Publisher Description

Two questions guide this seven-year project: First, how can we approach the phenomenon, representation, and interpretation of total solar eclipses? Second, how can we heal the historical divide separating the natural sciences from the humanities, arts, history, and theology? The result of this interdisciplinary investigation into eclipses is an exciting look behind the scenes - into labs, archives, and museums, as well as around fieldwork inastronomy, meteorology, animal behaviour, and ecophysiology.Carefully prepared for readers from all backgrounds, these voices invite us to imagine a liberated mode of discovery,perception, creativity, and knowledge-production across the traditional academic divisions. A uniquely prismatic representation of total solar eclipses emerges, itself rising to a model of communal thinking, together, across disciplinary borders. This book is Tom McLeish's final project and scholarly testament. Dedicated to him and to astrophysicist Jay M. Pasachoff (contributing author of a chapter about the solar corona, also Pasachoff's final piece of writing), thevolume is a friendly companion to the chase of knowledge, encouraging its readers to embark upon their own interdisciplinary journey of discovery.

Author Biography

Henrike Lange is Associate Professor of Italian Renaissance Art and Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. Historian of art, architecture, and literature, Lange is best known for her work on Italian medieval and Renaissance art and literature, including her publications on artists such as Giotto, Donatello, Mantegna, and research on writers such as Augustine, Dante, and Petrarch. Tom McLeish FRS was Professor Emeritus of Natural Philosophy at theUniversity of York. Theoretical physicist and "penseur anglais" (Emmanuel Macron), McLeish is best known for his groundbreaking work in soft matter physics and polymers, rheology, history of science,and theology of science, and as a Reader in the Anglican Church. He was awarded the 2018 Archbishop of Canterbury's Lanfranc Award for Education and Scholarship and his scientific-theological legacy includes the Christian leadership in the sciences initiative, ECLAS (Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science). Eclipse & Revelation is Tom McLeish's final project and scholarly testament.

Table of Contents

Henrike Christiane Lange (University of California, Berkeley) & Tom McLeish (University of York): Preface - "Cosmos" is for HarmonyHenrike Christiane Lange (University of California, Berkeley) & Tom McLeish (University of York): Introduction - Chasing the Total Solar Eclipse: On the Road and in the ArchivePART I - COSMOS1: Tom McLeish (University of York) and Mike Frost (British Astronomical Association): The Cosmic Clockwork: The How and When of Total Solar Eclipses2: Jay Pasachoff (Williams College): The Unveiling of the Corona3: Philipp Nothaft (All Souls College Oxford): Pre-Modern Astronomies of Eclipses in the Near-East and Europe4: Mike Frost (British Astronomical Association): From Science to Story: Testimony of an Eclipse ChaserPART II - HISTORY AND RELIGION5: John Steele (Brown University): Solar Eclipses Across Early Asia6: Giles Gasper (Durham University): 'The Face of the World Was Wretched, Horrifying, Black, Remarkable: Solar Eclipses in the Middle Ages7: Anna Marie Roos (University of Lincoln): Annus Tenebrosus: Black Monday, Faith, and Political Fervour in Early Modern England8: David Bentley Hart (NDIAS): Signs and Portents: Reflections on the History of Solar EclipsesPART III - ARTS AND LITERATURE9: Alison Cornish (New York University): Dante's Total Eclipses10: Roberta J.M. Olson (Wheaton College, Massachusetts, and The New-York Historical Society Museum & Library): Eclipsed? The Nineteenth-Century Quest to Capture Solar Eclipses in Art, Science, and Technology11: Henrike Christiane Lange (University of California, Berkeley): Total Eclipse of the Art: Vision, Occlusion, Representation12: Elaine Stratton Hild (Universität Würzburg): When Words Fail: Eclipse, Music, and SoundPART IV - ANIMALS, WEATHER, ENVIRONMENT13: Steven Portugal (Royal Holloway): Animal Behaviour and Eclipse14: Giles Harrison (Department of Meteorology, University of Reading): Weather and the Solar Eclipse: Nature's Meteorological ExperimentHenrike Christiane Lange (University of California, Berkeley) and Tom McLeish (University of York): Conclusion - The Moon and the Sun in the AfternoonMike Frost (British Astronomical Association): APPENDIX - The Eclipse Chaser's Toolkit

Review

Wonderful and wonder-full! This splendidly illustrated book explores total solar eclipses and their effect on us through art, music and words. * Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell DBE FRS FRSE FRAS FInstP, Astrophysics, University of Oxford *
A courtside seat to watch scientists, scholars, artists, and musicians toss ideas right (awesome!) and wrong (interesting!) back and forth over centuries of wonder. Nothing as real and completely out of human control or influence as the total solar eclipse has been so endlessly fascinating, provocative, and compelling; get your ticket here. * Michael O'Hare, Professor of the Graduate School at the University of California and Goldman School of Public Policy *
Superb! This book touched my soul! Fabulous stuff and the first of its kind! So rich in thought with delectable prose on the history, art and science of the ages that surround eclipses. Henrike Lange and Tom McLeish have done something extraordinary: From one momentary cosmic event they virtuously generated lasting inspiration to chase knowledge and wisdom... Even the most experienced eclipse chasers will feel enriched and further enlightened by an eclipse after delving into this book... A true tome on the total solar eclipse. * Mike Kentrianakis, American Astronomical Society 2017 Total Solar Eclipse Project Manager, Amateur Astronomers Association of New York, IAU's Working Group on Solar Eclipses *
I enjoyed the book... I emerged with my over 30 eclipse experiences freshly anchored in mysticism, history, and legend while clothed in new garments of art, music and literature. For both the scientist and the artist, Eclipse and Revelation gives view of the "other side"... The work becomes a tapestry that stitches history, passion, nature, weather, art, and music with a thread of mysticism and wonder. This ambitious volume welds so many dissimilar views of a shared experience: One chapter explains the physics behind the glow of the corona; another, Dante's eclipse muse. Ancient and medieval history... blend with the magnificence of art and poetry; animal and atmosphere respond in muted sympathy, all bound by the glory of the total eclipse. * Jay Anderson, Canadian meteorologist and eclipse chaser *
A total solar eclipse is a spectacle without equal. Henrike Christiane Lange and Tom McLeish study the human and cultural impact of totality. Every human culture has a mythology about solar eclipses. These stories should be told and this book is an excellent survey of many cultures across the continents and throughout the centuries. I especially enjoyed the excerpts from Tom McLeish's travel diary from August 2017 which capture the thrill of the chase and the allure of the corona in the co-authored Introduction. Chapter 2 by my late friend Jay Pasachoff on the solar corona is a masterclass in science communication. I highly recommend Eclipse & Revelation to anyone interested in solar eclipses and their many interactions with humanity. * Michael Zeiler, Cartographer and Eclipse Chaser *
Genius! Truly marvelous and relevant work, beautifully illustrated and delivered: an utterly brilliant new take on interdisciplinary collaborations between the arts, humanities, and sciences exploring a gripping natural phenomenon across human history. Unlike any other, this book includes fascinating perspectives and early science from ancient Asia, Assyria, Babylonia, India, China, Greece and Rome, the scientific revolution to the present... - all topped off with the latest meteorological methods and a conclusion that creates a poetic awareness of the entire cosmos... Lange and McLeish deliver a passionate defence of the liberal arts and a delightful account of the perpetual curiosity, excitement, joy, and enduring love of wisdom at the core of the scientific and scholarly life. * Andrew Stewart, Professor emeritus, History of Art and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley *

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