The Sleepwalkers

Description

An extraordinary history of humanity’s changing vision of the universe. In this masterly synthesis, Arthur Koestler cuts through the sterile distinction between ‘sciences’ and ‘humanities’ to bring to life the whole history of cosmology from the Babylonians to Newton. He shows how the tragic split between science and religion arose and how, in particular, the modern world-view replaced the medieval world-view in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. He also provides vivid and judicious pen-portraits of a string of great scientists and makes clear the role that political bias and unconscious prejudice played in their creativity.The Sleepwalkers – Arthur Koestler Preface
Introduction
Part One: The Heroic Age
1. Dawn
2. The Harmony of the Spheres
3. The Earth Adrift
4. The Failure of Nerve
5. The Divorce from Reality
Chronological Table to Part One
Part Two: Dark Interlude
1. The Rectangular Universe
2. The Walled-in Universe
3. The Universe of the Schoolmen
Chronological Table to Part Two
Part Three: The Timid Canon
1. The Life of Copernicus
2. The System of Copernicus
Chronological Table to Part Three
Part Four: The Watershed
1. The Young Kepler
2. The “Cosmic Mystery”
3. Growing Pains
4. Tycho de Brahe
5. Tycho and Kepler
6. The Giving of the Laws
7. Kepler Depressed
8. Kepler and Galileo
9. Chaos and Harmony
10. Computing a Bride
11. The Last Years
Part Five: The Parting of the Ways
1. The Burden of Proof
2. The Trial of Galileo
3. The Newtonian Synthesis
Chronological Table to Parts Four and Five
Epilogue
Selected Bibliography
Notes
IndexArthur Koestler (1905–1983) was an extraordinary polymath, writer, and political polemicist. His most famous works include the novels Darkness at Noon and Arrival and Departure; his autobiographical writings, including Spanish Testament and Scum of the Earth; and his visionary nonfiction, including The Ghost in the Machine, The Case of the Midwife Toad, and The Sleepwalkers.

Herbert Butterfield was an influencial historiographer born in 1900 in Yorkshire, England. A graduate of Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, he is best known for his 1931 work The Whig Interpretation of History. He died in 1979.GB

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