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THE INVISIBLE PYRAMID -- A NATURALIST ANALYSES THE ROCKET CENTURY |
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PREFACE THE theme of this book was developed through a series of lectures delivered under the auspices of the John Danz Fund at the University of Washington in Seattle in the Fall of 1969. It gives me pleasure to express to the members of the Danz family my appreciation of their interest and generosity, as well as to the administrative staff of the University, who were my hosts. I should also like to express my thanks to my friend and former colleague, the astronomer Frank Bradshaw Wood, of the University of Florida, Gainesville, for information cheerfully supplied me upon the elliptic of Halley's comet. Similarly I am glad to seize this opportunity to mention the many provocative conversations which have taken place with my university colleagues, Froelich Rainey, Director of the University Museum, and Dale Coman, M.D., of the University Medical School. As men concerned with the growing problems of our environment, we share equal anxieties and hopes. In this book I have chosen, for literary reasons extending into the seventeenth century, to use somewhat interchangeably the terms Halley's star and Halley's comet, since for the latter no satisfactory synonym exists. I do not think anyone will be confused by this interchange, which has stylistic advantages in a book of this nature. LOREN EISELEY
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