My Book Reviews

In this post, I would like to review three related books Out of Wonder: The Evolving Story of the Universe by Nellie McLaughlan (Veritas, Dublin, 2016), Cosmos: The Story of Cosmic Evolution, Science and Civilisation by Carl Sagan (Abacus, 2009, originally MacDonald, 1981) and Calculating the Cosmos: How Mathematics Unveils the Universe, Ian Steward , Profile Books, 2016. These three books ascend in difficulty like three steps on a ladder; the first written from a spiritual/philosophical/wonderment/mystical view of the universe; the second, by far the oldest of the three works tells the fascinating story of cosmic evolution from the point of view of a professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences; while the last is by a mathematician of international renown. The Mind-blowing Magnitude of Space The French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) averred famously in his book Pensées (published posthumously in 1670) that contemplating humanity's place in the universe, dwarfed as...

Our great national poet and Nobel Laureate in Literature , W.B. Yeats (1865 -- 1939) wrote the following prophetic lines: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst   Are full of passionate intensity. These are extraordinary words indeed.  Prophetic, prescient and powerful, they describe our sad, apathetic and anarchic world.  Poets see into the heart of things, penetrate the veil of pretence, the trappings of power, the masks of megalomania, egomania, solipsism, narcissism and all “-isms” that seek to reduce human beings to pawns that can be discarded as collateral damage to evil purposes clothed in palatable terms and felicitous phrases.  I try to avoid politics in this blog because it is ever so divisive.  The preceding is a trivial fact, but I have been re-rea...