👨‍🔬Science and philosophy🌔 all across the canvas👩🏻‍🎨. A splatter of Philosophy of Science, a splatter of history of Science, a few brush strokes of physics trivia and then some. Only in the chapter treating dark matter the writer breaks the mold by presenting some new ideas.
Altogether a solid effort, if a bit too much spread out, it lacks a bit in character and novelty. The au fait reader of popular science may find "Mapping out the Heavens" a bit lackluster. Nevertheless, I congratulate Priyamvada's commitment to an ever-growing effort to popularize Cosmology and Science in general. ( )

3.5 stars
This is a very interesting look at some of the history around such cosmological discoveries as black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and string theory. The author frequently points out how various personalities or situations often got in the way of advancing scientific knowledge, dispelling the notion that science is an orderly advance from one level of knowledge to the next. I think I understand the things explained a little better than I did before, but I'm not sure I'd go along with some other reviewers thoughts that it's always simple enough for 'even a lay person' to understand. Still, a good read for those of us who'd *like* to know more about the cosmos. ( )

There have been a number of books lately on the history of science, but most of them are very detailed - perhaps too much so for the average lay reader. This book includes just enough information to highlight the major players and their main contributions, and most interestingly, perhaps, to explain why the history of science has changed drastically in the past thirty years.

Specifically, the author points out that we are now in an era of “big science” - i.e., one dependent on large teams in more than one country, rather than lone scientists working in isolation. This is not to say there is no longer competition, but now it tends to be between teams rather than individuals. Dr. Natarajan adds that the advances in equipment, particularly from computerization, have also provided a huge boost in the capacity of scientists to explore the universe. And of course, there is the Internet, allowing for peer communication, peer review, and instant promulgation of ideas. Big science, she proposes, has the potential of accelerating the rate of discovery, although she allows that the vast amounts of data being collected have caused bottlenecks in analysis.

The author begins with the ancient Greeks. She goes through the contributions of the most prominent thinkers since then, focusing on those who contributed to major shifts in our understanding of where we are in the universe, and how central (or not) we are to the universe. Her first big shout-out is to Copernicus in 1543, who identified the earth as going around the sun instead of the reverse, creating a new reference system by reordering of the heavens. More recently, she cites Edwin Hubble who, as she says poetically, “set the entire universe adrift.”

Natarajan would agree with Wootton, in his recent book The Invention of Science, that while Copernicus’s insights were brilliant, they were not driven by data. Thus Wootton dates the beginning of the so-called “scientific revolution” with Tycho Brahe, who carefully compiled extensive data from observations. Natarajan concurs that “[t]he new primacy of empirical data marked an important turn in the history of science….” But she locates the points for major changes in science with changes in perceptual frameworks.

Nevertheless, she concedes, for ideas really to make headway, they must, as she writes, “marry observation, technology, and understanding.”

Quite a bit of Natarajan’s history focuses on questions about the origins of our universe, and the controversy among different proponents of theories, from the ancient model of “turtles all the way down” to the steady state theory, the big bang, and now, the multiverse. She explains each one as well as the data supporting or controverting the theories.

She also tackles black holes and their properties, doing a much better job than Stephen Hawking of explaining them for the non-scientist.

Other topics include standard candles - from Cepheids to Quasars, the electromagnetic spectrum, blackbodies, dark energy, dark matter, gravity, and the possibility of other forms of intelligence in the universe.

Evaluation: This is an excellent book, especially if you don’t want to delve too deeply into an equation-laden explanation of complex subjects. The author is a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale, but in addition to having many academic awards, she also writes for the popular media. This was evident from her lucid prose and ease in explaining complicated subjects. ( )

Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos is an excellent guide to the many radical discoveries that are remaking our understanding of the cosmos. The author, Priyamvada Natarajan is a theoretical astrophysicist at Yale who maps dark matter by observing how light is bent by “potholes” as it travels from its source to where we see it. These potholes reveal the mysterious dark matter whose effects we can map (Well, Natarajan can map.) even while we don’t have a clue what it is.

There is a poem that I used to include in my syllabus as a history teacher. It’s by Thomas Bailey Aldrich and begins, “My mind lets go a thousand things/Like dates of wars and deaths of kings” and then goes on to recall the very hour the wind shook loose two petals from a flower. I think of it often when reading historical overviews. Authors are always in a double-bind. If they don’t include the thousand things, they will be perceived as unserious, and if they do, they risk losing their readers before they get to the good stuff when those petals start falling. For me, when I read the overviews, I just tell myself, it will get better and it usually does.

The book begins with an extensive overview of the history of cosmology from the earliest observations recorded in cuneiform more as statistical tabulations without any attempt at explanation though the centuries. Natarajan makes some effort to remind readers that cosmological exploration was not isolated to Europe, reminding us of the invention of the compass by the Chinese, the mapping advances from India and the critical role of Arabs in creating the mathematics that formed the foundation for advanced cosmology. She also reminds us that the Flat-Earth Society has been a collection of anti-science cranks since Ptolemy, not Columbus – though not in those words.

One of the central points she makes is that science is provisional and self-correcting. Throughout the history of science, new technologies enable the collection of new data, new data creates new insights and discoveries, and meanwhile old ideas resist change. There is a clash of ideas, sometimes people suggest a middle way, but ultimately, the best data and explanations win out because science chooses what is replicable and empirical even when it is uncomfortable.

