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The Unexpected Universe
Physical [11], 239p. ; 21cm. Science -- Addresses, essays, lectures.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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1212 people want to read
About the author
Loren Eiseley
50 books314 followersLoren Corey Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was a highly respected anthropologist, science writer, ecologist, and poet. He published books of essays, biography, and general science in the 1950s through the 1970s.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
April 3, 2012
This collection of short essays by anthropologist Loren Eiseley often led me to set down the book and stare off into space for a long minute. His writing skirts the bleeding edges of our rational understanding of the world around us and hands the reader a comprehensive guide to an almost religious devotion to and appreciation of nature and time. No polemic, no anti- or pro- anything lays secreted away in these pages. Instead the reader will find musings and tales, some light and optimistic, some deeply dark and aching, of one man's experience of life. Its a beautiful read.
October 27, 2009
Eiseley used to write a monthly column in a magazine called Natural History. One of the essays was about bringing home a fossil and placing it on the floor in his house. One night his dog recognized the fossil as a bone, put his foot on it and growled at his master.
Eiseley says he was transported far back into the past by the experience.
Reading this made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
Eiseley says he was transported far back into the past by the experience.
Reading this made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
September 23, 2011
This is not a review. This is a funny, to me I guess, story about my picking this book. When I was a kid I decided to givr the hobo life a try and head out west by any conveyance I could hop, crawl or jump into. I remember falling into the company of a bunch of winos in a makeshift camp of sorts in N.M. Kind of a way station for the down and out, the few on the lam, and punks like me. I was chumming around with this old guy who looked like a vulture sizing everybody up for a meal. We were passing a bottle of MD 20/20 back and forth and he had his stuff in a kind of knapsack laying open next to him. I saw a book sticking out and I asked him about it. He pulled it out and held it up turning it around and staring at it like a jar of peaches you can't decide to open or not. He said this is "The Book". Then he looked at me and said what will you trade me for it? I had never thought about trading for it but since it was "The Book" I had to have it. I fumbled around and pulled out a pair of brass knuckles I had that I carried for protection and never had any intention of ever using and he said "I'll take those". He threw me the book and I tossed him my knucks and that was that. I started reading this wonderful book and lost it somewhere. I have another copy now and I'm reading it anew. I think Mr. Eiseley could have gleaned some meaning about the wino who had his book.
August 14, 2025
There is something about reading a Loren Eiseley book that makes me want to assign it six stars, or, like that amplifier in the movie Spinal Tap, an eleven. Ever since I first read The Night Country almost forty years ago, I thought there was something about Eiseley's prose that fairly coruscated. That's certainly true of the essays in The Unexpected Universe.
What Eiseley manages to convey is an almost childlike sense of wonder about the universe. It could be something small like a spider or a water bug or rambunctious young fox -- or it could be the size of our sun as viewed from the surface of Pluto.
What Eiseley manages to convey is an almost childlike sense of wonder about the universe. It could be something small like a spider or a water bug or rambunctious young fox -- or it could be the size of our sun as viewed from the surface of Pluto.
July 17, 2010
It's impossible for me not to like a naturalist who quotes from Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Bacon, Heraclitus, Lord Dunsany, and Peter Beagle.
July 6, 2017
One of the best books I randomly came across. An amazing discovery for those that don't know Loren. It's the cross section of astronomy, philosophy, anthropology, and amazing literature.
August 7, 2024
“Perhaps all I was, really, was a pile of autumn leaves seeing smoke wraiths through the haze of my own burning.”
March 22, 2015
Five stars for everything Loren Eiseley has written! This book of essays is revealing and moving in so many ways....the search for God, the communion with nature and the wild, the contemplations of life The play with a fox cub, tying man to the initial bubbling of life on this mere planet....seeing oneself in the eye of an untamed creature. The Bonehunter, always searching, saw so much more than we.
