Since humans first looked up at the stars, astronomy has had a particular ability to stir the imagination and challenge the thinking of non-scientists and scientists alike. Astronomy: The Human Quest for Understanding is an introductory astronomy textbook specifically designed to relate to non-science majors across a wide variety of disciplines, nurture their curiosity, and develop vital science-based critical-thinking skills.
A general education course in the physical sciences may be the only such course that a non-science major will take during their academic career. With this reality in mind, the author developed Astronomy: The Human Quest for Understanding as an introduction to how science operates in practice and what makes it so successful in uncovering nature’s secrets. Given that the study of astronomy dates back thousands of years, it is the ideal subject for tracing the development of the physical sciences and how our evolving understanding of nature has influenced, and been influenced by, mathematics, philosophy, religion, geography, politics, and more. This historical approach also illustrates how wrong turns have been taken, and how the inherent self-correcting nature of science through constant verification and the falsifiability of truly scientific theories ultimately leads us back to a more productive path in our quest for understanding.
The approach adopted in this textbook also points out why, as a broadly educated citizenry, students of all disciplines must understand how scientists arrive at conclusions, and how science and technology have become central features of modern society. Unfortunately, at a time when science and technology are so important, there has been a growing anti-intellectual movement that has been evolving for at least the past thirty years. Today, facts have become either meaningless or arbitrary; as one press secretary of a former president once said, “alternative facts” were being presented about an inaugural crowd size. For some, the notion of expertise has also been called into question; the statements of experts who have spent lifetimes researching and studying an issue or topic are no more significant than opinions expressed by persons with no specific knowledge of the topic being addressed. Worse, expertise is often labeled as politically biased, with hidden agendas undermining cultural norms or personal privilege as perceived by various groups. It is a goal of this textbook to help in some small way to return modern society to an understanding of what facts truly are, and what genuine expertise really means.
In discussing this fascinating and beautiful universe of which we are a part, it is necessary to illustrate the fundamental role that mathematics plays in decoding nature’s mysteries. Unlike other similar textbooks, some basic mathematics is integrated naturally into the text, together with interpretive language, and supplemented with numerous examples. This website also supports the mathematical presentation with many additional mathematics tutorials that are provided in the website’s math review section; tutorials are also provided for specific key equations that are discussed in individual chapters (e.g., Newton’s universal law of gravitation in Chapter 5).
Astronomy: The Human Quest for Understanding leads the reader down the path to our present-day understanding of our Solar System, stars, galaxies, and the beginning and evolution of our universe, along with profound questions still to be answered in this ancient, yet rapidly changing field.