It is unfortunate that this overview must come first, but it must because all the rest of the book is built on its foundation, but it is far less exciting and interesting than the meat of the book that beings in the second chapter and then just keeps building. The tone of the writing changes dramatically after the first chapter, becoming more conversational, more engaging and far more fascinating. Natarajan adds lots of interesting information such as Poe presaging Hubble’s discovery of the expanding universe in a poem eighty years before Of course, Poe had no evidence, it was a dream of an idea, but it was true and Hubble confirmed it with science. The expanding universe upends everything, after all literature is full of the constancy of the heavens and Hubble broke it. It makes this science so much more accessible for the general public when she makes this connections with other disciplines like literature and poetry.

I love how Natarajan reveals the humanity of the scientists who shape our worldview. Einstein’s resistance to the expanding universe, his “fudge” as she calls it, a final attempt to hand onto the static universe model in the face of new evidence and his eventual confession he was wrong. It’s kind of reassuring to know that even Einstein hung onto belief over evidence for a while before coming round. Because he did come around. Perhaps those who cling to denial of climate change and evolution will do the same. Maybe not, but the idea that Einstein fudged for a bit makes me feel more optimistic about those who doubt science today. She also describes how Sitter’s wrong explanation while being totally, bizarrely wrong, contained a nugget of an idea that helped jumpstart another direction that led toward the right solution (or at least, since science is provisional, what we believe now is the right solution.) Equally fascinating, it is something so simple as photographic plates that enabled the real breakthroughs in observation that advanced the radical theories we have now come to accept.

Natarajan brings the same enthusiastic passion to revealing the nonlinear push and pull advancements that led to the discovery of black holes, dark matter, background radiation, the accelerating universe and will, I am certain, the discovery of other worlds and other sentient, curious, imaginative and creative beings. Full disclosure: I began volunteering my background computer capacity to SETI back when I had a Apple Mac Classic. But when Natarajan talks about other worlds, she does not mean just habitable planets with sentient life out there somewhere lost in the stars, but also other worlds in the multiverse and whether there could be life where the cosmological parameters necessary for the universe as we know it are different. This is radical stuff, revealing that scientists are some of the wildest and most radical thinkers on the planet.

But isn’t that what science is? Taking what we know, what we can observe and then getting freaky with it? Always presuming of course, the evidence backs it up.

4paws I recommend this book highly. Natarajan has a way of taking theory and all its complexity and explaining it so this non-scientist can easily understand it. She effectively explains the ideas that develop and the historical and technological waves that eventually erode those past explanations and replace them with new constructs, new ideas. She makes the process of interesting, human and fun, with little tidbits of gossipy details that bring revered scientists to life. I have always loved physics, took one astronomy class in college and worked at a planetarium (As an usher, believe me hearing the same presentation 6 times a weekend for 3 months ingrains those particular ideas forever,) so I am not intimidated by science, but I have no real science background, no expertise, and yet never felt overwhelmed by the science.

I like her holistic approach, combining literature and cultural information as ways of showing how radical some of these new concepts are. There are wonderful illustrations. It took me a few weeks to read this, but that is generally how I read nonfiction. I read until I come to a concept I need to think about and internalize and switch to some fiction, coming back when I have chewed it over a bit and am ready to learn something new. My mind still lets go a thousand things, but this book is full of falling petals and they are beautiful in their mystery and magnificence.

Mapping the Heavens will be released on April 26th. I received an electronic advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

http://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/04/16/mapping-the-heavens-by-pri... ( )

The universe still hangs onto a laundry list of secrets, at least from us. Unlike the universe, Mapping The Heavens follows a totally predictable path, beginning with a compressed course in the usual suspects – Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Brahe et al. As we get closer to 2016, the stories get longer and more detailed. There is a lot of not so intrigue over Nobel Prizes which is not exactly “mapping the heavens”. There is sadness over the dozens who missed out because the prize was limited to three people per year. But aside from the asides, the book divides into four recent, important discoveries: black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and the background radiation from the Big Bang. Of the four, dark energy is unique because it has no explanatory theory behind it. We just know. Today we think of the universe as 73% dark energy, 23% dark matter, and 4% ordinary atoms (free hydrogen, helium, plus .3% neutrinos. .5% stars, .03% heavy elements). Natarajan explains it simply and well, so that it all makes sense, even to a beginner.

There are of course some great graphics, but some are a complete mystery, unexplained and unreferenced. Natarajan also uses an odd term regarding black holes. She says (twice) that galaxies “host” black holes at their centers. That seems backwards. Black holes are several million times the size of our sun. What if they’re not collapsed suns, but collapsed masses that defined a nascent galaxy without ever becoming stars because they were too massive? They are more than likely the creators of the galaxies or they wouldn’t be at the center of every galaxy we examine. It seems wrong to call them guests, as if they came later. The missing link, at least for me, is the relationship of dark matter and dark energy to black holes. To me, whether a galaxy could form without a black hole at its center is where the research action should be. That’s where I thought the book was heading – ie. what’s next.

But after all the angst of scientific progress, Natarajan concludes with a return to ancient uneducated speculations, from the Greeks to Giordano Bruno, and everyone, it seems, except modern sci-fi authors, whose ideas are as valid (if not more so) than anyone else in history. It’s a disappointing end to a topic with infinite potential.

David Wineberg ( )