Chasing the Sun: A Cultural and Scientific History of the Star That Gives Us Life PDF
Preview Chasing the Sun: A Cultural and Scientific History of the Star That Gives Us Life
ALSO BY RICHARD COHEN By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2010 A CBS COMPANY Copyright © Narrative Tension Inc. 2010 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. The right of Richard Cohen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. Simon & Schuster UK Ltd 1st Floor 222 Gray’s Inn Road London WC1X 8HB www.simonandschuster.co.uk Simon & Schuster Australia Sydney Excerpt from ‘Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction’ by Wallace Stevens from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens copyright 1954 by Wallace Stevens, and renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Kooser, Ted, excerpt from ‘Telescope’ from Delights and Shadows. Copyright © 2004 by Ted Kooser. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org. Gogarty, Oliver St John, excerpt from ‘Time, Gentlemen, Time’ from The Poems and Plays of Oliver St John Gogarty, reprinted with the permission of Colin Smyth Ltd on behalf of V.J. O’Mara. Coward, Noel, excerpt from ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’. Copyright © Noel Coward, reprinted with the permission of Methuen Drama, an imprint of A&C Black Publishers Ltd. Auden, W.H., ‘In Praise of Limestone’ in Collected Poems Of W.H. Auden, reprinted with the permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Ltd. Lyrics from ‘Time’: words and music by Roger Waters, Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright © Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd (NS). All rights on behalf of Roger Waters Music Overseas Ltd. Administered by Artemis Muziekuitgeverij BV. All rights reserved. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. If any have inadvertently been overlooked, the publishers would be glad to hear from them and make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-0-74325-928-6 eBook ISBN: 978-0-85720-980-1 Typeset in Baskerville by M Rules Printed in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD For Toby, Mary and Guy Stars in their own right CONTENTS List of Illustrations and Illustration Credits Preface Sunrise on Mount Fuji PART ONE THE SUN BEFORE SCIENCE 1 Telling Stories Solar myths; Max Müller’s discoveries; children of the Sun; an Inca festival 2 Celebrating the Seasons Solstices and equinoxes; worshipping through the seasons; North American sun dances 3 The Three Thousand Witnesses The Earth’s standing stones; Stonehenge; the Pyramids; Newgrange and New York 4 Terrors of the Sky Auroras and eclipses; their respective histories, from 2000 BC to Shakespeare and Milton PART TWO DISCOVERING THE SUN 5 The First Astronomers The earliest sungazers; the Sumerians; the Babylonians; the ancient Egyptians 6 Enter the Greeks From Homer and Hesiod to Pythagoras, Plato and Ptolemy 7 Gifts of the Yellow Emperor China’s separateness; modes of thought: yin and yang, the ‘Way’ and the Sun 8 The Sultan’s Turret Arabia’s great astronomers; India and Western Europe, AD 600–1543 9 The Earth Moves The great four: Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler and Galileo 10 Strange Seas of Thought Newton on gravity and colour; the transit of Venus; Newton’s successors to 1850 11 Eclipses and Enlightenment From Captain Cook to Einstein’s great moment; Antarctica 2003 12 The Sun Dethroned Solar physics 1800–1950; the Copenhagen gang; making the atomic bomb PART THREE THE SUN ON EARTH 13 Sunspots Their make-up explained; cycles, flares and eruptions; their influence on weather 14 The Qualities of Light Light in war, in sport and in crime; shadows, sunsets and twilight 15 Beneath the Beating Sun Heat and its effects; skin colour fashions; from Sun avoidance to sunbathing 16 Skin Deep Skin cancers and other solar disorders; how melatonin works; sungazing; Seasonal Affective Disorder 17 The Breath of Life Photosynthesis and its discoverers; plants and the Sun; hibernation and migration 18 The Dark Biosphere Creatures of the deep; currents and tides
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