Cosmigraphics:
Picturing Space Through Time – Michael Benson (2014)
Rarely do I come across
a book such as this, one that brings together two of my greatest loves and
creates something fabulous. Author
Michael Benson shows us how the worlds of Art and Astronomy are, and have
always been, connected and complimentary, and the way he does so is so
beautiful, informative, and clever that I am left in awe. I love this book!
The objects in our sky,
the gorgeous night with its twinkling stars, shiny planets, comets, and
meteors, and the beaming sky of day with the Sun and sometimes the Moon
visible, have been our companions throughout the whole existence of life on our
planet. Ancient man not only saw, but
understood, that the view afforded from Earth allows us to see the passage of
time, and the cycles described by the motions of the heavens. Using just plain, careful, repeated
observation, and before the invention of written language, humanity catalogued
stars and constellations, predicted eclipses, and calculated the Moon’s
cycles. We also created art to help us
describe what we saw, from cave paintings to petroglyphs to carved or molded
sculptures. This is how we know that
ancient man understood the cosmos in a deep and meaningful way, something which
has been sadly lost to much of our modern human population.
Cosmigraphics collects
some of the most amazing images and artwork created by us to describe the
heavens above and our Earth below. This
book captures the artistic legacy of the visual explorations of our cosmos, and
provides wonderfully descriptive and informative text with each image. This book is divided into sections exploring
the idea of Creation, our Earth, the Moon, the Sun, the structure of the
Universe, etc. Each chapter is so gorgeous
and so indicative of the immense genius required to not only grasp infinitely
complex ideas but to also portray them in a visual manner, that they allow for
the dissemination of information and the spread of wisdom. These images tell a million stories. They are beautiful in their own right, and
worthy of the appreciation we rightfully lay upon masterpieces by the likes of
Michelangelo or Picasso.
We marvel at the
heavens, and have always done so. As our
scientific knowledge grew, our ideas of the universe grew. Whereas ancient man had deduced that the
Earth is spherical, it was accepted doctrine that the Earth was the center of
all creation (Bible bias, always), and that, according to early Greek
philosophers, what we see in the sky corresponds to sequential “shells” with
each carrying different denizens of the sky.
It was accepted belief that the Moon rotated around the Earth in its own
sphere, then the Sun, then each known planet.
At the time, this was Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Beyond the planetary “spheres” was a
celestial sphere containing the stars in heaven, all fixed and immovable. It took centuries of human observation, and
the perfection of lenses and the telescope, for us to understand that there are
no “shells”, that the heavens do move, that our Sun is the center of our solar
system, that the planets all rotate around the Sun and not Earth, and that the
stars themselves are ridiculously far away from our personal solar system. Even so, it was assumed that the whole of
existence fit within our galaxy, a self-contained universe we refer to as the
Milky Way.
Astronomers and other
scientists improved on the initial telescopes, and with the new-found clarity
of vision, were able to discern that many of the objects in our night sky were
not nebulas internal to the Milky Way, but actually their own island universes,
located an inconceivable distance from our own galaxy. Each new discovery shrunk the old world
dictated by religious dogma and human make-em-up, and increased the scope of
vision allowed to a human being. As our
knowledge of the universe, its galaxies, and the overall structure of it grew,
the idea that humanity was the single reason for everything to exist also
dissipated, much to the chagrin of every deluded, brain-dead, dogmatically
religious idiot whose entire world-view is based in blind belief and obedience
to thousand-year old make-believe.
With every new
discovery, with every new tool we create to explore our universe, we find more
wonder and weirdness than we could ever have imagined. There used to be just
one Sun. Now we know that our galaxy,
the cloudy band of light in our night sky called the Milky Way, is composed of
billions of individual stars. We know
that outside of our galaxy lie countless trillions of other galaxies, each with
their infinity of suns and planets. Hell we even know that everything we can
see in the sky above is just a small part of the entire universe. Estimates now posit our Universe is on the
order of 13-15 billion years old, and nearly unimaginably vast, but we can only
observe about 36 billion light years distance in any direction. In its early stages, spacetime itself
expanded faster than light, causing much of the Universe to remain occulted
from our vantage point. Any observer on
a planet over 36 billion light years away from us would not be able to see
Earth either. It is these type of
realities that, while factually and verifiably true, crash against our ideas of
“common sense.” Common sense stated
that, if the Earth were actually rotating, all plants, animals, and water would
be flung off the planet! (They did not know about gravitation, just as humans
in the 1800’s did not know about radiation.
Who knows what all-encompassing truths of the Universe we remain
ignorant of today in 2026!)
Many of my intellectual heroes
utilized both Art and Science in their work.
Leonardo da Vinci fused art, science, and engineering in ways we are
still coming to grips with today. Even
Richard Feynman, physicist extraordinaire, created a visual and artistic way of
describing particle interactions with diagrams named after him still used today
to explain quantum processes. Galileo’s
observations of Jupiter and his discovery of its visible moons would not have
had the impact they had without his daily drawings of the gas giant and it’s
satellites. These beautiful drawings are
included in Cosmigraphics. An image is
truly worth a thousand words and Galileo’s drawings helped to simplify the
results from exceedingly complex visual observations, allowing the rest of us
to grasp his discoveries.
Science, the scientific
method specifically, is how we understand the basic truths of our
existence. Art is how we communicate
those found truths, whether personal or universal. In Cosmigraphics, Michael Benson catalogues
and examines the confluence of Science and Art, and expands our collective
minds in doing so successfully. This is
a masterpiece of artistic and scientific exposition, and I hope someday to find
a copy for my own collection. Almost
nothing that we humans do is isolated.
Every field of human endeavor touches every other field, and we are
better off for it. The specialization of
humanity’s explorations have led to amazing discoveries, but it is the space
between the specialists, the diffuse and vague areas between concrete ideas,
where the true synergy of life occurs.
We would all be better off if we recognized this fact and lived our
lives accordingly. If you know of anyone
interested in science, art, or the history of humanity’s exploration of our
universe, this is the book for them. It
is highly recommended.
(This amazing book can be purchased here: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/cosmigraphics/author/michael-benson/ )
