Overview

From global navigation to natal charts to memory palaces and beyond, a thrilling journey through humanity's visualization of new spaces. When you give directions, do you tell someone to go straight ahead and turn left? Or do you suggest that they head north before moving west? Your answer reveals more than you might think. In A Sense of Space, writer and physicist John Edward Huth uses these two kinds of navigation—either centered on or independent of people—to help readers chart a path through evolving spatial models. In doing so, he offers an astonishing exploration of how changing scientific models of space alter our social perceptions, and vice versa. New visions of space can emanate from human considerations, he argues, and those new visions can in turn spawn new cultural phenomena. With accessible introductions to topics including mental maps, astrology, astronomy, particle physics, and Einstein's relativity, Huth makes clear that, although our minds have evolved to comprehend space on terrestrial distances, we routinely extend this understanding to realms far removed from our everyday experiences, from the cosmological to subatomic scales. Taking us across the eons from the myth of a flat earth to the mysteries of the multiverse, A Sense of Space is an energetic, thoughtful guide to how we orient ourselves in our world—and beyond.

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9780226844428

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Reviews

“A fascinating exploration that takes us from oceans to space, back to the brain, and inside the atom. Extraordinary.” * Tristan Gooley, author of The Natural Navigator *

Author Information

John Edward Huth is the Donner Professor of Science at Harvard University. He has done research in experimental particle physics since 1980 and is currently a member of the ATLAS collaboration at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). He participated in the discovery of the top quark and the Higgs boson and is the author of The Lost Art of Finding Our Way.

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