September 12, 2008
Eiseley is brilliant and thoughtful. His essays are centered on nature and our physical universe and what it teaches us. The story about the spider truly enlightened me about perspective... we all have our own filter ;-)
February 8, 2015
This book was more like a poetic meditation on life, death, evolution, human progress (or lack there of) with a focus of the works of Thoreau and Darwin. I loved the layered literary references, including The Odyssey and The Tempest. This book is timeless.
October 13, 2024
I have read a couple of Eisley’s books now, and decided to try this one as well, partly because it was described to be about a "wide spectrum of phenomena throughout the universe" and my background is in astrophysics. But for an anthropologist, his universe is mainly that of Earth, and I personally got much more universe-related writings in his The Invisible Pyramid.
In The Immense Journey, the book of his I read first and which I enjoyed, I felt that Eisley was out there living and being on a sort of adventure along-side us while he was telling us about it. In this book it feels like he is in his chair, reflecting on all sorts of things. For me, this book was very much all over the place and I was never quite sure what he was trying to communicate. It felt pretentious and rambling, and never felt like it was going anywhere.
I have come to realize that he is very fond of analogies. It was fascinating and interesting at first, but now they have become too much for me. His analogies often feel equal part poetical and laborious. They need quite a bit of explaining to make sense and I’m not sure if his analogies really help his communication. One example of this is in the first chapter, named "The Ghost Continent", where he starts off the chapter with "Every man contains within himself a ghost continent" and then goes off explaining that, delving into the topic of our quest for knowledge, alongside the quests of Odysseus and Captain Cook. Actually, most of his books and chapters are named in an equally analogy-heavy way.
None of the essays in this book really stood out to me, and I guess I have come to realize that his writing style is not for me. I do have one more book of his I want to try, though (The Night Country).
In The Immense Journey, the book of his I read first and which I enjoyed, I felt that Eisley was out there living and being on a sort of adventure along-side us while he was telling us about it. In this book it feels like he is in his chair, reflecting on all sorts of things. For me, this book was very much all over the place and I was never quite sure what he was trying to communicate. It felt pretentious and rambling, and never felt like it was going anywhere.
I have come to realize that he is very fond of analogies. It was fascinating and interesting at first, but now they have become too much for me. His analogies often feel equal part poetical and laborious. They need quite a bit of explaining to make sense and I’m not sure if his analogies really help his communication. One example of this is in the first chapter, named "The Ghost Continent", where he starts off the chapter with "Every man contains within himself a ghost continent" and then goes off explaining that, delving into the topic of our quest for knowledge, alongside the quests of Odysseus and Captain Cook. Actually, most of his books and chapters are named in an equally analogy-heavy way.
None of the essays in this book really stood out to me, and I guess I have come to realize that his writing style is not for me. I do have one more book of his I want to try, though (The Night Country).
December 15, 2020
A few jarringly anachronistic notes, but these essays are full of dark, lyrical, genius. Looking forward to my next Eiseley. Highly recommended.
August 9, 2022
"We live by messages—all true scientists, all lovers of the arts, indeed, all true men of any stamp. Some of the messages cannot be read, but man will always try. He hungers for messages, and when he ceases to seek and interpret them he will be no longer man." (pp. 145-146)
April 15, 2021
I've never read anything like this before. Just extraordinary in scope and feeling.
"The Star Thrower" is my favourite essay of them all.
"The Star Thrower" is my favourite essay of them all.
June 29, 2017
This is the third Eiseley I’ve read, and it sometimes felt like he was trying to recreate the success of that first book. I would have preferred him to take his considerable talent some place new. Eiseley has a knack for looking at something from the outside, and making it about himself (“asserting the human right to define his own frontier”). On a picky note, I’m not sure how one produces “a carelessly exaggerated yawn,” and I certainly hope the young farm-girl lived her life unaware that Eiseley thought she looked like the last Neanderthal.
October 5, 2009
I'd never heard of the author before and don't usually read scientific philosophy, but I found it in a secondhand bookshop for 70 cents, so thought I'd give it a try.
