The ancient Chinese were profoundly influenced by the Sun, Moon and stars, making persistent efforts to mirror astral phenomena in shaping their civilization. In this pioneering text, David W. Pankenier introduces readers to a seriously understudied field, illustrating how astronomy shaped the culture of China from the very beginning and how it influenced areas as disparate as art, architecture, calendrical science, myth, technology, and political and military decision-making. As elsewhere in the ancient world, there was no positive distinction between astronomy and astrology in ancient China, and so astrology, or more precisely, astral omenology, is a principal focus of the book. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including archaeological discoveries, classical texts, inscriptions and paleography, this thought-provoking book documents the role of astronomical phenomena in the development of the 'Celestial Empire' from the late Neolithic through the late imperial period.

'Includes exciting recent advances in studying gravity and its cosmic manifestations.' Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, former President of the Royal Society A fascinating historical account of how we have reached our current understanding of gravity. There have been sensational developments in gravitational physics in recent years. The detection of gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space - has opened a new window on the universe. These waves are produced by the most cataclysmic events in the universe - the collisions and mergers of black holes and neutron stars. There have also been great strides in our understanding of supermassive black holes. We now know that a black hole with a gargantuan mass lies at the heart of every galaxy, and we even have an image of one such beast. Gravity: From Falling Apples to Supermassive Black Holes provides an engaging and accessible account of how we have reached our current understanding of gravity and places these amazing discoveries in their true context. Gravity: From Falling Apples to Supermassive Black Holes is written in a captivating historical style with stories about the researchers of the past and present that illuminate many key ideas in astronomy and physics. The historical material leads from discussions of the early cosmologies to the great breakthroughs of Tycho and Kepler. We then consider Galileo's contributions to astronomy and mechanics, and the significance of Jeremiah Horrocks's ideas to the Newtonian revolution that would follow. Newton's theories brought about a new scientific age and his description of gravity was unrivalled for over two centuries until it was superseded by Einstein's description in terms of curved spacetime. The outlandish predictions of Einstein's theory have been confirmed again and again, including black holes and gravitational waves. Finally, we move on to more speculative ideas including Hawking radiation and primordial black holes and attempts to find a quantum theory of gravity.

Annotation Telematic Embrace combines a provocative collection of writings from 1964 to the present by the preeminent artist and art theoretician Roy Ascott, with a critical essay by Edward Shanken that situates Ascott's work within a history of ideas in art, technology, and philosophy.

Set in the social and historical context of pre-Revolutionary America, this book is a spellbinding account of one of the great and historic achievements of its time."--BOOK JACKET.

The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of one man's forty-year obsession to find a solution to the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day--"the longitude problem." Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that "the longitude problem" was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution-a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of Harrison's forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.