[English] John Barrow: “Art and the Universe”

[English] John Barrow: *Art and the Universe*, translated by Shu Yunxiang, Shanghai Scientific & Technical Publishers, October 2001

I had read half of this book earlier, and today I finished the other half as well. Barrow’s range is quite broad; the subjects covered in this book include astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics, history, culture, religion, language, fine arts, music, and so on, so it is hard to give a concise overview.

On the Peking University website for the history and philosophy of science, there is an introduction: http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/viewarticle.php?sid=666 But even there, it seems, the book’s distinctive qualities are not really pointed out. In fact, cosmology is by no means the theme of this book; perhaps it would be more fitting to summarize it as “nature and the humanities full of art”?

January 27, 2007, 13:47

Latest comments

• CS

  2007-02-11 08:46:02 Anonymous 218.22.21.24 

  Recently I’ve been reading Barrow’s *The Constants of Nature*, the Chinese edition. The translator was too conscientious, translating many notes and references into Chinese as well, which is quite annoying. I had originally wanted to look up the references, but once they were translated into Chinese they became hard to find properly; regrettably, I can’t find the English version.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.