It was a bit of a slog, to be honest. Less rigorously scientific than expected, and too philosophically woolly. Some interesting ideas buried under a pile of frustratingly vague and incoherent waffle.
It was a bit of a slog, to be honest. Less rigorously scientific than expected, and too philosophically woolly. Some interesting ideas buried under a pile of frustratingly vague and incoherent waffle.
November 17, 2010
Flipping fantastic. I am not, repeat not, a natural history fan by any stretch of the imagination, but Eiseley's prose is so wonderful it made the ride worthwhile. The occasional non-PC 60's jargon slips in a time or two, & he's very, very excited about man having been to the moon (it was the 60's, ok?), but otherwise, what a great read.
February 26, 2023
There were times when reading The Unexpected Universe that I thought I'd found, in Loren Eiseley, another William Bolitho. Now unconscionably obscure, Bolitho was an erudite and ornately lyrical essayist of the 1920s, whose out-of-print books like Twelve Against the Gods and Camera Obscura proved such an unexpected joy for me. Coming across The Unexpected Universe, Eiseley's collection of erudite, ornate essays, in similarly unpromising circumstances (a second-hand book store, miscatalogued in the sci-fi section next to a book proving that God was an alien), I saw plenty to excite me. But the precious metals were packed hard into the rock, and many of them proved too difficult to extract.
Discussing science, anthropology, naturalism and spirituality, Eiseley's wide-ranging essays had plenty of potential, and his learned digressions into history, mythology and personal anecdote boded well for a lush reading experience. However, I began to recognise just how slowly I was getting through the book, and how jaded I was becoming. I'm neither a quick nor a slow reader, merely a regular and persistent one, but I was surprised how long it took me to get through this slim volume.
As the initial promise wore off, I began to look more closely at why I felt jaded. At first, I began to notice that while Eiseley's topics of discussion were fascinating, his writing was often quite verbose and bloated. What I had thought to be ornate decoration was increasingly a sickly garnish, and in many paragraphs I found I would lose the thread of argument. In addition to his academic pursuits, Eiseley was also a published poet, and much of his prose – particularly in his occasional flights of fancy – read like prose-poems – but ones injudiciously wrought.
This verbosity was something I also felt with Bolitho – though to a much lesser extent there – but Bolitho was always redeemed by his fantastic, acute observations. With Eiseley, however, I increasingly found that not only was the heavy prose making me lose the thread of argument, but I was often unsure what the argument was. When the argument is clear, Eiseley's bejewelled pursuit can be enjoyable, as in the essay 'The Invisible Island', where the common understanding of Darwinian evolution is recast to pay homage to those all-important genetic and cultural misfits ("... so much has been written about the triumph of the fittest and so little about the survival of the failures who have changed... the world" (pg. 120); "Competition may simply suppress what exists only as potential" (pg. 128)). But too often I didn't know what Eiseley's dreamy, shifting sands were trying to say, and it would be a few paragraphs before I could find something to fix onto.
The Unexpected Universe is a worthwhile book, intermittently inspiring, entertaining and thought-provoking. The name Loren Eiseley is on my radar now, and I am certainly going to pursue more of his writing. But The Unexpected Universe was also intermittently indulgent, ponderous and roundabout, and for all its qualities I believe my lasting memory of the book will be this sluggishness.
Discussing science, anthropology, naturalism and spirituality, Eiseley's wide-ranging essays had plenty of potential, and his learned digressions into history, mythology and personal anecdote boded well for a lush reading experience. However, I began to recognise just how slowly I was getting through the book, and how jaded I was becoming. I'm neither a quick nor a slow reader, merely a regular and persistent one, but I was surprised how long it took me to get through this slim volume.
As the initial promise wore off, I began to look more closely at why I felt jaded. At first, I began to notice that while Eiseley's topics of discussion were fascinating, his writing was often quite verbose and bloated. What I had thought to be ornate decoration was increasingly a sickly garnish, and in many paragraphs I found I would lose the thread of argument. In addition to his academic pursuits, Eiseley was also a published poet, and much of his prose – particularly in his occasional flights of fancy – read like prose-poems – but ones injudiciously wrought.
