The Lost Universe

The Lost Universe

"A fascinating insight into the life and culture of the Pawnee people is achieved here by the author's presentation of carefully gathered information in the form of a narrative of one year in Pawnee village. The first few chapters lay the groundwork of kinship lines, followed by a narration of the life of one person in the village. Customs, ceremonies, beliefs, and hard work become apparent as the author leads one through the intricacies of the activities. Although it presents a great deal of detailed anthropological material, the manner of presentation turns the book into a readable account. . . . The book is based on years of first-hand study as well as scholarly research and is recom-mended as an in-depth study of Plains Indian life."—Reprint Bulletin-Book Reviews Gene Weltfish is coauthor, with Ruth Benedict, of The Races of Mankind. She is also the author of The Origins of Art and other books.

The Dream Universe

A vivid and captivating narrative about how modern science broke free of ancient philosophy, and how theoretical physics is returning to its unscientific roots In the early seventeenth century Galileo broke free from the hold of ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He drastically changed the framework through which we view the natural world when he asserted that we should base our theory of reality on what we can observe rather than pure thought. In the process, he invented what we would come to call science. This set the stage for all the breakthroughs that followed--from Kepler to Newton to Einstein. But in the early twentieth century when quantum physics, with its deeply complex mathematics, entered into the picture, something began to change. Many physicists began looking to the equations first and physical reality second. As we investigate realms further and further from what we can see and what we can test, we must look to elegant, aesthetically pleasing equations to develop our conception of what reality is. As a result, much of theoretical physics today is something more akin to the philosophy of Plato than the science to which the physicists are heirs. In The Dream Universe, Lindley asks what is science when it becomes completely untethered from measurable phenomena?

The Lost Universe