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Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and science started to grow apart, and modern thinkers challenged the old orthodoxies, offering thrilling new perspectives that suddenly felt radical—and too dangerous for women.

In Origin Story, medical historian Howard Markel recounts the two-year period (1858 to 1860) of Darwin's writing of On the Origin of Species through its spectacular success and controversy. Simultaneously, Markel delves into the mysterious health symptoms Darwin developed, combing the literature to emerge with a cogent diagnosis of a case that has long fascinated medical historians.

Upon its first English publication in 1959, Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery revolutionized thinking about the scientific method. Largely an exploration of the demarcation problem, or what distinguishes science from non-science, Popper introduced and defended his concept of falsifability -- that scientific systems are ones open to empirical disconfirmation -- against the prevailing views of his day.

Thanks to recent advances in AI, humans have entered a world where we are no longer the sole custodians of knowledge. A new wave of disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us - and are beginning to transform everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?

PLAYING WITH REALITY explores the riveting history of games since the Enlightenment, weaving an unexpected path through military theory, biology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and the future of democracy. As neuroscientist and physicist Kelly Clancy shows us, games have been deeply intertwined with the arc of history. War games shaped the outcomes of real wars in nineteenth and twentieth century Europe. Game theory warped our understanding of human behavior and brought us to the brink of annihilation.

In the developed world, we’ve reaped the benefits of refrigeration for more than a century, but the costs are catching up with us. We’ve eroded our connection to our food and redefined what “fresh” means. More important, refrigeration is one of the leading contributors to climate change. As the developing world races to build a US-style cold chain, Twilley asks: Can we reduce our dependence on refrigeration? Should we?

Taking us back to that exhilarating - and often dangerous - moment when scientists tried to work out exactly what it was they'd discovered, we see gases as the formative substances of our modern world. From how nitrous oxide and chloroform get into our bloodstream and affect our neural pathways to the gases that make plants grow and flowers smell through to the carbon-fuelled climate crisis, Mark Miodownik masterfully reveals this invisible world through his unique brand of scientific storytelling.

In Turning to Stone, Marcia Bjornerud invites you into a geo-centric perspective, in which rocks are raconteurs, companions, mentors, oracles, and sources of solace. She dispels the notion that rocks simply are and instead helps you to see them as living entities with biographies that intersect with our own.

Two questions guide this seven-year project: First, how can we approach the phenomenon, representation, and interpretation of total solar eclipses? Second, how can we heal the historical divide separating the natural sciences from the humanities, arts, history, and theology? The result of this interdisciplinary investigation into eclipses is an exciting look behind the scenes—into labs, archives, and museums, as well as around fieldwork in astronomy, meteorology, animal behavior, and ecophysiology.

As the FDA medical officer charged with reviewing Merrell Pharmaceutical’s application for approval in 1960–1961, Kelsey was unconvinced that there was sufficient evidence of the drug’s efficacy and safety. Despite substantial pressure, she held her ground for nineteen months while the extent of the drug’s worldwide damage became known—thousands of stillborn babies, as well as at least 10,000 children across forty-six countries born with severe deformities such as missing limbs, arms, and legs that resembled flippers, and improperly developed eyes, ears, and other organs.

A History of the World in Six Plagues is a timely examination of the role that confinement has played in fostering and hindering epidemics. In a rare blend of rigorous research and truly compelling story-telling, Dr Edna Bonhomme traces the long history of viral outbreaks under conditions of social confinement - the plantation system, colonial camps, imprisonment, quarantine, factories - and reveals how these enclosed spaces fuel epidemics.