This verbosity was something I also felt with Bolitho – though to a much lesser extent there – but Bolitho was always redeemed by his fantastic, acute observations. With Eiseley, however, I increasingly found that not only was the heavy prose making me lose the thread of argument, but I was often unsure what the argument was. When the argument is clear, Eiseley's bejewelled pursuit can be enjoyable, as in the essay 'The Invisible Island', where the common understanding of Darwinian evolution is recast to pay homage to those all-important genetic and cultural misfits ("... so much has been written about the triumph of the fittest and so little about the survival of the failures who have changed... the world" (pg. 120); "Competition may simply suppress what exists only as potential" (pg. 128)). But too often I didn't know what Eiseley's dreamy, shifting sands were trying to say, and it would be a few paragraphs before I could find something to fix onto.
The Unexpected Universe is a worthwhile book, intermittently inspiring, entertaining and thought-provoking. The name Loren Eiseley is on my radar now, and I am certainly going to pursue more of his writing. But The Unexpected Universe was also intermittently indulgent, ponderous and roundabout, and for all its qualities I believe my lasting memory of the book will be this sluggishness.
Read
September 3, 2024Recently I'd been talking to some friends about how I'd noticed a theme in some contemporary movies where they promoted an idea that the binding force of the universe is love. On some level, of course, this idea has floated around at least in some form for a couple of thousand years -- it shows up in early Greek philosophy, after all. But the interesting thing for me was that these films tie it directly to an idea that it's backed by "Science," i.e. that on some Quantum level (for example) Love transcends time and distance and is foundational. So, after those conversations, I went looking around for books that promote it, and, lo and behold, found there are any number of authors who have been doing this kind of thing, one of whom is Loren Eiseley.
And yet, this book (0ne of several she has) surprised me. Because even though what I'd been reading about it suggested it would do that (though it's from the 60s, so I knew it wouldn't be too heavily "quantum" oriented. Indeed, though, I think to say that it's not so much "Science" oriented as it is "Empirical." It involves a lot of discussion of explorers, early scientists, but then also a good deal of discussion of myth, literature, and ideas. I was happy with it. I hate to say banal things like this, but, "It makes you think." <--- usually something only stupid people say. (Hmmm, that might be a self-criticism.
Anyway, I was expecting to read this book just to give me a background in people who'd written on this idea of the Inter-connectivity of things, particularly in relation to "Love." (not just something like, say, E.O. Wilson's "Consilience," about unified field theorems, etc., a book which annoys me). But this book was something else entirely.
And yet, this book (0ne of several she has) surprised me. Because even though what I'd been reading about it suggested it would do that (though it's from the 60s, so I knew it wouldn't be too heavily "quantum" oriented. Indeed, though, I think to say that it's not so much "Science" oriented as it is "Empirical." It involves a lot of discussion of explorers, early scientists, but then also a good deal of discussion of myth, literature, and ideas. I was happy with it. I hate to say banal things like this, but, "It makes you think." <--- usually something only stupid people say. (Hmmm, that might be a self-criticism.
Anyway, I was expecting to read this book just to give me a background in people who'd written on this idea of the Inter-connectivity of things, particularly in relation to "Love." (not just something like, say, E.O. Wilson's "Consilience," about unified field theorems, etc., a book which annoys me). But this book was something else entirely.
May 21, 2022
A very enjoyable and interesting set of essays. I particularly enjoyed The Angry Winter.
The underlying theme of these philosophical essays is scientific, so it is an intersection of two subjects that are interesting to me. I enjoyed the blend between anecdotal writing and philosophical explanation and discussion. Many of the points made by Eiseley I think I resonate with, especially the high and important placement of nature. Eiseley has clearly gained much influence from Transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson, along with scientists and biologists sush as Darwin, all of whom I would like to read to get a first-hand view of these people and their specific lives, circumstances, and views.
