Cosmic Imagery - Key Images in the History of Science
We live in a visual age - an age of images - iconic, instant and influential. In his remarkable new book, John Barrow traces their history and influence in order to tell the story of modern science.
Certain key images have created our conception of the large, the small, and the complex - both of inner and outer space. Some, like Gresham Professor Robert Hooke's first microscope views of the world, arose because of our new technical capabilities. Others, like the first graph, were breathtakingly simple but perennially useful. The first stunning pictures of the Earth from space stimulated an environmental consciousness that has grown ever since. Many of these images have changed our view of ourselves and of the world around us. In this lecture, John Barrow takes us on a tour through the most influential images of science.