Stuart Clark

From stone age to space age, every human who has ever looked up at the night sky has seen the same stars in the same patterns. They reveal our entire history, as well as hinting at our ultimate fate. Clark investigates this incredible relationship between humanity and the night sky

How the Stars Have Shaped the History of Humankind

Beneath the Night

From myth to Musk, astrology to astronomy, Dr Stuark Clark selects the very best writing about the Red Planet. From its very first sighting, Mars has been a source of fascination for humanity. Named for the Roman god of war, this red planet has been explored more than any other beyond Earth and continues to occupy a distinctive place in our imagination. It's an environment that may even foster life. In The Book of Mars, Dr Stuart Clark selects one hundred pieces of writing about the planet. It is a collection that brings together fact and fiction, dreams and fears, centuries of observation and more recent feats of interstellar exploration. From classic writers of science fiction – Stanley G. Weinbaum, Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Pamela Sargent, Roger Zelazny – to distinguished experts in astronomy, astrobiology and aerospace engineering; from Hugo and Nebula Award-winning authors – Kim Stanley Robinson, Mary Robinette Kowal – to trail-blazing journalists and science communicators; from Andy Weir's The Martian to Elon Musk's SpaceX programme, The Book of Mars is an extraordinary overview both of the Red Planet and of the way scientific investigation diffuses into culture.

An Anthology of Fact and Fiction

The Book of Mars

S. Clark

In this original and fascinating book, Stuart Clark investigates the cultural history of the senses in early modern Europe. At a time in which the nature and reliability of human vision was a focus for debate in medicine, art theory, science, and philosophy, there was an explosion of interest in the truth (or otherwise) of miracles, dreams, magic, and witchcraft. Was seeing really believing? Vanities of the Eye wonderfully illustrates how this was woven into contemporary works such as Macbeth - deeply concerned with the dangers of visual illusion - and exposes early modern theories on the relationship between the real and the virtual.

Vision in Early Modern European Culture

Vanities of the Eye

Vanities of the Eye investigates the cultural history of the senses in early modern Europe, a time in which the nature and reliability of human vision was the focus of much debate. In medicine, art theory, science, religion, and philosophy, sight came to be characterized as uncertain or paradoxical--mental images no longer resembled the external world. Was seeing really believing? 

Stuart Clark explores the controversial debates of the time--from the fantasies and hallucinations of melancholia, to the illusions of magic, art, demonic deceptions, and witchcraft. The truth and function of religious images and the authenticity of miracles and visions were also questioned with new vigor, affecting such contemporary works as Macbeth-- a play deeply concerned with the dangers of visual illusion. Clark also contends that there was a close connection between these debates and the ways in which philosophers such as Descartes and Hobbes developed new theories on the relationship between the real and virtual. 

Original, highly accessible, and a major contribution to our understanding of European culture, Vanities of the Eye will be of great interest to a wide range of historians and anyone interested in the true nature of seeing.

The universe

On March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency released a map of the afterglow of the Big Bang. Taking in 440 sextillion kilometres of space and 13.8 billion years of time, it is physically impossible to make a better map: we will never see the early universe in more detail. On the one hand, such a view is the apotheosis of modern cosmology, on the other, it threatens to undermine almost everything we hold cosmologically sacrosanct. The map contains anomalies that challenge our understanding of the universe. It will force us to revisit what is known and what is unknown, to construct a new model of our universe. This is the first book to address what will be an epoch-defining scientific paradigm shift. Stuart Clark will ask if Newton's famous laws of gravity need to be rewritten; if dark matter and dark energy are just celestial phantoms? Can we ever know what happened before the Big Bang? What's at the bottom of a black hole? Are there universes beyond our own? Does time exist? Are the once immutable laws of physics changing?

A New Exploration of Time, Space, and Modern Cosmology

The Unknown Universe

Bengt Ankarloo

In the ancient Near East, the art of influencing the natural course of events by means of spells and other ritual forms was universal. The social and political role of magic is apparent, too, in the competition to achieve precedence over rival systems of ritual practice and belief. Within a region filled with petty kingdoms competing for power, the Jews of ancient Palestine maintained control over adherents by developing distinct ritual practices and condemning as heretical those of nearby cults. Texts from Mesopotamia reveal a striking number of incantations, rituals, and medical recipes against witchcraft, attesting to a profound fear of being bewitched. Magical rituals were also used to maintain harmony between the human and divine realms. The roots of European witchcraft and magic lie in Hebrew and other ancient Near Eastern cultures and in the Celtic, Nordic, and Germanic traditions of the continent. For two millennia, European folklore and ritual have been imbued with the belief in the supernatural, yielding a rich trove of histories and images. Witchcraft and Magic in Europe combines the traditional approaches of political, legal, and social historians with a critical synthesis of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies. The series, complete in six volumes, provides a modern, scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present day. Each volume of this ambitious six-volume series contains the work of distinguished scholars chosen for their expertise in a particular era or region.

Biblical and Pagan Societies

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 1

Stuart G. Clark

At the dawn of the 17th century, it was believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Yet some men knew that the Heavens did not move as they should and began to believe exactly the opposite - a heresy punishable by being burned alive. The Sky's Dark Labyrinth follows the stories of Johannes Kepler - a German Lutheran and the first man to distill how stars and planets moved according to mathematical laws - and Galileo Galilei. An Italian Catholic, Galileo tries to claim Kepler's success for his own Church, and finds himself enmeshed in a web of intrigue originating from within the Vatican itself. Both men and their families are trapped by human ignorance and terror in one of the darkest, yet also one of the most enlightening, periods of European history. The Sky's Dark Labyrinth is the first of a trilogy of novels inspired by the dramatic struggles, personal and professional, and key historical events in man's quest to understand the Universe.

The Sky's Dark Labyrinth

Adam Roberts

Hannu Rajaniemi

Jeff Noon

M. John Harrison

Kathleen Ann Goonan

Tad Williams

Michael Doser

Claire Dean

Adrian Ellis

We're running out of planet and we're running out of patience. The party's over and we're looking for the door. But the exits are unmarked. The engines of the world are hidden from us. Ninety-six per cent of the universe is missing and the rest is stirred into motion by machinery that hides in plain sight. We've got to get out of this place - but how? Embracing everything from politics to polymorphism, physics & fantasy, Exit Strategies is your indispensable, (sometimes unreliable) guide to the escape tunnel. With a foreword by CERN physicist Michael Doser, and featuring stories by Jeff Noon, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and the best-selling fantasy writer Tad Williams, Exit Strategies looks for a back door to the universe over 150 pages. How much of the cosmos is real, how much an astronomer's dream? And if we could escape from reality, what kind of utopia would we build for ourselves? Elsewhere in Exit Strategies, M. John Harrison meets a rising star of TV science, Hannu Rajaniemi considers what will happen when our books start reading us, and Claire Dean meets the artists bent on making J G Ballard's Crystal World a reality. And in a special tribute, Adam Roberts considers the life, work and sheer sanity of the late, great Iain Banks. Every two months Arc maps the future through stories, features, essays and provocations from some of the world's most celebrated authors from science fiction and beyond.

Exit strategies

Arc 2.1

Different conceptions of the world and of reality have made witchcraft possible in some societies and impossible in others. How did the people of early modern Europe experience it and what was its place in their culture? The new essays in this collection illustrate the latest trends in witchcraft research and in cultural history in general. After three decades in which the social analysis of witchcraft accusations has dominated the subject, they turn instead to its significance and meaning as a cultural phenomenon - to the 'languages' of witchcraft, rather than its causes. As a result, witchcraft seems less startling than it once was, yet more revealing of the world in which it occurred.

Narrative, Ideology and Meaning in Early Modern Culture

Languages of Witchcraft

The six-volume set Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, of which this volume is the fifth, provides a scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present. Contributors combine political, legal, and social historical approaches with a critical synthesis of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies. With the end of witch trials in the 18th century, the writers chart the process of and reasons for the decriminalization of witchcraft, but also challenge the widespread assumption that Europe became "disenchanted." Presented here are surveys of the social role of witchcraft, as well as a full treatment Victorian supernaturalism and the continued importance of witchcraft and magic as topics of debate among intellectuals and other writers. Three authors contribute three extensive articles: "The Decline and End of Witchcraft Prosecutions" by Brain P. Levack (U. of Texas); "Witchcraft After the Witch-Trials" by Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra (U. of Amsterdam); and "Witchcraft and Magic in Enlightenment, Romantic and Liberal Thought" by Roy Porter (Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine). Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe

Il giorno senza ieri

This collection reprints key articles written within the past 30 years on the Annales school, their journal, their influence on history, historiography and other academic fields.

Critical Assessments

The Annales School

Vanities of the Eye investigates the cultural history of the senses in early modern Europe, a time in which the nature and reliability of human vision was the focus of much debate. In medicine, art theory, science, religion, and philosophy, sight came to be characterised as uncertain or paradoxical - mental images no longer resembled the external world. Was seeing really believing? Stuart Clark explores the controversial debates of the time - from the fantasies and hallucinations of melancholia, to the illusions of magic, art, demonic deceptions, and witchcraft. The truth and function of religious images and the authenticity of miracles and visions were also questioned with new vigour, affecting such contemporary works as Macbeth - a play deeply concerned with the dangers of visual illusion. Clark also contends that there was a close connection between these debates and the ways in which philosophers such as Descartes and Hobbes developed new theories on the relationship between the real and virtual. Original, highly accessible, and a major contribution to our understanding of European culture, Vanities of the Eye will be of great interest to a wide range of historians and anyone interested in the true nature of seeing.

Crit Assessmnts

Annales

E. William Monter

Each volume in the series Witchcraft and Magic in Europe combines the traditional approaches of political, legal, and social historians with a critical synthesis of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies. The series, complete in six volumes, provides a modern, scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present day. Most European prosecutions for the crime of witchcraft occurred between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the peak coming in the hundred years after 1560. This volume brings together the large amount of recent scholarship on witchcraft of this period and provides a novel analysis of the trials by considering the legal systems involved. Witch hunts, methods of torture, and the scientific interest in magic spells and demonology as an intellectual pursuit are also covered in detail.

The Period of the Witch Trials

The true, cutting-edge story of man's epic quest to find an Earth-like planet capable of sustaining complex life. In 1995 two Swiss astronomers discovered a planet circling a star other than our Sun. This changed our perception of the Universe forever, proving that Earth and the other celestial bodies in our Solar System are not alone in outer space. Now, after two decades of exploration, more than 860 planets have been discovered, many of which are completely unlike anything else we know. Some are blacker than coal; some are bathed in molten lava; others are perpetually scoured by hurricane-force winds; some have not one sun but two that rise in the morning, and others are perpetually drowned in global oceans. But as well as strange, uninhabitable lands, there is familiarity too. Some of these alien worlds are strikingly similar to planets in our Solar System. Astronomers now know of planets just like Jupiter, Neptune, Mars and Mercury orbiting stars similar to our Sun, both nearby and deep into space. Authoritatively written and fully up to date on this fast-moving area of science, The Search for the Earth's Twin will take you on a journey through the cosmos via frozen wastelands, slow-moving globes and fiery volcanic bodies, to planets that can - and just might - sustain complex life. The prospect of discovering the Earth's twin is now tantalisingly close.

The Search For Earth's Twin

A fantastic voyage across 276 billion trillion miles of space and 13.5 billion years of time, told through more than 300 of the most dramatic astronomical images ever captured The 101 greatest sights between earth and the edge of the cosmos are depicted in this collection of more than 300 of the most beautiful space photographs ever taken. The dramatic large format makes the perfect showcase for the latest images from Hubble's new camera, and the majority of the photographs will be displayed at full or double page size. Readers should prepare to embark on a journey that will take them to the edge of the Universe and the beginning of time, crossing 46.5 billion light years of space and exploring 101 celestial wonders ranging from comets to quasars. They will start on Earth, nestled in the Orion Spur of the Milky Way Galaxy, near the center of the Local Group of galaxies, gravitationally bound to the Virgo Supercluster, but the entire universe is here to explore. There are photos of sand dunes snaking across the northern plains of Mars, driven by the winds of spring; alien cloudscapes of fluorescing gases; and secret nests of new stars hidden within. Hypergiant stars tear themselves to pieces, galaxies collide, and superclusters gather like motes of dust on a cosmic web. The journey that these photos represent is organized into four zones—interplanetary, interstellar, intergalactic, and, finally, intertemporal. Voyager's grand tour of space offers an unrivaled portrait of our cosmic habitat. Quite simply, there is no better way to see the Universe.

101 Wonders Between Earth and the Edge of the Cosmos

Voyager

Using non-scientific terms, discusses our solar sytem and galaxy and events and objects that occur in interstellar space, such as colliding galaxies and black holes.

Stuart Clark

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