About Time: Cosmology, Time, and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang by Adam Frank read by David Drummond is a book about the first moments of time. I don't know why I chose this audio book, nor do I remember from where I got it.
Started: 10/11/2016
Completed: 10/24/2016
Recommendation: Mild Recommendation
Recommended By: Nobody
Review:
The first half of the book is a cosmologist lecturing on all of human history (basically stone age forward). It was almost entirely old hat to me and seemed wildly inappropriate in a book about cosmology. The central thesis for the author, however, is that time and culture are "braided" together. He took a long time developing this thesis and concluded that we would only come to understand our cosmology in general in terms of our own cultural development (ranging from relatively new theories to doom and gloom accompanying peak oil and climate change). The author felt comfortable, from this vantage, offering morality lessons. The only reason for the recommendation is that the second half of the book is a pretty good, fairly complete, introduction to cosmological thinking and analysis. It isn't terribly detailed, but it does a good job of putting things together for the lay audience (no math). I found the description of pocket universes particularly lucid and helpful to me.
The first half of the book is a cosmologist lecturing on all of human history (basically stone age forward). It was almost entirely old hat to me and seemed wildly inappropriate in a book about cosmology. The central thesis for the author, however, is that time and culture are "braided" together. He took a long time developing this thesis and concluded that we would only come to understand our cosmology in general in terms of our own cultural development (ranging from relatively new theories to doom and gloom accompanying peak oil and climate change). The author felt comfortable, from this vantage, offering morality lessons. The only reason for the recommendation is that the second half of the book is a pretty good, fairly complete, introduction to cosmological thinking and analysis. It isn't terribly detailed, but it does a good job of putting things together for the lay audience (no math). I found the description of pocket universes particularly lucid and helpful to me.
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