Author: Goren Gordon
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
ISBN: 9781536138009
Category : Curiosity
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Curiosity is the foundation of childhood development and continues on into adulthood; it is the cornerstone of scientific discovery, art and play. In the past, the study of curiosity has been mainly restricted to the field of psychology. Recently, a new science of curiosity has emerged that is multidisciplinary, applicative, and transformative. In this book, some of the leading researchers of this emerging field give a comprehensive background description, explain in detail the state-of-the-art advances, and raise future-looking insights into curiosity. The book includes accounts of new neuroscientific research of curiosity, computational models of infant-like robots, thought-provoking insights into knowledge and wisdom, and curious social robots that play with curious children. Furthermore, applications of The New Science of Curiosity in art and game-design highlight the importance of these new approaches to fields outside science. The New Science of Curiosity also has a great impact on our day-to-day lives, described in the book regarding the medical profession and the educational system. The New Science of Curiosity holds great promise for a better, deeper, and more comprehensive understanding of this elusive, yet crucial, aspect of human cognition. Only a multi-disciplinary diverse approach, as presented in this book, holds the key to unlocking the mysteries of exploration, seeking and investigative experiences of our grandiose dreams and daily lives.

Author: Philip Ball
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022621169X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
"Looking closely at the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Ball vividly brings to life the age when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton. In this entertaining and illuminating account of the rise of science as we know it, Ball tells of scientists both legendary and lesser known, from Copernicus and Kepler to Robert Boyle, as well as the inventions and technologies that were inspired by curiosity itself, such as the telescope and the microscope. The so-called Scientific Revolution is often told as a story of great geniuses illuminating the world with flashes of inspiration. But Curiosity reveals a more complex story, in which the liberation--and subsequent taming--of curiosity was linked to magic, religion, literature, travel, trade, and empire. Ball also asks what has become of curiosity today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged for consumption, how well it is being sustained, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may continue to ask"--OCLC

Author: Mario Livio
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476792127
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Astrophysicist and author Mario Livio investigates perhaps the most human of all our characteristics—curiosity—in this “lively, expert, and definitely not dumbed-down account” (Kirkus Reviews) as he explores our innate desire to know why. Experiments demonstrate that people are more distracted when they overhear a phone conversation—where they can know only one side of the dialogue—than when they overhear two people talking and know both sides. Why does half a conversation make us more curious than a whole conversation? “Have you ever wondered why we wonder why? Mario Livio has, and he takes you on a fascinating quest to understand the origin and mechanisms of our curiosity. I thoroughly recommend it.” (Adam Riess, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics, 2011). Curiosity is not only at the heart of mystery and suspense novels, it is also essential to other creative endeavors, from painting to sculpture to music. It is the principal driver of basic scientific research. Even so, there is still no definitive scientific consensus about why we humans are so curious, or about the mechanisms in our brain that are responsible for curiosity. In the ever-fascinating Why? Livio interviewed scientists in several fields to explore the nature of curiosity. He examined the lives of two of history’s most curious geniuses, Leonardo da Vinci and Richard Feynman. He also talked to people with boundless curiosity: a superstar rock guitarist who is also an astrophysicist; an astronaut with degrees in computer science, biology, literature, and medicine. What drives these people to be curious about so many subjects? An astrophysicist who has written about mathematics, biology, and now psychology and neuroscience, Livio has firsthand knowledge of his subject which he explores in a lucid, entertaining way that will captivate anyone who is curious about curiosity.

Author: Perry Zurn
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452963622
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The first English-language collection to establish curiosity studies as a unique field From science and technology to business and education, curiosity is often taken for granted as an unquestioned good. And yet, few people can define curiosity. Curiosity Studies marshals scholars from more than a dozen fields not only to define curiosity but also to grapple with its ethics as well as its role in technological advancement and global citizenship. While intriguing research on curiosity has occurred in numerous disciplines for decades, no rigorously cross-disciplinary study has existed—until now. Curiosity Studies stages an interdisciplinary conversation about what curiosity is and what resources it holds for human and ecological flourishing. These engaging essays are integrated into four clusters: scientific inquiry, educational practice, social relations, and transformative power. By exploring curiosity through the practice of scientific inquiry, the contours of human learning, the stakes of social difference, and the potential of radical imagination, these clusters focus and reinvigorate the study of this universal but slippery phenomenon: the desire to know. Against the assumption that curiosity is neutral, this volume insists that curiosity has a history and a political import and requires precision to define and operationalize. As various fields deepen its analysis, a new ecosystem for knowledge production can flourish, driven by real-world problems and a commitment to solve them in collaboration. By paying particular attention to pedagogy throughout, Curiosity Studies equips us to live critically and creatively in what might be called our new Age of Curiosity. Contributors: Danielle S. Bassett, U of Pennsylvania; Barbara M. Benedict, Trinity College; Susan Engel, Williams College; Ellen K. Feder, American U; Kristina T. Johnson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Narendra Keval; Christina León, Princeton U; Tyson Lewis, U of North Texas; Amy Marvin, U of Oregon; Hilary M. Schor, U of Southern California; Seeta Sistla, Hampshire College; Heather Anne Swanson, Aarhus U.

