Essays on Galileo and the history and philosophy of science Book

I read Darkness at Night because it appeared in the footnotes of Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. Silverman was discussing Poe's Eureka, a "poem" that Poe claimed would explain the universe, revolutionize the world of science & philosophy, etc.

Among many other riddles, Poe takes on the question of why the night sky is dark.

Here's the basic question. Whenever you look up at the sky, your eye is meeting a star - somewhere, no matter how distant. And if there's millions, billions, trillions of stars, it's all the more likely that anywhere you look, your gaze connects to a star. So, with all those pinpricks of light in the sky, why don't they act like pixels, and create a bright sky at night? Why aren't the skies filled with starlight?

Harrison answers this question very thoroughly, by reviewing all the previous theories and explanations. It turns out that in order to answer this question, you need to talk about the nature of light, of space, whether the universe is expanding, and twenty or so other cosmological questions. He starts far back, with the Pre-Socratics, and goes all the way into the second half of the 20th century.

All this is interesting, but for me, it suffers from a problem common to a lot of science writing. If you already know the current answer to these questions, then hearing ancient Greek or 17th century theories about light has a piquant thrill - kind of like correcting an inaccurate rumor. But if you don't, then it gets rather confusing, and it becomes a succession of odd analogies ("Let's say you have a lightbulb in a box") and theologies.

Overall, I would recommend this book to those curious about the history of science, and the ways imagination confronts a paradox over time.