Heaven & Earth [antikvár]

Human beings have evolved to be aware of the world around them, indeed such awareness is essential for the survival of the human species - or any species for that matter. The five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch were long thought to be sufficient to deal with the external world. However, if we accept that the evolution of the senses is the result of the struggle for survival, there is an essential sixth sense - pain -which tells us about our internal environment. Indeed, there may yet be another sense: a feeling for the passage of time. It has always been there in the background, reminding us of our mortality, but nowadays seems to have assumed a daily presence. In this book time is relevant to many of the ideas we encounter, since unaided we are unable to appreciate the importance (and beauty) of actions that occur on very short and very long timescales. Most humans have the full set of senses, and the organs concerned with sight and sound are located high on the body, enabling us to see and hear far and wide. Our eyes and ears are in pairs so that we have three-dimensional vision and directional hearing, together refining our minute-by-minute knowledge of place and space and enabling us to respond to the environment that surrounds us. Though our senses are no more acute than in other creatures, they have the advantage of being connected to a more elaborate signal-processing system: the brain. In humans, this organ Is not solely concerned with the essentials of life and it Is here that self-awareness and consciousness are mysteriously created from the signals that our senses provide. This enormous processing power can apply itself to incoming information in ways that are only remotely connected to survival, such as an appreciation of beauty. The same brain enables us to create art, and science. Art and beauty underlie the images in this book and are a recurrent theme throughout, but many of the pictures here are of places and things that are, for one reason or another, beyond our ability to appreciate directly. Some pictures are of things that are too small or occur too quickly for us to notice, while others are unimaginably large and distant and happen on timescales that are as long as time itself. The only reason for exploring them at all is human curiosity, which is formalized in the processes of science, but the images that result from this quest for knowledge are often remarkably beautiful as well as informative. Though all the senses are fully integrated into the human experience, it is through our eyes that the richest and most varied impressions reach the mind. The visual image is just that, a picture, an instantaneous snapshot that Is refreshed many times per second as the eye flits from scene to scene. Vision provides a vast quantity of information quickly. Our eyes tell us of colour, size, shape, texture, brightness and much else that contributes to the visual sensations that we experience and which may have aesthetic qualities as well as practical uses. The eye can prompt the brain to recognize a familiar face across a crowded room in an instant. The same glance may also capture mood and context while simultaneously transmitting a welcome or a warning. Beyond its emotive power, the eye is a