The Grand Contraption

[Dave Monroe]

Park, David.  The Grand Contraption:
   The World as Myth, Number, and Chance.
   Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005.

The Grand Contraption tells the story of humanity's
attempts through 4,000 years of written history to
make sense of the world in its cosmic totality, to
understand its physical nature, and to know its real
and imagined inhabitants. No other book has provided
as coherent, compelling, and learned a narrative on
this subject of subjects. David Park takes us on an
incredible journey that illuminates the multitude of
elaborate "contraptions" by which humans in the
Western world have imagined the earth they
inhabit--and what lies beyond. Intertwining history,
religion, philosophy, literature, and the physical
sciences, this eminently readable book is, ultimately,
about the "grand contraption" we've constructed
through the ages in an effort to understand and
identify with the universe.

According to Park, people long ago conceived of our
world as a great rock slab inhabited by gods, devils,
and people and crowned by stars. Thinkers imagined
ether to fill the empty space, and in the comforting
certainty of celestial movement they discerned
numbers, and in numbers, order. Separate sections of
the book tell the fascinating stories of measuring and
mapping the Earth and Heavens, and later, the
scientific exploration of the universe.

The journey reveals many common threads stretching
from ancient Mesopotamians and Greeks to peoples of
today. For example, humans have tended to imagine
Earth and Sky as living creatures. Not true, say
science-savvy moderns. But truth isn't always the
point. The point, says Park, is that Earth is indeed
the fragile bubble we surmise, and we must treat it
with the reverence it deserves.

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7924.html

Chapter 1: Voices from the Sands

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7924.html

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