On the Shoulders of Giants: The Great Works of Physics and Astronomy

( 13 )
Pick Up In Store

Pick Up in Store

Reserve and pick up in 60 minutes at your local store

Paperback
$14.97
BN.com price
$22.95 List Price (Save 35%)
Marketplace (New and Used)
from
$3.23
$22.95 List Price (Save 86%)
Usually ships in 1-2 business days
All (24)  
Used (12)  
New (12)  
Close
Sort by
Page 1 of 3
Showing 1 – 10 of 24 (3 pages)
$3.23
(Save 86%)
Big River Books
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(1384)

Condition:

New — never opened or used in original packaging.

Like New — packaging may have been opened. A "Like New" item is suitable to give as a gift.

Very Good — may have minor signs of wear on packaging but item works perfectly and has no damage.

Good — item is in good condition but packaging may have signs of shelf wear/aging or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Acceptable — item is in working order but may show signs of wear such as scratches or torn packaging. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Used — An item that has been opened and may show signs of wear. All specific defects should be noted in the Comments section associated with each item.

Refurbished — A used item that has been renewed or updated and verified to be in proper working condition. Not necessarily completed by the original manufacturer.

Good
2003 Paperback Good Cover and pages may have some wear or writing. Binding is tight. We ship daily Monday-Friday.

Ships from: Powder Springs, GA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$4.50
(Save 80%)
Campus_Bookstore
Seller since 2011

Feedback rating:

(308)

Condition: Good
Used - Good Minor cover wear. May contain highlighting/underlining/notes/etc. May have used stickers on cover. Ships same or next day. Expedited shipping takes 2-3 business days; ... standard shipping takes 4-14 business days. Read more Show Less

Ships from: Fayetteville, AR

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$5.73
(Save 75%)
spellbound PA
Seller since 2005

Feedback rating:

(9714)

Condition: Very Good
12/16/2003 Paperback Trade Paperback Edit Very Good 076241698X Very Good Condition and Unread! Text is clean and unmarked! Light shelf wear to cover from storage, crease. --Be ... Sure to Compare Seller Feedback and Ratings before Purchasing-- Read more Show Less

Ships from: McKeesport, PA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$7.50
(Save 67%)
Affordable Firsts MA
Seller since 2006

Feedback rating:

(47)

Condition: Like New
Philadelphia 2003 Wraps 4th Printing Fine. NF(spine ends chipped+creased, surface scratches-rear) 8vo. Wraps 1264pp. Tables, Many Figures, Photos.

Ships from: Arlington, MA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$7.59
(Save 67%)
Extremely_Reliable
Seller since 2007

Feedback rating:

(3210)

Condition: Very Good
Buy with confidence. Excellent Customer Service & Return policy.

Ships from: Richmond, TX

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
$8.90
(Save 61%)
Big River Books
Seller since 2010

Feedback rating:

(1384)

Condition: New
2003 Paperback New We ship daily Monday-Friday.

Ships from: Powder Springs, GA

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$8.95
(Save 61%)
Book Outlet NY
Seller since 2007

Feedback rating:

(435)

Condition: Very Good
2003 Paperback Very Good Scuffing to cover, pages are like new. NEVER READ! Book is an overstock and shows minor handling wear. May have marker line (remainder mark) on edge.

Ships from: North Tonawanda, NY

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Canadian
  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$10.98
(Save 52%)
Labyrinthbooks
Seller since 2008

Feedback rating:

(741)

Condition: Very Good
076241698X

Ships from: Pennington, NJ

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •International
  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$11.48
(Save 50%)
Textbookcenter.com
Seller since 2005

Feedback rating:

(46119)

Condition: Very Good
SHIPS FAST! via UPS(AK/HI Priority Mail) within 24 hrs/ used sticker/some hilite

Ships from: Columbia, MO

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
  • •Express, 48 States
  • •Express (AK, HI)
$13.03
(Save 43%)
Great Book Deals
Seller since 2008

Feedback rating:

(12288)

Condition: New
Absolutely Brand New & In Stock. 100% 30-Day Money Back. Direct from our warehouse. Over 5+ Million Customers served. In business since 1997. Happy Customers is Our #1 Goal. ... Customer Service toll free upport Monday-Friday EST Hrs. 4 to 14 business day Delivery Time by US Post Office. Read more Show Less

Ships from: Oldsmar, FL

Usually ships in 1-2 business days

  • •Standard, 48 States
  • •Standard (AK, HI)
Page 1 of 3
Showing 1 – 10 of 24 (3 pages)
Close
Sort by

Overview

World-renowned physicist and bestselling author Stephen Hawking presents a revolutionary look at the momentous discoveries that changed our perception of the world with this first-ever compilation of seven classic works on physics and astronomy. His choice of landmark writings by some of the world's great thinkers traces the brilliant evolution of modern science and shows how each figure built upon the genius of his predecessors. On the Shoulders of Giants includes, in their entirety, On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus; Principia by Sir Isaac Newton; The Principle of Relativity by Albert Einstein; Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences by Galileo Galilei with Alfonso ...

