The Human Cosmos

June 1, 2020

With this latest work, science journalist Marchant (Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body) sets off to summarize the human history of the stars by focusing on the people involved--astronauts, mathematicians, sailors, writers--rather than the discoveries themselves. Starting with dot patterns that resemble sky maps in the caves of Lascaux, she continues to examine the contributions that various groups, including the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks, have made to our understanding of the night sky. The narrative also touches on the contributions of astronomers such as Galileo, Issac Newton, and Christiaan Huygens, along with how figures including artist Wassily Kandinsky and writer and philosopher Thomas Paine portrayed the sky. The scope of the book ranges from stone pillars in southern Turkey to meteorites in Antarctica. Marchant organizes this long-ranging history of astronomy into chapters that consider human development of concepts such as time, fate, and power. Our present moment is also considered, where light pollution interrupts biological rhythms and where we often study the sky with computers instead of our eyes. VERDICT Though tied together by astronomy, this thematic, engaging overview of our stars and skies has something for all readers of geography, exploration, religion, philosophy, and politics.--Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 20, 2020
Journalist Marchant (Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body) takes a thought-provoking look at how human fascination with the night sky has influenced beliefs throughout history. For example, tablets from the seventh century BCE unearthed near Mosul show that the Assyrians believed that lunar eclipses coincided with the death of their king, the earliest known occurrence of astrology. Marchant goes back even further, about 20 millennia ago, to explore the Lascaux cave paintings and the contentious theory that they represent constellations, and also surveys current cutting-edge research into how stargazing can trigger transcendental states. The book’s broad scope is made manageable by punchy storytelling; in explaining how cosmology influenced the American Revolution, Marchant begins by stating that Thomas Paine’s journey toward radicalism started “with a pirate ship, some astronomy lectures and a pair of globes.” Each section is informed by Marchant’s belief that technology that separates people from the actual world, such as using GPS to navigate, or computers to map the sky, comes at a cost. Integrating science, history, philosophy, and religion, Marchant’s epic account is one for readers to savor.

Starred review from August 1, 2020
Artificial light now blocks the grandeur of the starry night sky that so profoundly affected and guided our ancestors. The glorious celestial pageant was viewed as the home of the gods; it sparked myths, art, and cosmologies; served as map and timekeeper; and gave rise to science. To track the phenomenal influence of the stars on human culture, science journalist Marchant conducts a unique and mind-expanding inquiry comprising deeply considered immersions in the cave art at Lascaux; shamanism; ancient, celestially oriented tombs in Ireland and Turkey; the precise astronomical records kept by Babylonian priests; astrology; and Polynesian celestial navigation. Marchant details the rise of monotheism, and the further loosening of our ties to the stars with the invention of the mechanical clock, the telescope, quantum physics, even abstract painting. Marchant elucidates key moments of mathematical, technological, artistic, and scientific ingenuity, and profiles intriguing visionaries. Ultimately, Marchant considers the mysteries of consciousness and expresses concern over the implications of our separation from the stars. In a tour de force on par with Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2015), Marchant argues that we need to experience the awe evoked by the unveiled night sky so that we, once again, feel profoundly connected to the cosmos and, more crucially, to earthly life, which is precious, vulnerable, and in our care.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2020
A tour of the heavens that centers not so much on outer space as what it does to our inner beings. For generations, prehistorians have considered the animals painted in ocher and charcoal on the ceilings of caves such as Lascaux to be ritual objects of a kind. But what if they're really star charts? One scholar calculated the ephemera of 20,000 years ago and then mapped it onto a work of rock art called Bull No. 18. As science journalist Marchant writes, "he found that when the bull was created, the Pleiades were slightly higher above the bull's back and that Aldebaran (the bull's eye) was more clearly framed by the Hyades--an even closer match to the painting than they are today." There's nothing overly New Age-y about the thought that "Lascaux Cave is as much about cosmology as it is about biology." Chronicling the history of the Hill of Tara (present-day Ireland), built long before the Great Pyramids, Marchant, who has a doctorate in genetics and medical microbiology, notes the work of a scientist who tried to work out how the ancient monument was oriented toward the sky. Readers will share his sense of wonder at a direct landing of sunlight "right in the tomb's heart...until the chamber was so bright he could walk around without a lamp, and see the roof twenty feet above." It's a short hop from archaeoastronomy to current teleological notions of the "meaning" of the universe. As Marchant writes, "science is based on the idea of studying a purely physical, material reality. Subjective experience is stripped out so we can seek what's really out there rather than in our imaginations. That has led inexorably to a worldview in which the physical universe is all that exists." But is there more? That chapter has yet to be written. Readers interested in the cognitive aspects of cosmology will enjoy Marchant's explorations.

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