The paradox of Olbers' paradox : a case history of scientific thought

Hardcover. First edition. NY: Herder and Herder, 1969. 269 pp. Short note on rear flyleaf of a review of the book, otherwise clean, unmarked and solid. Olbers' paradox is the puzzle of the darkness of the night sky, which should be ablaze at every point if the universe were infinite and filled everywhere with stars. Ever since the German astronomer Wilhelm Olbers reformulated the puzzle in 1823, he and many after him tried to save the presumed infinity of the universe. They did so for pseudometaphysical reasons: an infinite universe could readily pass for the ultimate entity and serve thereby as a substitute God. In the process science suffered. This is the paradox of the paradox, or the paradox of the scientific mind in the presence of a more than scientific puzzle.