Author: Max Planck Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing ISBN: 178720555X Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 129
Book Description
First published in 1932, this book by Nobel Prize-winning German physicist Max Planck, a profound humanist as well as a theoretical scientist and professor in Germany between the two World Wars, provides the reader with a great insider’s look at how scientific revolutions unfold from the first sparks of ingenuity to their establishment as accepted paradigms of their current times.
Author: Andrew A. Marino Publisher: ISBN: 9780981854915 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 462
Book Description
Going Somewhere is a dynamic autobiographical narrative about Andrew Marino's career in science. With a depth and drama that arise from personal involvement, the book explores an exceptionally wide range of science-related matters: the relation between electrical energy and life; the influence of corporate and military power on science; the role of self-interest on the part of federal and state agencies that deal with human health, especially the NIH and the FDA; the importance of cross-examining scientific experts in legal hearings; the erroneous view of nature that results when the perspective of physics is extended into biology; the pivotal role of deterministic chaos theory in at least some cognitive processes. These matters arise in the long course of the author's scientific and legal activities involving the complex debate over the health risks of man-made environmental electromagnetic fields. The book offers far more than a solution to the contentious health issue. The story provides a portal into how science actually works, which you will see differs dramatically from the romantic notion of an objective search for truth. You will understand that science is a human enterprise, all too human, inescapably enmeshed in uncertainty. This realization has the potential to change your life because it will likely affect whom you choose to believe, and with what degree of confidence.
Author: Robert B. Silvers Publisher: New York Review of Books ISBN: 9781590170526 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
We often think of science as continuously advancing. In this collection of essays, five world-renowned writers explore obscure and neglected episodes in the history of science which suggest instead that the process of understanding the significance of scientific discoveries can be erratic, contradictory, even irrational. Jonathan Miller, Oliver Sacks, and Daniel Kevles show how promising new ideas may at first fail to be noticed or accepted, and then, years after they have been dismissed or forgotten, are recognized in a different form as important. R.C. Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould discuss the ways that words and images used by scientists and popularizers alike, from the murals on the walls of natural history museums to such ubiquitous terms as "adaptation" and "environment," reflect serious and often unacknowledged distortions in the way we conceive of both individual organisms and the natural history of the world. These essays demonstrate that science is, in the words of Oliver Sacks, "a human enterprise through and through, an organic, evolving, human growth, with sudden spurts and arrests, and strange deviations, too. It grows out of its past, but never outgrows it, any more than we outgrow our childhood."
Author: Robert Bernard Hass Publisher: University of Virginia Press ISBN: 9780813921129 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
The ascendancy of science pushed aside Emerson's view of nature as an analogue for a kind and benevolent deity and led to a spiritual crisis that Robert Frost attempted to address in his work. Hass (English, Edinboro U. of Pennsylvania) argues that this was the central concern of Frost's work throughout his career. Frost consistently argued that poetry must seek to find a consistent rationality that strives towards wisdom and firmly rejected Poe's conception of poetry as mere ornament or the more revolutionary conceptions of the American Modernists. Hass traces Frost's career as one in which he slowly overcame his fear of materialism and was able to restore his religious faith. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Michael Böcher Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319340794 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 207
Book Description
Researchers in the environmental sciences are often frustrated because actors involved with practice do not follow their advice. This is the starting point of this book, which describes a new model for scientific knowledge transfer called RIU, for Research, Integration and Utilization. This model sees the factors needed for knowledge transfer as being state-of-the-art research and the effective, practical utilization to which it leads, and it highlights the importance of “integration”, which in this context means the active bi‐directional selection of those research results that are relevant for practice. In addition, the model underscores the importance of special allies who are powerful actors that support the application of scientific research results in society. An important product of this approach is a checklist of factors for successful knowledge transfer that will be useful for scientists. By using this checklist, research projects and research programs can be optimised with regard to their potential for reaching successful knowledge transfer effects.
