a short history of nearly everything, bill bryson the beak of the finch, johnathan weiner cosmos, carl sagan isaac newton, james gleick kosmos, adam bartos pale blue dot, carl sagan project orion, george dyson when life nearly died, micheal j. benton
the sum of me
Benjamin B. Chemelski
If you were to look at my bookcase you might quickly conclude that design is not a focus of mine. You would see books with authors such as Carl Sagan, Micho Kaku and Steven Hawking and on people like Isaac Newton and Nicolaus Copernicus. You may assert that I work in a lab or perhaps that I studied astronomy in college, but neither is true. Art and design have always been the practical side of myself, a more fulfilling path, and getting lost in science, a hobby. This project attempts to meld those two halves of myself.
Benjamin B. Chemelski 2013
HOW I ENCOUNTERED THESE BOOKS a short history of nearly everything, bill bryson the beak of the finch, johnathan weiner cosmos, carl sagan isaac newton, james gleick kosmos, adam bartos pale blue dot, carl sagan project orion, george dyson when life nearly died, micheal j. benton cosmos
a short history of nearly everything
the beak of the finch
kosmos
pale blue dot
when life nearly died issac newton project orion
ME FRIENDS / FAMILY
SCHOOL
WORLD
“The words ‘beginning of the Space age’ were not spoken by any of us. They were the contribution of journalists. In the evenings, all of us poured out onto the streets, away from the light sources, and awaited the appearance of the quickly moving, pale asterisk that we had thrown into the sky. By some deep intuition we understood that this asterisk marked a star movement in each of our individual lives.” 1 | adam barton, kosmos, 2002. princeton architectural press
“Violent motion is made continued either by the aire or by motion force imprest or by the natural gravity in the body moved.� james gleick, isaac newton, 2003. random house | 2
“The mission was the grand tour of the solar system” 3 | george dyson, project orion, 2002. owl books
“We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.� carl sagan, cosmos, 1980. ballatine books | 4
“Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first apperance of new beings on this earth” 5 | jonathan weiner, the beak of the finch, 1994. alfred a. knopf publishing
“Consider again that dot [Earth]. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives […] on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” carl sagan, pale blue : a vision of the human future in space, 1997. ballantine books | 6
“Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.” 7 | bill bryson, a short history of nearly everything, 2002. broadway books
“A 10-kilometre asteroid excavates a crater 100 to 150 kilometers across. Equally, the speeds of asteroids and the energy they transmit are also known. The KT asteroid probably entered the atmosphere at a speed of 25 kilometers per second, and it’s energy was equivalent to 100 million mega-tonnes of TNT, perhaps 30 times the explosive power of all nuclear warheads currently in arsenals around the world today.” micheal j. benton, when life nearly died, 2003. thames and hudson | 8