Journey of Ideas About the Earth

Who conceived the idea of a symbol for zero and invented the decimal number system? How did Copernicus get the idea that the Earth goes around the Sun as opposed to the Sun going around the Earth as Aristotle posited? Journey of Ideas About the Earth answers these and other questions about the size and shape of the Earth (geodesy), its place in the Solar System (astronomy), and the development of tools to study it analytically (mathematics). Following two themes, this book presents the concept that the growth of knowledge results from a journey of ideas. The first theme is that our knowledge grew because humankind undertook a journey of ideas over millennia and civilizations. The second is that the growth of ideas occurred during periods of sustained, hospitable environments for scholarly pursuits. Pradeep Talwani labels these the Bright Ages and illustrates these concepts with a carefully researched and organized narrative that describes how we learned about the Earth we live on. Spanning 5,000 years, this book describes the growth of knowledge as a continuous journey of ideas from ancient civilizations to the Greeks, Indians, Arabs, and Europeans, highlighting lesser-known ideas as well as new research that resulted in previously unpublished discoveries.