See more details below
Sending request ...

More About This Book

Overview

World-renowned physicist and bestselling author Stephen Hawking presents a revolutionary look at the momentous discoveries that changed our perception of the world with this first-ever compilation of seven classic works on physics and astronomy. His choice of landmark writings by some of the world's great thinkers traces the brilliant evolution of modern science and shows how each figure built upon the genius of his predecessors. On the Shoulders of Giants includes, in their entirety, On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres by Nicolaus Copernicus; Principia by Sir Isaac Newton; The Principle of Relativity by Albert Einstein; Dialogues Concerning Two Sciences by Galileo Galilei with Alfonso De Salvio; plus Mystery of the Cosmos, Harmony of the World, and Rudolphine Tables by Johannes Kepler. It also includes five critical essays and a biography of each featured physicist, written by Hawking himself.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
The words of the title derive from a famous passage in a letter by scientist Isaac Newton. "If I have seen further," Newton wrote, "it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, himself a renowned far-sighted thinker, has compiled an anthology of the seven great classics in astronomy and physics. To each of these masterworks, Hawking adds an introductory essay that shows how each was built on previous discoveries. In addition, the author of A Brief History of Time provides penetrating biographies of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.
Publishers Weekly
Acclaimed physicist Hawking has collected in this single illuminating volume the classic works of physics and astronomy that in their day revolutionized humankind's perception of the world. Included are Copernicus's On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres, Galileo's Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, Kepler's "Harmony of the World," Newton's The Principia and selections from The Principle of Relativity by Einstein. Taken together, these writings document the evolution of our conception of the universe from a pre-Copernican cosmos with a stationary earth at its center to one in which the very weave of time and space are relative. The editor's ability to step back and view the sweep of his subject was first showcased in his bestselling A Brief History of Time and confirmed in his The Universe in a Nutshell. In an essay introducing each work here, he gives a short and sweet biography of its author and an explanation of its significance, as well as the occasional gem, like Galileo's handwritten renunciation of his beliefs before the Inquisition. To read the works themselves is to feel the thrill and mystery of intimacy with oft-cited source documents. Despite the volume's heftiness, Hawking has given these works a setting that is elegantly simple and, in its simplicity, effectively broadening. (Oct.) Forecast: With a 100,000 first printing and $25,000 marketing campaign, Running Press won't let the book's heft discourage them from getting the word out. And with the fair price for this behemoth, their effort should pay off. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780762416981
  • Publisher: Running Press Book Publishers
  • Publication date: 12/2/2003
  • Pages: 1280
  • Sales rank: 149,312
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.82 (h) x 2.07 (d)

Meet the Author

Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking’s ability to make science understandable and compelling to a lay audience was established with the publication of his first book, A Brief History of Time, which has sold nearly 10 million copies in 40 languages. Hawking has authored or participated in the creation of numerous other popular science books, including On the Shoulders of Giants and The Illustrated On the Shoulders of Giants.

Biography

In the universe as a whole, the nature of black holes may be one of the most puzzling mysteries. No less puzzling, in the slightly smaller universe of book publishing, is the astounding popular success of Stephen Hawking's 1988 book on the matter, or anti-matter, as it were: A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes.

Clocking in at just over 200 pages, it was, indeed, brief, but it was hardly the easy read its marketers promised. Nor did it stray much beyond the tone of a scholarly lecture, though at times it did take quick autobiographical peeks into Hawking's personal life. Still, it is just the author's persona that may have been the selling point prompting more than 10 million people worldwide to pick up a copy -- and to have it translated into more than 40 languages in the 10 years since its release.

For Stephen Hawking is an instantly recognizable public figure -- even for those who haven't delved into his so far unprovable theories about black holes. Stricken by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) -- or Lou Gehrig's disease, as it is called in the States -- while he was working toward his doctorate at Cambridge University, this Englishman is known for the keen wit and intellect that reside within his severely disabled body. He uses a motorized wheelchair to get around and a voice synthesizer to communicate -- a development, he complains, that has given him an American accent. He has guest-starred, in cartoon form, on an episode of The Simpsons and has appeared in the flesh on Star Trek: The Next Generation, using the benefits of time travel to play poker with Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. (He has said he doesn't believe in the theory himself, noting that the most powerful evidence of its impossibility is the present-day dearth of time-traveling tourists from the future.)