However, the essays were often very challenging for me. The expression and words used were often, though purposeful I'm sure, difficult to truly interpret from a first read. Therefore, I believe I will gain a fuller understanding and awe for this book upon further reading.
Overall, I do think this book has opened my mind slightly and I will use it as a starting block to kickstart my thinking along this certain path, along with my own thoughts and interpretations of the world and nature, and other books of the similar vein I hope to read in the near future.
The underlying theme of these philosophical essays is scientific, so it is an intersection of two subjects that are interesting to me. I enjoyed the blend between anecdotal writing and philosophical explanation and discussion. Many of the points made by Eiseley I think I resonate with, especially the high and important placement of nature. Eiseley has clearly gained much influence from Transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson, along with scientists and biologists sush as Darwin, all of whom I would like to read to get a first-hand view of these people and their specific lives, circumstances, and views.
However, the essays were often very challenging for me. The expression and words used were often, though purposeful I'm sure, difficult to truly interpret from a first read. Therefore, I believe I will gain a fuller understanding and awe for this book upon further reading.
Overall, I do think this book has opened my mind slightly and I will use it as a starting block to kickstart my thinking along this certain path, along with my own thoughts and interpretations of the world and nature, and other books of the similar vein I hope to read in the near future.
February 11, 2023
Frequently, the language was difficult to understand. At times, the author was very verbose or mentioned a topic but did not elaborate on it. That said, he was a deep thinker and had lyrical prose. He was correct that knowledge of evolution has overturned people's belief of an unchanging world and the subsequent effect on society, machines and technology are escaping our control such as nuclear weapons. It was nice to think of how everything is connected throughout space and time such as the transformational effect of fire and words on the human species. I liked the analogy of cities as organisms and individual humans as cells and words, writing, and human thought as genetic material that will propagate into the future. I enjoyed the chapters on the star thrower where the author learned that we can overcome our baser instincts and embrace life including non-human life and on humanity's origins in the trees, its first steps in the savanna, and its trek across ice and snow.
July 17, 2020
Studying and analyzing early man, Eiseley makes interesting assumptions. His reactions about Darwin and Thoreau are all through the book. As a believer in the Creator, I examine the ideas. I love his writing and his questioning.
“We live by messages – all true scientists, all lovers of the arts … Some of the messages cannot be read, but man will always try. He hungers for messages, and when he ceases to seek and interpret them he will be no longer man.”
“We live by messages – all true scientists, all lovers of the arts … Some of the messages cannot be read, but man will always try. He hungers for messages, and when he ceases to seek and interpret them he will be no longer man.”
June 26, 2022
Written in 1969, Eisely takes issue with absolutist science and proclaims that we must expect the unexpected; that "there are more things in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in philosophy." He writes of mystery with scholarship (he was a lifetime naturalist). A highly personal and brooding reflection on the nature of life. Interesting...Ray Bradbury liked it!
March 21, 2020
An emotional drift into outer space, which coincidentally looks a lot like a plant cell. Eiseley is is unfortunately blinded by certain hang-ups typical of his time, and one can feel him almost straining against them.
April 4, 2019
Utterly beautiful. His reflection on the uniqueness and primacy of man won me over!
February 25, 2024
I really liked some of the essays collected here, others didn’t really grab me. Three stars overall.
February 27, 2024
Beautiful prose and I'm pretty sure it made me decide to be a naturalist, but falls into incoherent babbling a little too much.
October 29, 2024
What an incredible, reflective collection of essays by deep thinker looking back on life and out into the unknown, wild universe. Very thought provoking and worth reading.
April 11, 2025
some dated moments but overall really beautiful writing that still feels relevant.
March 6, 2017
Less scientific in its focus than The Immense Journey and more melancholy (if that’s possible) than The Night Country. The best piece in this middle-Eiseley collection is without a doubt “The Star Thrower” (which I look forward to re-reading soon) but the title essay and “The Innocent Fox” are also terrific.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews