I am writing about a scientific book called 'The Guide To The Galaxy' by Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper

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Critical Account of Scientific Reading

I am writing about a scientific book called ‘The Guide To The Galaxy’ by Nigel Henbest and Heather Couper and published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge 1994.  This book is about the galaxy in which our planet and our solar system lie.  It contains information that goes beyond what most people or people with limited scientific knowledge know.  The book talks about the efforts and the hard work by early scientists to discover more and more about our galaxy.  It also talks about the most sophisticated techniques used nowadays to probe the galaxy.

The first chapter investigates the discovery of our galaxy, illustrating the work by early thinkers and scientists.  It starts with the origin of the name of our galaxy, Milky Way, which was named by the Romans.  The chapter also talks about the conception of other civilisations about the ‘Milky Way’, such as the Greeks and their theory ‘a stream of milk which gushed from the breast of the goddess Juno as she nursed the thirsty infant Hercules’, while the North Americans thought of it as a route of ghosts on their way to the ‘land of the hereafter’.  The Eskimos saw it as a guide to travellers.

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The chapter then talks about some scientists like Galileo Galilei and his efforts in inventing the telescope, which took our knowledge of the galaxy into a whole new level.  The theory of ‘Universal Gravitation’ by Isaac Newton and the ‘New Hypothesis of the Universe’ by Thomas Wright were discussed briefly.  The book also mentions the work by Immanuel Kant, William Herschel, Lord Rosse and many others.  The book depicts their different approaches to the challenges they are faced with.  Some were inspired by religious beliefs like Thomas Wright who saw the galaxy as a perfect example of God’s great ...

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