I am also intrigued by the fish book. And being paid by unsold books, while not super relevant, was an anecdote too interesting to leave out IMHO
Brian
I remain disappointed that Newton wasted that much of his time, but hey, I’m on a message board.
I’m an atheist and I’d have to agree. The show does put itself at odds with believers with comments by NdGT like, “God puts an end to all the questions.” While that’s often true, I don’t know how it futhers or improves the main objective of the show; Which is to educate, not disenfranchise.
That’s good to know. I mean the intended audience shouldn’t just be kids of non-believers, but also religious believers who are interested in science, but may belong to more conservative faith traditions which seem to have an uneasy (if not hostile) view of science. Use the show to promote scientific thinking, regardless of faith beliefs (if you really want to go after those, do it later - you’ll just turn off conservative religious folk by bashing them).
I daresay many have already turned themselves off and seek laws to turn others off, too.
The show puts itself at odds with believers of “the God of the gaps” and fundamentalists in general, but IMHO not with believers overall.
The thing is, early science did fundamentally transform our worldview from one where the universe is mysteriously governed by a god or gods to one where the universe is rational, intelligible and open to sceptical inquiry. In other worlds, science gave us naturalism, and the show is using that as a central theme.
Just watched eps two & three. I don’t get the religion slamming. Telling kids evolution is a theory based on facts and evidence as opposed to bullshit is like telling kids not to drink the drain cleaner under the sink and sticking metal forks into electrical sockets is bashing creationist “theory.”
It’s not bashing and politics and religion. This is basic having a brain stuff.
I have see all three episodes. I love the show. I first found the bashing of the show funny. Now I find it sad. It’s an excellent show.
I’m pretty sure Carl Sagan did in the original.
The fish book cracked me up completely. It was just so unexpected and so human. I will always wonder how many of them Halley was able to unload.
I’ve heard the History of Fishes story before, perhaps in A Short History of Nearly Everything.
So far, the episode themes have matched the original series: episode 2 - evolution; episode 3 - planetary orbits (Kepler), and cometary orbits (Halley, Newton).
Sagan did his next three episodes on Venus, Mars, and Voyager and the outer planets; looks like this version will deal with Einstein this Sunday, which Sagan saved for episode 8 (Travels in Space and Time).
The original show wasn’t any less delicate about saying where religion is wrong, it just existed in a time when people weren’t hypersensitive about perceived slights. It didn’t have Christian groups demanding equal time to reply to each episode.
I wish we knew more about the Oort Cloud. I think it’s pretty interesting, and we can’t even see it. We just figure it’s there.
It’s not much, but in the last couple of days the discovery was announced of 2012 VP113 (VP is short for vice president, as the discoverers have preliminarily named the object for Joe Biden), a small body with a perihelion distance of 80 AU (this is twice Pluto’s aphelion distance, and 60% greater than the outer defined region of the Kuiper Belt (50-55 AU).
Along with Sedna, discovered in 2003, and several other recent discoveries, 2012 VP113 is listed as a “possible inner Oort cloud object,” or OCO.
The few illustrations they showed looked great. I’d buy a book just to frame them and hang them on the wall.
I wonder what the books would be worth today if someone found them carefully stored in a barn or cellar or something.
Here’s one for £ 8,076.31. It’s described as “a fine copy of the rare first edition”. I don’t know if that means it’s an actual book from that time or just a copy of one.
Maybe someone should check the attic of the house where Halley lived then.
Perhaps still trying to recoup its losses from printing the book;), The Royal Society has copies of the illustrations for sale on its website.
If it’s going for eight thousand pounds, it’s an original copy. Copy is a vague term. All books are copies of their original manuscript.
I did some googling around and found that it was “not common” for the Royal Society to pay for a book to be published. Normally, they just gave permission for books to be published under their name.
But De Historia Piscium was two things. First it was one of two books by Francis Willughby reworking the classification of living things. The other book, on birds, Ornithologiae libri tres, had sold very well. The new categorization by function and morphology prefigured Linnaeus and was a major change in outlook.
Second, it was being produced posthumously. It’s author had been one of the original members of the Royal Society. He had worked on it for ten years.
Ornithologiae had been published by his widow. His friend and co-researcher, John Ray, had completed the manuscript for Piscium. When Ray brought the manuscript and draft illustrations to the Royal Society, they did several things.
They agreed that it could be published under the auspices of the Society, and that the Society would pay for the printing, honoring a respected deceased member. Then they formed a committee and basically re-wrote the whole thing top to bottom, to ensure that it would reflect well on their imprimatur. They decided which illustrations to use. It only took ten months.
The cost of creating the illustrations was expensive. The committee decided that illustrations were critical to the purpose of the book. Books with many fine engravings were also the latest technology, which reflected well on the Society, so costs rose. There were more than a hundred illustrated pages and many craftsmen were used to produce the engraving plates. Which brings us to the last thing they did.
The Society only had enough money for basic printing. So they sold subscriptions (sponsorships) for each illustrated page. Society members, and others, paid a guinea (pound) per plate. Subscriber’s names were added to the illustration pages. In the end, there were 187 plates, 154 of them sponsored. This is more than twice the number of plates in Ornithologiae, which had 77.
It’s a pity De Historia Piscium never sold as well as the Ornithologiae. It’s an important book and, as has been mentioned, it sells for a lot today because of that and, arguably, because of the illustrations. Ray’s books, on plants, were published with few illustrations.
No, this isn’t the only topic that the new Cosmos has sent me googling after. I count that as a good thing.
Is anyone else still watching? I was surprised to find no recent threads or even posts about the show. I have really enjoyed watching with my daughter. I can’t say I’ve learned much myself but it’s really opening my little girl’s eyes to the wonders of science much like the first version did for me so many years ago.
I’ve watched every episode so far. I have actually been enjoying it as well despite some of my earlier misgivings.
Still watching and enjoying it a lot. We haven’t seen the latest episode yet, but we’ll get to it soon.