The Icarus Question: Essays on Science, Technology, and the Search for Home in a Changing World

Daedalus, the great inventor of ancient myth, fashioned wings so that he and his son Icarus could escape imprisonment. But it all went awry when Icarus ignored his father's warnings and flew too close to the Sun. We know how that story ends—or do we? In The Icarus Question, physicist Gene Tracy offers reasons to hope that humanity's urge to transcend our limitations need not lead to inevitable disaster. Weaving together memoir, history of science, mythology, astronomy, psychology and litera...