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Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time
Michael Benson tells the thrilling story of the discovery and description of the universe in a new way. Selecting artful and profound illustrations and maps, many hidden away in the world’s great science libraries and virtually unknown today, he chronicles more than 1,000 years of humanity’s ever-expanding understanding of the size and shape of space itself. He shows how the invention of the telescope inspired visions of unimaginably distant places and explains why today we turn to supercomputer simulations to reveal deeper truths about space-time.
Cosmigraphics explores the visual side of our greatest imaginative achievement as a species: the unveiling of a vast universe that is largely invisible to our senses. It will be a revelation to space-struck Earthlings, art lovers, and readers interested in the history of science, the visualization of information, graphic design, and mapping.
Cosmigraphics explores the visual side of our greatest imaginative achievement as a species: the unveiling of a vast universe that is largely invisible to our senses. It will be a revelation to space-struck Earthlings, art lovers, and readers interested in the history of science, the visualization of information, graphic design, and mapping.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published October 14, 2014
14 people are currently reading
674 people want to read
About the author
Michael Benson
7 books30 followersMichael Benson is a journalist and maker of documentary films, including the award-winning Predictions of Fire (1995). His work has been published in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Smithsonian, among other publications, and he has been a television (CNN) and radio (NPR) reporter. He is also the author of the Abrams bestseller Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes. He lives in New York City.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 23, 2016
What an amazing exercise for my brain! Trying to see through the eyes of people on our planet 100, 500, thousands of years ago felt like holy and sacred work. I was especially struck with reverence for foldout images from 1121 from a French encyclopedia liber floridus, with vibrant colors that withstand the test of time. and. from 2000 B.C. there is the nebra sky disc, the first known astronomical instrument, found in Germany. Over 4,000 years old.
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May 18, 2015From the Introduction, page 10:
"Is 'Cosmigraphics' an art or a science book? Yes, and yes. As with science, the role of art was far from its contemporary meaning for most of the history sampled here. Until the seventeenth century or later, the arts and sciences were essentially fused. The great Renaissance painters advanced the science of optics, and were prized for their ability to convey realistic depictions of nature. Many were as much scientists and engineers as they were artists, even if their art is what we most celebrate now. The natural philosophers of the Enlightenment also developed their mimetic abilities, the better to depict natural phenomena. ...
"Before the Renaissance and as late as Romanticism, artists were essentially considered craftspeople, artisans involved in a relatively low-ranking guild devoted to embellishing church architecture, manuscripts, and civic buildings. Their names weren’t necessarily important, even if the greatest rose to prominence. …
“Just as scientific endeavor wasn’t autonomous from theology and was viewed as a way to comprehend God’s design, so art operated in service as a form of illustration….
“The visual legacy encompassed by ‘Cosmigraphics’ documents the stages of our evolving understanding as a species — a gradually dawning, forever incomplete situational awareness about the cosmos and our position within it, rising across millennia. If there’s one over-arching subject, it’s the enigma of our emergence as conscious beings within an unspeakably vast and cryptic universe, one that doesn’t necessarily guard its secrets willfully — actually it strews them promiscuously around in the form of hints, indications, clues, and manifestations — but doesn’t exactly hand out codebooks either.”
https://maryoverton.wikispaces.com/Ho...
"Is 'Cosmigraphics' an art or a science book? Yes, and yes. As with science, the role of art was far from its contemporary meaning for most of the history sampled here. Until the seventeenth century or later, the arts and sciences were essentially fused. The great Renaissance painters advanced the science of optics, and were prized for their ability to convey realistic depictions of nature. Many were as much scientists and engineers as they were artists, even if their art is what we most celebrate now. The natural philosophers of the Enlightenment also developed their mimetic abilities, the better to depict natural phenomena. ...
"Before the Renaissance and as late as Romanticism, artists were essentially considered craftspeople, artisans involved in a relatively low-ranking guild devoted to embellishing church architecture, manuscripts, and civic buildings. Their names weren’t necessarily important, even if the greatest rose to prominence. …
“Just as scientific endeavor wasn’t autonomous from theology and was viewed as a way to comprehend God’s design, so art operated in service as a form of illustration….
