Table of Contents
Describing the indescribable 1
Embarking 3
A glance through the book
Why a book like this might matter?
Maps of the territory
Natural voyagers
Theme 1 The scale of reality 9
Chapter 1 Through the circle of the night 11
Our backyard
As far as the eye can see
Deep space
Reflection: the logic of insignificance? 18
Chapter 2 Wonderlands 22
What banged?
Tumbling in free fall
Reflection: the span of reason? 27
Theme 2 Frontiers of reality? 31
Chapter 3 Reports from the edge 33
Known unknowns
Bottomless pits
A Goldilocks puzzle
Reflection: the logic of discovery? 39
Chapter 4 The cresting wave of time 43
The dreams of others
Like a great river flowing
Reflection: the experience of time and change 47
Chapter 5 The measure of things 50
Deep complexity
The logic of numbers Reflection: the ultimate paradox? 58
The picture emerging 62
Chapter 6 A tale of origins 65
Full circle
Common Stardust
A unique exception? or a wider pattern?
Theme 3 Understanding self-assembly 73
Chapter 7 The dance of all life 75
The living cell
From egg to embryo
Sculpted from the inside
The spark
Chapter 8 Once upon a time - how life came to be 85
The glory of life today
Ancient foundations
Earliest prototypes of life?
Chapter 9 The blind logic of time and change 94
Survival in Hades
Oxygen accumulating
Swathes of culling, oceans of time
Theme 4 Understanding understanding 103
Chapter 10 Echoes from the dream time 105
The awakening of the past
Two thousand millennia
The lens of language
Survival and aggression
Chapter 11 From biochemistry to experience 118
Common wizardry
What controls the controls?
A hunger to make sense
Chapter 12 (Re?)creating the creation 129
A framework for understanding
Behind the logic of science
All that is? 135
A single fabric
An adaptive inheritance
Taking wing!
List of sources 148
