Kosmos : a Course of Six Lectures on the Development of Our Insight into the Structure of the Universe, Delivered for the Lowell Institute in Boston, in November 1931

One of the leading astronomers of our time has here explained in non-technical language what his science is about. His method has been to discuss what each of the great astronomers has contributed to our knowledge of the universe, from the earliest Greek star-gazers down to Eddington, Jeans, and Einstein. He thus gives both a history of astronomy and an account of its purposes and its ways of working. The basis of the book is the series of Lowell Institute Lectures which Willem De Sitter delivered before popular audiences last winter; his development of those lectures has been calculated to make his material even more informative to the general reader. In the preparation of the lectures I owe much to my collaborators at the Leiden Observatory, especially to Dr. Oort, and in the revision of the last two chapters I have been materially assisted by the great benefit I have derived from conversations with many astronomers and physicists during my delightful stay in the United States and Canada, especially at Cambridge and Pasadena.It is a pleasure, as well as a duty, to thank the Harvard University Press for the great care devoted to the publication, and the Mount Wilson Observatory for permission to reproduce several of its photographs. Preface Contents I. Introduction: Aims and Methods of Scientific Research · The Ancients; Ptolemy and Copernicus II. Birth of Modern Astronomy · Kepler, Galileo, Newton · The Eighteenth Century III. The Beginning of Sidereal Astronomy · William Herschel and His Successors IV. Further Observational Advances · The Survey of the "Local System" · Life-Work Of J. C. Kapteyn V. Photography and Spectroscopy · The Great Telescopes · The Galactic and the Extra-Galactic Systems VI. Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe · Conclusion