities across vast reaches of time and space. The particles that make us have traveled billions of years across the universe; long after we and our planet are gone, they will be a part of other worlds." (p.33)"Our good fortune, the perfection of circumstances that have defined our existence, is just a moment in time." (p.54)"To some, including the great French philosopher René Descartes, the pineal is the seat of the soul. In some lizards and fish it actually forms a kind of third eye that records light information directly. In us, it is like a relay centre for information. It emits the molecule melatonin, which triggers responses all over the body." (p.76)"Life changes Earth, Earth changes life, and those of us walking the planet today carry the consequences within." (p.97)"Layer after layer of history reveals itself when you know how to look." (p.121)"The major forces at work around us today are wind, rain, and gravity- all products of the laws of physics and chemistry. If they shape today's world, they must have acted in the past to make a rock record." (p.127)"The thrill of the scientific hunt is to have an idea whose truth is hitched to predictions that take us to new places to explore, objects to discover, and data to analyze." (p.132)"Rare events wipe the slate clean and briefly change the rules of the game. The creatures that survive catastrophe aren't always 'better' at any ecological trick." (p.137)"Our present- with its polar ice- is an aberration. For most of history our planet was warm, almost tropical. If the rocks of the world are a lens, they reveal that our modern, relatively cold landscape is not the normal state of affairs for the planet." (p.144)"...we are the temporary holders of the materials that compose our bodies." (p.146)"Music is an analogy for what drives climate: a composition can be heard as one entity but be decomposed into rhythms, backbeats, and harmonies of different instruments acting on their own cycles." (p.174)"The rich history of innovation is not a linear path from one person to the next but the product of a social milieu with innumerable antecedents and, as a result, multiple inventors." (p.183)"Culture, technology, and economics mediate and referee our interaction with Earth." (p.186)"Human creativity and biology are like two different instruments in an orchestra: they play seperately, but together they make one score." (p.187)"Biology and culture have been the yin and yang of the human experience on our planet." (p.187)"Has the result of millions of years of human evolution been to disconnect us from the planet and from evolution itself?" (p.188)"From the people saved by agricultural and medical breakthroughs to the lives changed by great literature, philosophy, and music, the success of our species resides inside the offspring of our minds." (p.189)"Before our species hit the scene, trillions of algae took billions of years to transform the planet; now change is driven by single ideas traveling at the speed of light." (p.190)
review 2: The books present several interesting facts in an accessible way, in a commendable tradition of making science accessible and interesting. However, the scope of the book is at the same time too wide and too narrow: while trying to present a short history of the universe, basically, the author dwells unnecessarily on details which do not help propel the narrative forward. Personal anecdotes, odd bits of information and quite extensive biographical notes about people who appear and reappear almost on the same page breaks up the flow of the book and the book is sadly quite out of focus. less

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