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Seeing And Believing
 
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Seeing And Believing [Paperback]

Richard Panek (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Journalist Richard Panek begins his historical essay on the telescope with the Hubble Deep Field. This extended exposure by space telescope is a picture that looks out of our galaxy--farther, immeasurably farther, than the human eye has seen before. It exemplifies the purpose of all telescopes: "To address our place in the universe, literally. To size up all of space and figure out where we are in it." How and why did this particular technology have such profound effects?

Panek first considers Galileo, who "raised his new instrument toward the night sky and understood at once that there was more to see--and more to seeing--than meets the eye.... Unlike spectacles or magnifying lenses, the optic tube offered not just a distortion of what was already there, but more. It revealed evidence that was different from what the naked eye could see, evidence that wasn't otherwise there." Panek goes on to look at the, ahem, luminaries of observational astronomy--William Herschel, George Ellery Hale, Edwin Hubble--showing how faith in the telescope grew and our mental image of the universe expanded until "all the assumptions safely based on observation are gone." Panek's prose is vivid and beautiful, sustaining this (curiously) unillustrated book as it traces the astronomer's quest for light and dark, sight and belief. --Mary Ellen Curtin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Panek's concise, popularly written history of the telescope is an exciting interstellar voyage that shows how a humble novelty item and maritime tool evolved into a powerful exploratory instrument that has changed our conception of the cosmos. Although Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's moons with a spyglass in 1610 helped demolish the medieval worldview that placed a stationary earth at the center of creation, faulty lenses and frustrating optics hobbled astronomical research for decades. Amateur astronomer William Herschel's discovery of Uranus in 1781 led to his pre-Einsteinian insight that stargazers were not only looking tens of trillions of miles into space, but also penetrating into time past. Yet, incredibly, as recently as the turn of this century most astronomers clung to the belief that the universe consisted of just one galaxyAoursAwith the sun in a central position. In 1996, the Hubble Space Telescope pierced the heavens, resulting in the current estimate of a total of 50 billion galaxies. Panek (Waterloo Diamonds), contributing writer at Elle and Mirabella, puts these and other conceptual breakthroughs into clear perspective as he deftly explains how astronomy's interface with photography, spectroscopy, radio and space exploration led to the discovery of quasars, pulsars, black holes, galaxy superclusters and the search for "dark matter." His narrative sometimes bogs down in technical detail, but, nonetheless, it is a delightful intellectual adventure, fleshed out with vivid cameos of innovators like Tycho Brahe, Edwin Hubble and visionary astrophysicist George Ellery Hale, who in 1948 supervised the construction of what was then the world's largest telescope at Mount Palomar, but whose mental illness made him report that he was suffering periodic visits from an elf. Agent, Henry Dunow.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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4 Reviews
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3.0 out of 5 stars How the Telescope Opened our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens, Feb 21 2002
By 
Bobby Matherne (New Orleans, Louisiana) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Seeing And Believing (Paperback)
The key word in the subtitle is "Minds" as one soon learns. In the first half of the book, Panek describes how the telescope opened our eyes to the heavens and as the second half begins, he opens our eyes to how the progression began in earnest to the opening of our minds to the heavens. Certainly Galileo opened many minds to possibilities in the heavens that they had not considered: mountains on the Moon, moons orbiting Jupiter, phases of Venus, and so forth. What the eyes could see through the Galileo's perspicillum belied what our minds at the time could see, and the stretching of people's minds is treacherous endeavor, as he soon found out. But with stretching, people's minds do open, and the mind-opening exercises of Galileo prepared future centuries of star-gazers for quasars, pulsars, black holes, and a universe far greater than any of Galileo's contemporaries could have ever imagined.

[page 1] "On January 15, 1996, the universe grew by forty billion galaxies."

On the next page, Panek amends his statement to say, "What actually grew that morning, of course, wasn't the size of the universe, but our understanding of it." What happened that morning was a photo made of a single spot of the universe, as small as a grain of sand at arm's length, by the Hubble Space Telescope that was focused on that spot for ten entire days. They found almost 2,000 galaxies in that grain of sand speck of our night sky, which multiplied by the size of the rest of the sky approximates fifty billion galaxies. And this was only looking at visible light. What scientists found was more light than they ever expected and also more dark. Dark spaces for the first time appeared between galaxies, indicating that perhaps we had reached the end of universe with our instruments. Many questions arose.

[page 3] ". . . sometimes the best answer a scientist could want is more questions."

There weren't very many unanswered questions about the structure of the universe when Galileo made his first "tube of long seeing" by modifying a spyglass of a Dutch craftsman and turned it to familiar night sky. Planets and stars were pinpoints of light, everybody knew that; no questions were asked so nobody looked. But when Galileo looked at the night sky through his telescope he saw for the first time in the history of the Earth that planets had size and shapes and colors whereas stars remained pinpoints of light. He saw three pinpoints of light near Jupiter and as he observed on successive nights, sometimes he'd see two of them to the left of Jupiter and sometimes two to the right. How could Jupiter be moving so as to cause theses stars to dart about the planet so? Faced with this unanswerable question, he dared think the previously unthinkable: Perhaps the dots of light were moons orbiting Jupiter! What his eyes saw was incomprehensible until he opened his mind to new possibilities. Each generation since our minds have stretched farther and farther open as our instruments record previously incomprehensible data from the heavens.

This review truncated. To read the rest, a quick search of google will take you there with the following search argument: Seeing and Believing by Richard Panek

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4.0 out of 5 stars Superb little book!, Jun 14 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Seeing And Believing (Hardcover)
This is a very enjoyable book! As a professional astronomer, I can only recommend this book to all people interested on the impact that the telescope had in the history of mankind. Although there is no deep technical description of telescopes here, this is not the point. The telescope has changed and is still changing the way we see the Universe and Panek does a very good job at describing the major contributions of this wonderful invention.

My only complaint is that the last chapter might be a bit too rushed compared to the previous ones since it basically reviews all modern astronomy in about 20 pages. But, otherwise, strongly recommended!

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5.0 out of 5 stars A Gem!, Nov 29 1998
This review is from: Seeing And Believing (Hardcover)
Even if you know nothing about astronomy --even if you don't care about astronomy -- you will love this book. It is written so gracefully, so unpretentiously (no 'we are starstuff' bombast) and the story it tells is so intriguing, that even science-shy readers can enjoy -- and learn. (I know because I am one.) The book is very pretty ,too -- small and slender, and with a lovely cover. A perfect present.
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