The son of a research biologist, Hawking resisted familial urging that he major in biology and instead studied physics and chemistry -- as a nod to his father -- when he went to Oxford University as a 17-year-old. In academic writing, Hawking had an extensive career pre-History, starting with The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, coauthored with G.F.R. Ellis in 1973. But in the late 1980s, faced with the expenses incurred by his illness, he took up Bantam Books' offer to explain the mysteries of the universe to the lay public.

"This is one of the best books for laymen on this subject that has appeared in recent years," The Christian Science Monitor wrote in 1988. "Hawking is one of the greatest theoretical cosmologists of our time. He is greater, by consensus among his colleagues, than other expert authors who have written good popular books on the subject recently. And he is greater, by far, than the ‘experts' who have ‘explained' quantum physics and cosmology in terms that support a religious agenda." And The New York Times in April 1988 said, "Through his cerebral journeys, Mr. Hawking is bravely taking some of the first, though tentative, steps toward quantizing the early universe, and he offers us a provocative glimpse of the work in progress."

Since then, A Brief History of Time has been republished in an illustrated edition (1996) and as an updated and expanded 10th anniversary edition (1998). In Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, a collection of 13 essays and the transcript of an extended interview with the BBC, Hawking turned more autobiographical, mixing stories about his studies in college and the beginning of his awareness that he had ALS with thoughts on how black holes can spawn baby universes and on the scientific community's efforts to create a unified theory that will explain everything in the universe. And in The Universe in a Nutshell, his sequel to A Brief History of Time, Hawking takes the same approach as he did in his first bestseller, explaining to the lay reader such ideas as the superstring theory, supergravity, time travel, and quantum theory.

A common current in Hawking's writing -- aside from his grasp of the complexities of the universe -- is a sharp wit. In one of the rare personal reflections in A Brief History of Time, he said he began thinking about black holes in the early 1970s in the evenings as he was getting ready for bed: "My disability makes this rather a slow process, so I had plenty of time." In life, he has a reputation for quickly turning his wheelchair away of a conversation that displeases him, even running his wheels over the toes of the offending conversant.

Even questions about his muse are likely to draw an answer tinged with pointed humor. When Time asked Hawking why he decided to add explaining the universe to a schedule already taxed by his scholarly writing and lecture tours, he answered, "I have to pay for my nurses."

Good To Know

Hawking worked 1,000 hours in his three years at Oxford, roughly an hour a day. "I'm not proud of this lack of work," he said in Stephen Hawking's a Brief History of Time: A Reader's Companion. "I'm just describing my attitude at the time, which I shared with most of my fellow students: an attitude of complete boredom and feeling that nothing was worth making an effort for."

Despite his science degrees, Hawking has no formal training in math and has said he had to pick up what he knows as he went along.

    1. Hometown:
      Cambridge, England
    1. Date of Birth:
      January 8, 1942
    2. Place of Birth:
      Oxford, England

Table of Contents

Introduction IX
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
His Life and Work 1
On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres 7
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
His Life and Work 391
Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 399
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630)
His Life and Work 627
Harmony of the World, Book Five 635
Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)
His Life and Work 725
Principia 733
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
His Life and Work 1161
Selections from The Principle of Relativity 1167
Acknowledgements 1265

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 13 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(4)

4 Star

(5)

3 Star

(2)

2 Star

(2)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines
Add Recommendations
Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

  • - HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
  • - Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
  • - Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
  • - Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
  • - Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
  • - Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
  • - Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

  • - By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
  • - Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
  • - See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.
Search for Products You'd Like to Recommend

Recommend other products that relate to your review. Just search for them below and share!

Create a Pen Name

Your Pen Name is your unique identiy on BN.com. It will appear on the reviews you write and other website activities. Your Pen Name cannot be edited, changed or deleted once submitted.

Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously

We're sorry, but penname is already taken.

Please select one of the following:
Your Pen Name can be any combination of alphanumeric characters (plus - and _), and must be at least two characters long.

Continue Anonymously

penname is available!

By visiting the BN.com website or marking a purchase on BN.com, a User is deemed to have accepted the Terms of Use.

Continue Anonymously

Welcome, penname

You have successfully created your Pen Name. Start enjoying the benefits of the BN.com Community today.

Sort by: Showing all of 13 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted December 6, 2011

    Great book on the development of DARPA

    A compilation of English translations of several of history's most revolutionary books. Einstein, Coppernicus, Newton, etc. Very good, but don't expect an easy read.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 24, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 22, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted July 10, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted December 2, 2008

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 10, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted November 21, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted March 1, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 31, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 10, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted October 13, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 20, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 3, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

Sort by: Showing all of 13 Customer Reviews
If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble
Why is this product inappropriate?
Comments (optional)
500 character limit