Eye Of The Beholder

By the early 17th century the Scientific Revolution was well under way. Philosophers and scientists were throwing off the yoke of ancient authority to peer at nature and the cosmos through microscopes and telescopes. In October 1632, in the small town of Delft in the Dutch Republic, two geniuses were born who would bring about a seismic shift in the idea of what it meant to see the world. One was Johannes Vermeer, whose experiments with lenses and a camera obscura taught him how we see under different conditions of light and helped him create the most luminous works of art ever beheld. The other was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, whose work with microscopes revealed a previously unimagined realm of minuscule creatures. By intertwining the biographies of these two men, Laura Snyder tells the story of a historical moment in both art and science that revolutionized how we see the world today.

About the Author :
Fulbright scholar Laura J. Snyder is the author of The Philosophical Breakfast Club, a Scientific American Notable Book, winner of the 2011 Royal Institution of Australia poll for Favorite Science Book, and an official selection of the TED Book Club. She is also the author of Reforming Philosophy. Snyder writes about science and ideas for the Wall Street Journal. She is a professor at St. John's University and lives in New York City. Fulbright scholar Laura J. Snyder is the author of The Philosophical Breakfast Club, a Scientific American Notable Book, winner of the 2011 Royal Institution of Australia poll for Favorite Science Book, and an official selection of the TED Book Club. She is also the author of Reforming Philosophy. Snyder writes about science and ideas for the Wall Street Journal. She is a professor at St. John's University and lives in New York City.

Review :
Laura Snyder is a master storyteller. A fabulous book This is much more than a group biography – it is a portrait of an age of insatiable intellectual curiosity... The great pleasure of the book is how Snyder makes the science clear to the layman' Engaging and richly detailed interdisciplinary history One of those engaging books that make you smarter without making you suffer... This poetic, inclusive approach to popular science writing makes Eye of the Beholder an unfailing pleasure to read' So suffused with excitement it feels like a thriller... Snyder has her own way of seeing into history. She looks back into its murky waters and makes lost connections visible' Snyder beautifully evokes the ambience of late 17th-century Delft... She is revelatory about Vermeer's aims and methods' Irresistible... Spectacular... [Snyder] ingeniously explores the minutiae of her subjects' lives to reveal sweeping changes in how their world was understood – ones that still resonate today' Snyder has a natural wit that emerges with the narrative The great pleasure of this book is how Snyder makes the science clear to the layman The reciprocal relationship between science and art in the seventeenth century might well be called "the reinvention of seeing". It is in this absorbing way that Snyder takes us back through time, beyond the reflections and shadows, to the very heart of Vermeer's art Engaging... a spirited account of these developments and of their conceptual as well as their practical implications. She is adept at picturing the culture in which her protagonists grew up. She has a relish for detail'