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The Sleepwalkers (The Watershed)- A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe by Arthur Koestler is a science book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Sleepwalkers (The Watershed)- A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe about?

The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe is a 1959 book by Arthur Koestler. It traces the history of Western cosmology from ancient Mesopotamia to Isaac Newton. He suggests that discoveries in science arise through a process akin to sleepwalking. Not that they arise by chance, but rather that scientists are neither fully aware of what guides their research, nor are they fully aware of the implications of what they discover.A central theme of the book is the changing relationship between faith and reason. Koestler explores how these seemingly contradictory threads existed harmoniously in many of the greatest intellectuals of the West. He illustrates that while the two are estranged today, in the past the most ground-breaking thinkers were often very spiritual.Another recurrent theme of this book is the breaking of paradigms in order to create new ones. People, scientists included, cling to cherished old beliefs with such love and attachment that they refuse to see what is wrong in their ideas and the truth in the new ideas that will replace them. (This point was developed a few years afterwards by Thomas Kuhn in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions",

Who reads The Sleepwalkers (The Watershed)- A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe?

Author

Arthur Koestler

Publisher

Penguin Books Ltd

Published

1959

Language

EN

ISBN

9780140209723

Category

science

Subjects

Religion, Social Science, Fiction

Rating

4.24 / 5 (605 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14