Book description
The Floating Egg begins with the search for an alchemist's
secret, and ends with the re-imagination of a past world. Each chapter
is connected to a particular corner of north-east England, and each
explores the uncertain line where myth is dissolved into science, and
belief gives way to knowledge.
Different episodes show how the fall of Constantinople converted the
common rock of the Yorkshire cliffs into a source of extraordinary
wealth and power, and how this in turn uncovered the inhabitants of a
succession of past worlds; how a stone falling from the sky near this
same coast changed the minds of all the natural philosophers of
Europe; and how a new science was born on the top of the tower of York
Minster. We learn about the cloak-and-dagger world of fossil trading
in the town of Whitby; and we see the entire life-work of a forgotten
scientific genius who died from consumption at the age of twenty-five,
having revolutionised his science.
The stories move from documentary accounts to fictional recreations
of historic events, from contemporary writing and illustrations to
present-day reflection. By using different ways of describing the
world of scientific endeavour, the author has produced a fascinating
visually beautiful and highly entertaining book which allows us to
witness the birth of a new science - the science of geology.
Roger Osborne's work has provided a range of innovative insights into
our views of the past, and how they infect the present. His previous
books include
The Deprat Affair: Ambition, Revenge and Deceit in
French Indo-China, The Dreamer of the Calle San Salvador: Visions of
Sedition and Sacrilege in Sixteenth-Century Spain
,
Civilization: A New History of the Western World
and
Of the People, By the People: A New History of Democracy.
He lives in Scarborough.
