Drawing on the lives of five great scientists, this "scholarly, insightful, and beautifully written book" (Martin Rees, author of From Here to Infinity ) illuminates the path to scientific discovery. Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein all made groundbreaking contributions to their fields--but each also stumbled badly. Darwin's theory of natural selection shouldn't have worked, according to the prevailing beliefs of his time. Lord Kelvin gravely miscalculated the age of the earth. Linus Pauling, the world's premier chemist, constructed an erroneous model for DNA in his haste to beat the competition to publication. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle dismissed the idea of a "Big Bang" origin to the universe (ironically, the caustic name he gave to this event endured long after his erroneous objections were disproven). And Albert Einstein speculated incorrectly about the forces of the universe--and that speculation opened the door to brilliant conceptual leaps. As Mario Livio luminously explains in this "thoughtful meditation on the course of science itself" ( The New York Times Book Review ), these five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on earth, the evolution of the earth, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors. "Thoughtful, well-researched, and beautifully written" ( The Washington Post ), Brilliant Blunders is a wonderfully insightful examination of the psychology of five fascinating scientists--and the mistakes as well as the achievements that made them famous.

More of Isaac Asimov's weekly science columns for the Los Angeles Times and those his wife, Janet, wrote during his illness and after his death in April 1992. The Asimovs discuss how close we are to producing life in a lab, the latest revelations about dinosaur extinction, recent startling sightings of planets and stars, if we can establish colonies on Mars, if computer intelligence can ever surpass human intelligence, and the gravest dangers to our environment. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Frontiers probes the furthest boundaries of prehistory, science, earth space and the universe. It is a collection of short, topical and intriguing essays through which Isaac Asimov, the incomparable writer of science fiction, proposes brand new answers to classic scientific conundrums.

Over the past few decades there has been a revolution in terms of who controls knowledge and information. This rapid change has imperilled the way we think. Without pausing to consider the cost, the world has rushed to embrace the products and services of four titanic corporations. We shop with Amazon; socialise on Facebook; turn to Apple for entertainment; and rely on Google for information. These firms sell their efficiency and purport to make the world a better place, but what they have done instead is to enable an intoxicating level of daily convenience. As these companies have expanded, marketing themselves as champions of individuality and pluralism, their algorithms have pressed us into conformity and laid waste to privacy. They have produced an unstable and narrow culture of misinformation, and put us on a path to a world without private contemplation, autonomous thought, or solitary introspection - a world without mind. In order to restore our inner lives, we must avoid being co-opted by these gigantic companies, and understand the ideas that underpin their success. Elegantly tracing the intellectual history of computer science - from the Descartes and the enlightenment to Alan Turing to Stuart Brand and the hippie origins of today's Silicon Valley - Foer exposes the dark underpinnings of our most idealistic dreams for technology. The corporate ambitions of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, he argues, are trampling longstanding liberal values, especially intellectual property and privacy. This is a nascent stage in the total automation and homogenization of social, political, and intellectual life. By reclaiming our private authority over how we intellectually engage with the world, we have the power to stem the tide. At stake is nothing less than who we are, and what we will become. There have been monopolists in the past but today's corporate giants have far more nefarious aims. They're monopolists who want access to every facet of our identities and influence over every corner of our decision-making. Until now few have grasped the sheer scale of the threat. Foer explains not just the looming existential crisis but the imperative of resistance.

Humanity has always been intrigued by the timeless question: Where did we come from? In 1974, the discovery of the fossilised bones of a three-million-year-old female dubbed 'Lucy' captured the world's attention. This nearly complete skeleton of an early human ancestor not only triggered widespread interest in our human origins but also prompted a thorough re-evaluation of established scientific doctrines. Today, hardly a month goes by without news of significant discoveries that are changing our understanding of human origins at what seems like the speed of lightning. But what does all this new knowledge about our species mean? That's exactly what acclaimed science writer Carl Zimmer tackles in this accessible, up-to-the-minute guide to human origins. Zimmer offers an entertaining and illuminating journey through our ancestry - beginning sixty-five million years ago with the first primates and ending today, as we enter a new phase of evolution. From ancient fossils unearthed in the Sahara Desert to the analysis of DNA by robots at the National Human Genome Research Institute in suburban Maryland, Zimmer weaves together the varied clues about our human ancestry in an entertaining, informative and highly readable volume that will appeal to expert and general reader alike.

Unabridged declassified value reproduction of The Los Alamos Primer by Robert Serber, in full color with all censor markings. This is the booklet given to new workers at Los Alamos during World War II, to catch them up on how to build a practical fission bomb. The Primer was driven by Robert Oppenheimer asking his protégé Robert Serber to summarize all knowledge and possible solutions known as of April 1943 in a series of lectures. Serber did such an excellent job that the notes from the series was turned into The Los Alamos Primer. Serber was known as an expert that bridged theory and reality, and so was also chosen to be one of the first Americans to enter Hiroshima and Nagasaki to assess the atomic damage in 1945. Touch a piece of history in this slim volume with the full text at an affordable price.

From the author of the #1 national bestselling Musicophilia comes a truly visionary book: an exploration of the remarkable, unpredictable ways that our brains cope with the loss of sight by finding new forms of perception to create worlds as complete and rich as the no-longer-visible world. