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Waves Passing in the Night: Walter Murch in the Land of the Astrophysicists

Autor Lawrence Weschler
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 23 mar 2017

From Pulitzer Prize nominee Lawrence Weschler, a fascinating profile of Walter Murch, a film legend and amateur astrophysicist whose investigations could reshape our understanding of the universe.

For film aficionados, Walter Murch is legendary--a three-time Academy Award winner, arguably the most admired sound and film editor in the world for his work on Apocalypse Now, The Godfather trilogy, The English Patient, and many others. Outside of the studio, his mind is wide-ranging; his passion, pursued for several decades, has been astrophysics, in particular the rehabilitation of Titius-Bode, a long-discredited 18th century theory regarding the patterns by which planets and moons array themselves in gravitational systems across the universe. Though as a consummate outsider he's had a hard time attracting any sort of comprehensive hearing from professional astrophysicists, Murch has made advances that even some of them find intriguing, including a connection between Titius Bode and earlier notions--going back past Kepler and Pythagorus--of musical harmony in the heavens. Unfazed by rejection, ever probing, Murch perseveres in the highest traditions of outsider science.

Lawrence Weschler brings Murch's quest alive in all its seemingly quixotic, yet still plausible, splendor, probing the basis for how we know what we know, and who gets to say. "The wholesale rejection of alternative theories has repeatedly held back the progress of vital science," Weschler observes, citing early twentieth-century German amateur Alfred Wegener, whose speculations about continental drift were ridiculed at first, only to be accepted as fact decades later. Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin says "It is controversy that brings science alive"--and Murch's quest does that in spades. His fascination with the way the planets and their moons are arranged opens up the field of celestial mechanics for general readers, sparking an awareness of the vast and (to us) invisible forces constantly at play in the universe.

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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781632867186
ISBN-10: 1632867184
Pagini: 176
Ilustrații: B+W images throughout
Dimensiuni: 140 x 210 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.38 kg
Editura: Bloomsbury Publishing
Colecția Bloomsbury USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States

Caracteristici

Highly esteemed writer and biographical subject:Weschler is one of the great cultural critics of our day. Walter Murch is arguably the most celebrated sound editor in the world, widely admired for his work on projects such asApocalypse Now,The Godfather, andGeorge Lucas' first film, THX 1138.

Notă biografică

Lawrence Weschleris a critic, journalist, and author who was a staff writer at theNew Yorkerfor more than twenty years. His books includeMr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, for which he was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award,Boggs: A Comedy of Values, andEverything That Rises, which received the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He has written for theLos Angeles Times, theNew York Times, theNation,Vanity Fair,Truthdig, andHarper's, among others.

Recenzii

Part scientific detective story and part reflection on science and its relation to its own history and social reality. . . . Absorbing. . . . Weschler is one of our great writers.
Richly suggestive . . . the relationship that unfolds here is a vigorous and invigorating meeting of two dynamically curious minds.
Waves Passing in the Nightis an investigation into contemporary astrophysics wrapped in the compelling story of a Hollywood soundtrack composer turned renegade theoretician. It all adds up to a thrilling ride through physical and mathematical space, featuring eye-opening parallels that will challenge and enhance any open-minded reader's view of the heavens.
An inviting portrait of an admirable and accomplished man. We come to see science as closed club, science as abstruse and narrow, science as caste. But Weschler allows that it could be the other way around, too: science as protector of truth and progress, science as guardian against kooks. What began as an exploration of a 'far out' but relatable idea from a 'far out' but relatable guy has become instead a study of the praxis of science. Weschler leaves us pondering how firmly we know what we think we know. Two of my favorite people have collaborated to produce a remarkable work.
Peculiar and beautiful. . .Waves Passing in the Night: Walter Murch in the Land of the Astrophysicists. . .questions the insular and self-protecting nature of science, as the practice of a community of scientists, but it does it for the sake of opening up dialogue rather than shutting it down and it does so in the most humane and quizzical ways.
An amateur scientist investigates oddly musical mysteries in the motion of the planets in this scintillating true-astronomy saga. . . Weschler remains sympathetic to both sides in this debate between an inspired novice and skeptical pros, expanding it into a fascinating lesson on the nature of scientific understanding and the ways people seek it.
[An] altogether engrossing and entertaining essay on fringe science.
A marvelous book, full of wonders and delights. Lawrence Weschler describes Walter Murch and his celestial theories in a way that lights up the reader's mind like a pinball machine.
Riding waves and crests of inspired speculation, Lawrence Weschler's brilliant new missive takes readers to the outer limits of an astronomical theory abandoned long ago, as it finds wobbly new life in the mind of an unexpected tinkerer. This lively guide to film editor Walter Murch and his 'gravitational astro-acoustics' is a genuine treat.
Everything That Risesultimately offers not just the quirks of one man's vision but a sublime way of seeing.
Weschler's graceful collection of essays and interviews stands out like a rare bloom. Charming, idiosyncratic and deeply intelligent, the book will likely captivate even readers who usually bypass the art history section.
Seeing Is ForgettingandTrue to Lifeare not only about the artists talking to Weschler or, through him, to each other; they're about the artists talking to themselves.
Weschler has charted [Robert Irwin's] journey with exceptional clarity and cogency. He has also, in the process, provided what seems to me the best running history of postwar West Coast art that I have yet seen.