Object Lessons: Earth

基本信息

Series:Object Lessons

Format:Paperback / softback 144 pages, 12 b/w illustrations

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Imprint:Bloomsbury Academic USA

ISBN:9781501317910

Published:9 Mar 2017

Weight:136g

Dimensions:122 x 164 x 12 (mm)

頁面參數僅供參考，具體以實物為準

書籍簡介

《實例研究》系列內容簡短，設計精美，探索生活中常見物件的鮮為人知的故事，激勵我們重新審視日常生活中我們習以為常的事物。

在《地球》一書中，一位行星科學家和一位文學人文主義者探索了當我們把地球看作從太空中可以看到的物體時會發生什麼。如同“藍色大理石”、“藍色蒼白的點”，或者如喬叟所描述的“一個小斑點”，這個孤獨的球體是對規模和人類自尊的挑戰。美麗而自給自足的地球，其實遠不如它初看上去那麼可知：它廣闊的內部是熾熱而堅固的巖石所組成的地獄，還有一個比海洋還大的蓄水池，一個世界中的世界。從太空觀看地球會讓人陷入尺度的深淵：人類如何能理解距離、温度和行星誕生、進化和消亡的時間尺度？

A literary scholar and a planetary scientist look at the Earth as object, viewed from the outside, and as a singular orb that is a challenge to scale and human self-importance.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

In Earth, a planetary scientist and a literary humanist explore what happens when we think of the Earth as an object viewable from space. As a “blue marble,” “a blue pale dot,” or, as Chaucer described it, “this litel spot of erthe,” the solitary orb is a challenge to scale and to human self-importance. Beautiful and self-contained, the Earth turns out to be far less knowable than it at first appears: its vast interior an inferno of incandescent and yet solid rock and a reservoir of water vaster than the ocean, a world within the world. Viewing the Earth from space invites a dive into the abyss of scale: how can humans apprehend the distances, the temperatures, and the time scale on which planets are born, evolve, and die?

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

作者簡介

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen is Professor of English and Director of GW Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute at George Washington University, USA. He is the author or editor of 11 books, including Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire (University of Minnesota Press, 2015; edited with Lowell Duckert), Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory Beyond Green (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), and Cultural Diversity in the British Middle Ages: Archipelago, Island, England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Linda T. Elkins-Tanton is Foundation Professor and Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, USA. She is the author of The Solar System, a six-book series, published by Chelsea House, 1st edition 2006; 2nd edition 2010: The Sun, Mercury, and Venus, The Earth and the Moon, Mars, Asteroids, Meteorites, and Comets, Jupiter and Saturn,Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the Outer Solar System. She is co-editor, with A. Schmidt and K. Fristad, of Volcanism and Global Environmental Change (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Her articles have been published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Nature Geoscience, Nature, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Astrophysical Journal, among other publications.