A Sense of Space

From global navigation to natal charts to memory palaces and beyond, a thrilling journey through humanity's visualization of new spaces.

When you give directions, do you tell someone to go straight ahead and turn left? Or do you suggest that they head north before moving west? Your answer reveals more than you might think.

In A Sense of Space, writer and physicist John Edward Huth uses these two kinds of navigation—either centred on or independent of people—to help readers chart a path through evolving spatial models. In doing so, he offers an astonishing exploration of how changing scientific models of space alter our social perceptions, and vice versa.

New visions of space can emanate from human considerations, he argues, and those new visions can in turn spawn new cultural phenomena. With accessible introductions to topics including mental maps, astrology, astronomy, particle physics, and Einstein's relativity, Huth makes clear that, although our minds have evolved to comprehend space on terrestrial distances, we routinely extend this understanding to realms far removed from our everyday experiences, from the cosmological to subatomic scales.

Taking us across the eons from the myth of a flat earth to the mysteries of the multiverse, A Sense of Space is an energetic, thoughtful guide to how we orient ourselves in our world—and beyond.