Author: Robert T. Pennock
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262042584
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
An exploration of the scientific mindset—such character virtues as curiosity, veracity, attentiveness, and humility to evidence—and its importance for science, democracy, and human flourishing. Exemplary scientists have a characteristic way of viewing the world and their work: their mindset and methods all aim at discovering truths about nature. In An Instinct for Truth, Robert Pennock explores this scientific mindset and argues that what Charles Darwin called “an instinct for truth, knowledge, and discovery” has a tacit moral structure—that it is important not only for scientific excellence and integrity but also for democracy and human flourishing. In an era of “post-truth,” the scientific drive to discover empirical truths has a special value. Taking a virtue-theoretic perspective, Pennock explores curiosity, veracity, skepticism, humility to evidence, and other scientific virtues and vices. He explains that curiosity is the most distinctive element of the scientific character, by which other norms are shaped; discusses the passionate nature of scientific attentiveness; and calls for science education not only to teach scientific findings and methods but also to nurture the scientific mindset and its core values. Drawing on historical sources as well as a sociological study of more than a thousand scientists, Pennock's philosophical account is grounded in values that scientists themselves recognize they should aspire to. Pennock argues that epistemic and ethical values are normatively interconnected, and that for science and society to flourish, we need not just a philosophy of science, but a philosophy of the scientist.

Author: Toby E. Huff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139495356
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Seventeenth-century Europe witnessed an extraordinary flowering of discoveries and innovations. This study, beginning with the Dutch-invented telescope of 1608, casts Galileo's discoveries into a global framework. Although the telescope was soon transmitted to China, Mughal India, and the Ottoman Empire, those civilizations did not respond as Europeans did to the new instrument. In Europe, there was an extraordinary burst of innovations in microscopy, human anatomy, optics, pneumatics, electrical studies, and the science of mechanics. Nearly all of those aided the emergence of Newton's revolutionary grand synthesis, which unified terrestrial and celestial physics under the law of universal gravitation. That achievement had immense implications for all aspects of modern science, technology, and economic development. The economic implications are set out in the concluding epilogue. All these unique developments suggest why the West experienced a singular scientific and economic ascendancy of at least four centuries.

Author: Exploratorium
Publisher: WeldonOwn+ORM
ISBN: 1681885964
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Fifty of the world’s most creative people share their stories and inspirations in this volume created by the Exploratorium science museum. What do music visionary Brian Eno, kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen, science writer Mary Roach, Mythbuster Adam Savage, and Pulitzer-winning journalist Thomas Friedman have in common? They are all game-changers: scientists, artists, entertainers, and activists who revolutionized their fields with bold new perspectives and approaches—and they all had transformative, course-setting experiences at the Exploratorium science museum, the San Francisco landmark visited by a million people a year in person and by millions more online. Join them and forty-five more brilliant thinkers and doers in a wonderfully playful, insightful, and sometimes incredibly moving journey to see how you, too, can harness your powers of observation, inquiry, and engagement to be the change you want to see in the world—regardless of who you are or what you do. Interviewees and subjects include: Oscar-Winning Sound Designer Walter Murch on observation Laurie Anderson on art as a way of knowing Memory Expert Elizabeth Loftus on how we learn Oliver Sacks on perception Mary Roach on how she learned to ask the right questions Adam Savage on the fun of finding things out Mickey Hart on the art of playing to learn, and learning to play California Governor Gavin Newsom on the importance of science Community activist Randy Carter on finding joy in the worst of places . . . and dozens more interviews, insights, and activities suggested by artists, scientists, poets, and politicians, in a book that can help you become more creative—and maybe just change the world.

Author: Judea Pearl
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465097618
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
A Turing Award-winning computer scientist and statistician shows how understanding causality has revolutionized science and will revolutionize artificial intelligence "Correlation is not causation." This mantra, chanted by scientists for more than a century, has led to a virtual prohibition on causal talk. Today, that taboo is dead. The causal revolution, instigated by Judea Pearl and his colleagues, has cut through a century of confusion and established causality -- the study of cause and effect -- on a firm scientific basis. His work explains how we can know easy things, like whether it was rain or a sprinkler that made a sidewalk wet; and how to answer hard questions, like whether a drug cured an illness. Pearl's work enables us to know not just whether one thing causes another: it lets us explore the world that is and the worlds that could have been. It shows us the essence of human thought and key to artificial intelligence. Anyone who wants to understand either needs The Book of Why.

Author: Roy Yorke Calne
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
ISBN: 9781631178610
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Science, like the universe, is expanding and accelerating. This book outlines the many gifts that science has bestowed upon our quality of life ranging from health, travel, and communication, but it also raises concerns about the sometimes awful consequences of science. These may be accidental and unanticipated, or deliberate, as with the development of new weapons that carry dreadful potential. After the Second World War, a chasm separated the regimes of the East and West, and the possibility that the world was heading towards a catastrophic atomic conflict was a serious worry. Science has a responsibility for its consequences, even if these are not anticipated. In view of the history of science and our current relationship with scientific advances, it would be prudent to attempt a continuing peaceful dialogue to avoid future confrontation. For the writing of this book, the author made many in-depth studies of correspondence between scientists and philosophers, including, most notably, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, at Churchill College Archives in Cambridge.

Author: Margaret J. Wheatley
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 145877760X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
A bestseller--more than 300,000 copies sold, translated into seventeen languages, and featured in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Fortune; Shows how discoveries in quantum physics, biology, and chaos theory enable us to deal successfully with change and uncertainty in our organizations and our lives; Includes a new chapter on how the new sciences can help us understand and cope with some of the major social challenges of our timesWe live in a time of chaos, rich in potential for new possibilities. A new world is being born. We need new ideas, new ways of seeing, and new relationships to help us now. New science--the new discoveries in biology, chaos theory, and quantum physics that are changing our understanding of how the world works--offers this guidance. It describes a world where chaos is natural, where order exists ''for free.'' It displays the intricate webs of cooperation that connect us. It assures us that life seeks order, but uses messes to get there.Leadership and the New Science is the bestselling, most acclaimed, and most influential guide to applying the new science to organizations and management. In it, Wheatley describes how the new science radically alters our understanding of the world, and how it can teach us to live and work well together in these chaotic times. It will teach you how to move with greater certainty and easier grace into the new forms of organizations and communities that are taking shape.