Showing titles in History & Philosophy

Let There Be Light presents a simple, beautiful, and elegant view of the oneness of all life, subjective and objective. It demonstrates the unity of the physical world with conscious experience of the physical world. Consciousness is not inside space and time, space and time are within consciousness; they are a special structure of the perceptual portion of consciousness.

In this fascinating collection of articles and speeches, Albert Einstein reflects not only on the scientific method at work in his own theoretical discoveries, but eloquently expresses a great appreciation for his scientific contemporaries and forefathers, including Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck, and Niels Bohr. While Einstein is renowned as one of the foremost innovators of modern science, his discoveries uniquely his own, through his own words it becomes clear that Einstein viewed himself as only the most recent in a long line of scientists driven to create new ways of understanding the world and to prove their scientific theories.

Elixir tells the story of Edouard Laugier and Auguste Laurent, the son of a perfumer and a fellow aspiring chemist, who met on the Left Bank while pursuing their passion for science. Spurned by the scientific establishment, the pair ended up working out of Edouard's family perfume shop, Laugier père et fils. By day they prepared the revitalizing elixirs and rejuvenating eaux it was famous for, but by night using the ingredients of the perfumery and the principles of alchemy, they pursued the secret of life itself.

In 1995, a scandal erupted when the New York Times revealed that the Smithsonian possessed a century’s worth of nude “posture” photos of college students. In this riveting history, Beth Linker tells why these photos were only a small part of the incredible story of twentieth-century America’s largely forgotten posture panic—a decades-long episode in which it was widely accepted as scientific fact that Americans were suffering from an epidemic of bad posture, with potentially catastrophic health consequences.

The periodic table is one of the most potent icons in science. It lies at the core of chemistry and embodies the most fundamental principles of the field. The one definitive text on the development of the periodic table by van Spronsen (1969), has been out of print for a considerable time. The present book provides a successor to van Spronsen, but goes further in giving an evaluation of the extent to which modern physics has, or has not, explained the periodic system. The book is written in a lively style to appeal to experts and interested lay-persons alike.

Both science and religion explore aspects of reality, providing "a basis for their mutual interaction as they present their different perspectives onto the one world of existent reality," Polkinghorne argues. In One World he develops his thesis through an examination of the nature of science, the nature of the physical world, the character of theology, and the modes of thought in science and theology. He identifies "points of interaction" and points of potential conflict between science and religion.

Ever since the human mind developed the capacity for thought, people have pondered not just the meaning of life, but the genesis of the world, the universe, and all the natural marvels and precious forms of life within it. To this day, all of these intricate subjects continue to be matters of great contention, and they are often best encapsulated in the debate between creationism and evolution. On the one hand are those who are adamant that it was God, or some other supreme being, that designed and crafted every detail of the universe.

For millennia, humans have used one simple method to solve problems. Whether it's planting crops, building skyscrapers, developing photographs, or designing the first microchip, all creators follow the same steps to engineer progress. But this powerful method, the "engineering method", is an all but hidden process that few of us have heard of—let alone understand—but that influences every aspect of our lives.

The Joy of Science presents 8 short lessons on how to unlock the clarity, empowerment, and joy of thinking and living a little more scientifically. In this brief guide to leading a more rational life, acclaimed physicist Jim Al-Khalili invites listeners to engage with the world as scientists have been trained to do. The scientific method has served humankind well in its quest to see things as they really are, and underpinning the scientific method are core principles that can help us all navigate modern life more confidently.

You'd think we were living in the golden age of science and reason. But the truth is far more sinister, says Austin Ruse. We're actually living in the age of the low information voter, easily misled by all-too-convincing false statistics and studies. In Fake Science, Ruse debunks so-called "facts" used to advance political causes one after the other, revealing how poorly they stand up to actual science.

Can scientific explanation ever make reference to God or the supernatural? The present consensus is no; indeed, a naturalistic stance is usually taken to be a distinguishing feature of modern science. Science Without God?: Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism shows that the history of Western science presents us with a more nuanced picture.

In 1916, Arthur Eddington, a war-weary British astronomer, opened a letter written by an obscure German professor named Einstein. The neatly printed equations on the scrap of paper outlined his world-changing theory of general relativity. Until then Einstein's masterpiece of time and space had been trapped behind the physical and ideological lines of battle, unknown. Eddington realised the importance of the letter - perhaps Einstein's esoteric theory could not only change the future of science but also restore the world of cooperative international science in a time of brutal war.

Drawing on conversations with hundreds of the world’s top scientists and on her own work as a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer for the New York Times, Natalie Angier creates a thoroughly entertaining guide to scientific literacy. The Canon is a vital book for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time—from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it’s for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or what electricity is.

A collection of BBC radio documentaries celebrating the lunar landings and their legacy. On July 20th 1969, for the first time in history, man walked on the moon. Over 50 years later, this 'giant leap for mankind' still captures our imagination, and in this four-part collection, we bring together some of the most fascinating and insightful BBC documentaries about our ever-changing relationship with our only natural satellite.

New technology is helping us share our wisdom and knowledge much more diversely across race, class, gender and borders. And AI is sparking a revolution in our approach to intelligent thinking—linking us into fast-working brainnets for problem solving. Hannah Critchlow brings us an enlightening, invaluable guide to our future through the evolving new science of collective intelligence. She reveals what it says about us as human beings, shares compelling examples and stories, and shows us how best we can work collectively at work, in families and in any team situation.

¿Estamos al borde de una nueva edad oscura de irracionalismo y superstición? En este libro conmovedor, el incomparable Carl Sagan demuestra con brillantez que el pensamiento científico es necesario para salvaguardar nuestras instituciones democráticas y nuestra civilización técnica. El mundo y sus demonios es el libro más personal de Sagan, y está lleno de historias humanas entrañables y reveladoras.

It was a time of bold new technology, historic moments, and international jousting on the final frontier. But it was also a time of human drama, of moments less public but no less dramatic in the lives of those who made the golden age of space flight happen. These are the moments and the lives that Into That Silent Sea captures, a book that tells the intimate stories of the men and women, American and Russian, who made the space race their own and gave the era its compelling character.

For many, the moon landing was the defining event of the twentieth century. So it seems only fitting that Norman Mailer - the literary provocateur who altered the landscape of American nonfiction - wrote the most wide-ranging, far-seeing chronicle of the Apollo 11 mission. A classic chronicle of America's reach for greatness in the midst of the Cold War, Of a Fire on the Moon compiles the reportage Mailer published between 1969 and 1970 in Life magazine

Who hasn't feared the math Minotaur in its labyrinth of abstractions? Now, in Out of the Labyrinth, Robert and Ellen Kaplan - the founders of The Math Circle, the popular learning program begun at Harvard in 1994 - reveal the secrets behind their highly successful approach, leading listeners out of the labyrinth and into the joyous embrace of mathematics.

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.