Author: Vaclav Smil Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0593297067 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A new masterpiece from one of my favorite authors… [How The World Really Works] is a compelling and highly readable book that leaves readers with the fundamental grounding needed to help solve the world’s toughest challenges.”—Bill Gates “Provocative but perceptive . . . You can agree or disagree with Smil—accept or doubt his ‘just the facts’ posture—but you probably shouldn’t ignore him.”—The Washington Post An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible—a scientist's investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish. We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don’t know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check—because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts. In this ambitious and thought-provoking book we see, for example, that globalization isn’t inevitable—the foolishness of allowing 70 per cent of the world’s rubber gloves to be made in just one factory became glaringly obvious in 2020—and that our societies have been steadily increasing their dependence on fossil fuels, such that any promises of decarbonization by 2050 are a fairy tale. For example, each greenhouse-grown supermarket-bought tomato has the equivalent of five tablespoons of diesel embedded in its production, and we have no way of producing steel, cement or plastics at required scales without huge carbon emissions. Ultimately, Smil answers the most profound question of our age: are we irrevocably doomed or is a brighter utopia ahead? Compelling, data-rich and revisionist, this wonderfully broad, interdisciplinary guide finds faults with both extremes. Looking at the world through this quantitative lens reveals hidden truths that change the way we see our past, present and uncertain future.
Author: Arlene Stein Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022636478X Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 237
Book Description
Introduction: so you want to go public? -- Writing beyond the academy -- Telling stories about your research -- Books for general audiences -- The digital turn -- Building an audience -- The perils of going public -- Making it count, making a difference
Author: Andrew Newberg, M.D. Publisher: Ballantine Books ISBN: 0307493156 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Why have we humans always longed to connect with something larger than ourselves? Why does consciousness inevitably involve us in a spiritual quest? Why, in short, won't God go away? Theologians, philosophers, and psychologists have debated this question through the ages, arriving at a range of contradictory and ultimately unprovable answers. But in this brilliant, groundbreaking new book, researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene d'Aquili offer an explanation that is at once profoundly simple and scientifically precise: the religious impulse is rooted in the biology of the brain. Newberg and d'Aquili base this revolutionary conclusion on a long-term investigation of brain function and behavior as well as studies they conducted using high-tech imaging techniques to examine the brains of meditating Buddhists and Franciscan nuns at prayer. What they discovered was that intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads us to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid and tangibly real. In other words, the sensation that Buddhists call "oneness with the universe" and the Franciscans attribute to the palpable presence of God is not a delusion or a manifestation of wishful thinking but rather a chain of neurological events that can be objectively observed, recorded, and actually photographed. The inescapable conclusion is that God is hard-wired into the human brain. In Why God Won't Go Away, Newberg and d'Aquili document their pioneering explorations in the field of neurotheology, an emerging discipline dedicated to understanding the complex relationship between spirituality and the brain. Along the way, they delve into such essential questions as whether humans are biologically compelled to make myths; what is the evolutionary connection between religious ecstasy and sexual orgasm; what do Near Death Experiences reveal about the nature of spiritual phenomena; and how does ritual create its own neurological environment. As their journey unfolds, Newberg and d'Aquili realize that a single, overarching question lies at the heart of their pursuit: Is religion merely a product of biology or has the human brain been mysteriously endowed with the unique capacity to reach and know God? Blending cutting-edge science with illuminating insights into the nature of consciousness and spirituality, Why God Won't Go Away bridges faith and reason, mysticism and empirical data. The neurological basis of how the brain identifies the "real" is nothing short of miraculous. This fascinating, eye-opening book dares to explore both the miracle and the biology of our enduring relationship with God.
Author: Max Planck
Author: Kimberlee Graves
Author: Andrew A. Marino
Author: Robert B. Silvers
Author: Robert Bernard Hass
Author: Michael Böcher
Author: Vaclav Smil
Author: Sidney Rosen
Author: Arlene Stein
Author: Andrew Newberg, M.D.