A Sense of Space: A Local's Guide to a Flat Earth, the Edge of the Cosmos, and Other Curious Places
From global navigation to natal charts to memory palaces and beyond, a thrilling journey through humanity’s visualization of new spaces.
 
When you give directions, do you tell someone to go straight ahead and turn left? Or do you suggest that they head north before moving west? Your answer reveals more than you might think.
 
In A Sense of Space, writer and physicist John Edward Huth uses these two kinds of navigation—either centered on or independent of people—to help readers chart a path through evolving spatial models. In doing so, he offers an astonishing exploration of how changing scientific models of space alter our social perceptions, and vice versa. New visions of space can emanate from human considerations, he argues, and those new visions can in turn spawn new cultural phenomena. With accessible introductions to topics including mental maps, astrology, astronomy, particle physics, and Einstein’s relativity, Huth makes clear that, although our minds have evolved to comprehend space in terrestrial distances, we routinely extend this understanding to realms far removed from our everyday experiences, from cosmological to subatomic scales.
 
Taking us across the eons from the myth of a flat earth to the mysteries of the multiverse, A Sense of Space is an energetic, thoughtful guide to how we orient ourselves in our world—and beyond.
1147038699
A Sense of Space: A Local's Guide to a Flat Earth, the Edge of the Cosmos, and Other Curious Places
From global navigation to natal charts to memory palaces and beyond, a thrilling journey through humanity’s visualization of new spaces.
 
When you give directions, do you tell someone to go straight ahead and turn left? Or do you suggest that they head north before moving west? Your answer reveals more than you might think.
 
In A Sense of Space, writer and physicist John Edward Huth uses these two kinds of navigation—either centered on or independent of people—to help readers chart a path through evolving spatial models. In doing so, he offers an astonishing exploration of how changing scientific models of space alter our social perceptions, and vice versa. New visions of space can emanate from human considerations, he argues, and those new visions can in turn spawn new cultural phenomena. With accessible introductions to topics including mental maps, astrology, astronomy, particle physics, and Einstein’s relativity, Huth makes clear that, although our minds have evolved to comprehend space in terrestrial distances, we routinely extend this understanding to realms far removed from our everyday experiences, from cosmological to subatomic scales.
 
Taking us across the eons from the myth of a flat earth to the mysteries of the multiverse, A Sense of Space is an energetic, thoughtful guide to how we orient ourselves in our world—and beyond.
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A Sense of Space: A Local's Guide to a Flat Earth, the Edge of the Cosmos, and Other Curious Places

A Sense of Space: A Local's Guide to a Flat Earth, the Edge of the Cosmos, and Other Curious Places

by John Edward Huth
A Sense of Space: A Local's Guide to a Flat Earth, the Edge of the Cosmos, and Other Curious Places

A Sense of Space: A Local's Guide to a Flat Earth, the Edge of the Cosmos, and Other Curious Places

by John Edward Huth

Hardcover(First Edition)

$32.50 
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Overview

From global navigation to natal charts to memory palaces and beyond, a thrilling journey through humanity’s visualization of new spaces.
 
When you give directions, do you tell someone to go straight ahead and turn left? Or do you suggest that they head north before moving west? Your answer reveals more than you might think.
 
In A Sense of Space, writer and physicist John Edward Huth uses these two kinds of navigation—either centered on or independent of people—to help readers chart a path through evolving spatial models. In doing so, he offers an astonishing exploration of how changing scientific models of space alter our social perceptions, and vice versa. New visions of space can emanate from human considerations, he argues, and those new visions can in turn spawn new cultural phenomena. With accessible introductions to topics including mental maps, astrology, astronomy, particle physics, and Einstein’s relativity, Huth makes clear that, although our minds have evolved to comprehend space in terrestrial distances, we routinely extend this understanding to realms far removed from our everyday experiences, from cosmological to subatomic scales.
 
Taking us across the eons from the myth of a flat earth to the mysteries of the multiverse, A Sense of Space is an energetic, thoughtful guide to how we orient ourselves in our world—and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226844428
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 11/13/2025
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 368
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Edward Huth is the Donner Professor of Science at Harvard University. He has done research in experimental particle physics since 1980 and is currently a member of the ATLAS collaboration at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). He participated in the discovery of the top quark and the Higgs boson and is the author of The Lost Art of Finding Our Way.
 

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Mental Maps of Space, Memory, and Society
2. From a Flat Earth to Early Cosmologies
3. Imagining and Finding the Planets
4. Mercury Must Be in Retrograde
5. Dante’s Journey
6. Imagining Extraterrestrials
7. On Earth as It Is in Heaven
8. The Wedding of Space and Time: Relativity
9. The Star Reckoning
10. Into the Realm of the Small: Quantum Mechanics
11. The Wisdom of the Inward Parts
12. Scaling to the Multiverse
13. The Psychology of Space Flight
14. Perspectives

Acknowledgments
Glossary
Notes
Index
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