To think that there ae more stars in the sky then there are grains of sand on a beach gives our home a bewildering context. Carl Sagan says that the work of astronomy is character building and it's clear why: it puts us in our place.
But there is one thing that dominates in this universe and that is all powerful mathematics. According to Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, there are six numbers more important than the rest that shape the universe.
I read this book like I would read 'The Cloud of Unknowing' as a piece of meditation on the deep forces that call all into being. It's filled with uncomprehendingly large numbers, complex interactions, and non-common-sense theories.
It is a book to enlarge the imagination by full frontal challenge to all it's previously held notions of space and time. Marvelling in sentences like 'Time may become like space, so that in a sense there is no beginning of time' it makes me wonder more about what is hidden to us that may be illuminated by science.
Though I have an interest in science I myself am not scientifically literate. I can barely begin to make sense of the mathematics and the physics of this book, yet I yearn to learn more; because in learning the little bits I can grasp it makes me hungry to have a few more bites before the whole feast of science and the universe.
This book, with it's remarkably clear prose, gives me a chance of understanding what I never knew existed right before my eyes. It makes us think about things that previously we never gave a second thought and gives us more perspective on who we are, on what our purpose is.
It demands re-reading and it's a short enough book to have a fair chance of multiple re-readings. It's a great book that I highly recommend even if you are not literate in science. Don't let that worry you, just be taken on a ride through the universe and enjoy the journey. If you pick up a few things on the way then it might give you an appetite to learn more, think more, observe more and enjoy the understandings of our world in a wholly new perspective that you might not expect.