“The visual legacy encompassed by ‘Cosmigraphics’ documents the stages of our evolving understanding as a species — a gradually dawning, forever incomplete situational awareness about the cosmos and our position within it, rising across millennia. If there’s one over-arching subject, it’s the enigma of our emergence as conscious beings within an unspeakably vast and cryptic universe, one that doesn’t necessarily guard its secrets willfully — actually it strews them promiscuously around in the form of hints, indications, clues, and manifestations — but doesn’t exactly hand out codebooks either.”
https://maryoverton.wikispaces.com/Ho...
February 15, 2015
review coming soon...
July 2, 2019
Amazing collection of different depictions of the universe throughout history.
October 30, 2017
This book is fantastic. It's beautiful and full of history and wonder. It's a perfect coffee table book (I'll probably buy it). The one downside, which is significant, the typeface used for the introductory text at the beginning of each chapter is a modern, high-contrast serif which is incredibly difficult to read. Toward the end, I skipped these intros and instead just read the image captions.
March 20, 2022
A treasure trove.
August 14, 2015
Fun and well done. This book grew on me.
This is an art and science book, a colorful history of our evolving knowledge. This is the science and art that revealed the universe to us over these past four thousand years. Before photography, art served as illustration.
Works in the book include maps, drawings, paintings as well as photographs and digital images. Thoughtful and current scientific essays open each of the ten chapters.
"The Starry Night," by Vincent Van Gogh, probably is the best known artistic representation of the night sky, writes the author. In here, we see an ink study of Van Gogh's 1889 oil.
This book visualizes the universe and our place in it. Early on, "universe" and "the world" referred to the same thing. Now we think of everything as in the cosmos. And here's a book of cosmos graphics.
A fifty dollar art book, already in its third printing.
This is an art and science book, a colorful history of our evolving knowledge. This is the science and art that revealed the universe to us over these past four thousand years. Before photography, art served as illustration.
Works in the book include maps, drawings, paintings as well as photographs and digital images. Thoughtful and current scientific essays open each of the ten chapters.
"The Starry Night," by Vincent Van Gogh, probably is the best known artistic representation of the night sky, writes the author. In here, we see an ink study of Van Gogh's 1889 oil.
This book visualizes the universe and our place in it. Early on, "universe" and "the world" referred to the same thing. Now we think of everything as in the cosmos. And here's a book of cosmos graphics.
A fifty dollar art book, already in its third printing.
February 20, 2016
This rich collection of human representations of the cosmos was mind blowing. It would take a lifetime of travel to see all these painting, prints and photographs in their home museums. The essays on each part of the cosmos provides added context on the evolution of astronomy. Michael Benson's work takes the images and interweaves them within their religious and social context.
I can't say it better than the author, so I won't try.
Celestial objects and art works representing them from all societies are "a stellar Rorschach test onto which the deepest collective human concerns and stories have been projected. If the utilitarian function (of constellations) is as a mnemonic device - a kind of easily remembers celestial coordinate system - their mix of animal, human and mythopoetic forms also provide a revealing communal scratch pad laid across the universe."
I can't say it better than the author, so I won't try.
Celestial objects and art works representing them from all societies are "a stellar Rorschach test onto which the deepest collective human concerns and stories have been projected. If the utilitarian function (of constellations) is as a mnemonic device - a kind of easily remembers celestial coordinate system - their mix of animal, human and mythopoetic forms also provide a revealing communal scratch pad laid across the universe."
November 2, 2015
Lots of cool images which are the focus but it also acts as a good astronomy refresher. It still amazes me how much humans understood about the cosmos before modern instruments. While it took until Copernicus for most observers to switch to a heliocentric model there were people that had the idea as far back as Ancient Greece of before. Anyway, a good book for those interested in space but can be a little dry at times, hence only 3 stars.
July 7, 2015
Gorgeous. If it wasn't so heavy, this would be the perfect before-bed book for me.
January 9, 2016
Beautiful images and interesting information. Will be useful in working on my sci-fi novel-in-progress.
November 5, 2016
What a joy to slowly take on all the imagery this book has to offer! I was not a fan of the writing but the collection of depictions of space is out of this world.
February 23, 2024
This is a beautiful coffee table book. The images are wonderful, most have good descriptions.
February 8, 2015
This is a beautiful historical art book of the Cosmos.
September 20, 2015
3.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews