Used Book – Introduction to a Natural History, Claude Allègre

Do we know that iron, this metal so familiar to us, has a history, that it was born in the heart of a large star? Do we know that the ancestor of all chemical elements is called hydrogen, just as the ancestor of all living beings is called bacteria? In Nature, the world around us, everything has a history: shapes, matter, beings, rocks, planets. The whole, ordered from the origin of the Universe to the present day, constitutes Natural History. Far removed, by its content, from mythologies and sacred books, and yet so close by its subject, the story Claude Allègre invites us to is that of the long history of Time. Starting from the initial moment of the Big Bang, he strides through the history of galaxies, stars, Earth, Life, and Humankind, to end his narrative in the... future. To write this history of Nature, he uses everything modern science has brought in terms of discoveries, from astronomical observations to the exploration of living things, passing through plate tectonics and the emergence of Humankind. From this fresco emerges a new vision of the relationship of Man to Science, to Knowledge, to God, that is, to his own uncertainties.