杏吧原创

COMBINING more than 200 images from the history of science with insightful essays, John Barrow鈥檚 Cosmic Imagery reveals the power a picture can have in shaping our understanding of the universe.

Some images are obvious choices, such as , , Watson and Crick鈥檚 and the Hubble Space Telescope鈥檚 of mind-bogglingly remote galaxies. There are also many less obvious ones, including Hermann Minkowski鈥檚 first , published in 1908, and a 15th-century student鈥檚 notebook showing the earliest surviving use of the plus and minus signs in algebra.

Astronomy is well represented and there is also a section on pure maths, with images ranging from the Platonic solids to the . We even get a brief history of the 鈥� a peculiar, one-sided surface that has found applications in industrial design and has inspired artists such as .

A few images seem questionable at first. For instance, what does the classic London Underground map have to do with science? Barrow reminds us that the colourful map is not just 鈥渁n icon of 20th-century design鈥� but also 鈥渢he first topological map 鈥� a circuit board of lines and exchanges that reshaped the sociology of London鈥�.

As with any anthology, one can always quibble with the author鈥檚 selections; to be sure, some images are more profound than others. All of them, though, have brought us a little closer to truly seeing our world 鈥� and often they have provided a deeper understanding than words or equations alone could convey.