An Evening with Ira Mark Edgall

***Please note: This event will take place at the Books & Books in Coral Gables at 265 Aragon Ave. Tickets are FREE and books will be available for purchase at the event. Can't make the event?

Cosmic Roots tells the 5000-year history of the development of Western cosmology/astronomy and the religions of Abraham. Written for the general reader, it features views of historical scholars rarely found in popular accounts.

From Plato to Einstein – The History of Astronomy and Cosmology and How it Overcame Religious Dogma.

Over luminous days and crystalline nights, ancient humans watched the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets wheel around the sky. The heavenly bodies were gods. Their gift was time. Telling mortals when to sleep, to wake, to sow, to reap.

Thus began a quest to predict the motions of celestial objects—one which would come to throw man out from his vaulted place at the center of the universe. It was an epic journey, covering some 150 generations and nearly 5000 years—punctuated by brilliant leaps of insight, at times against great resistance by religious authorities. From this emerged scientific achievements which stand as testimony to the power and imagination of the human mind.

This lecture is about is about that quest. About science. About religion. About their entwined history of conflict and insights which have come to define and shape our modern worldview.

For more about the book, please go to: cosmicrootsBOOK.com

2023 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD WINNER IN SCIENCE AND COSMOLOGY
Cosmic Roots traces the five-thousand-year conflict between science and religion -- and how it shaped our modern secular worldview.Told with rare clarity and striking insight, this fascinating and thought-provoking book focuses on the history of cosmology and its sister science astronomy. For it was discoveries within these great disciplines which first led to the conflict between science and religion. The story begins with the cosmological beliefs of the ancients -- from the flat Earth models of the Sumerians and Hebrews to the Greek notion of the orbits of planets as divine circles. Topics progress from Aristotle and Ptolemy's integrated planetary models to the Sun-centered cosmologies of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and the great Isaac Newton. Their combined scientific achievements stand as testimony to the power and imagination of the human mind.
This meticulously researched narrative also traces the roots of Western religion, based on historical events and archeological evidence. It takes us on a captivating journey through Western religious history -- from ancient paganism to the ethical monotheism of the Hebrews, Christians, and Moslems. Along the way, we follow the rise and fall of civilizations, of empires, cycles of war and peace, unification and division.
The book concludes with how Darwin came up with his theory of evolution and the impact of modern physics on religious beliefs. The cumulative effect of the scientific discoveries presented in Cosmic Roots has, for better or for worse, led to the separation of science and religion we see in Western culture today.

Ira Mark Egdall is the award-winning author of Einstein Relativity Simple: Our Universe Explained in Everyday Language. He is a retired aerospace program manager with an undergraduate degree in physics from Northeastern University. Mark now teaches lay courses and lectures in modern physics as well as the history of the science /religion conflict at Lifelong Learning Institutes at the University of Miami, Nova Southeastern University, and Florida International University. He also gives entertaining talks on modern physics and Cosmic Roots. For information on Mark’s courses, please go to:
In his aerospace career, Mark served as program manager for state-of-the-art infrared sensor systems for NASA and DOD while at BAE Systems in Lexington, Massachusetts. He also worked on large telescope systems, high-energy laser optics, Hubble Space Telescope studies, and the first operational adaptive optics system while at Itek Optical Systems in the same city.

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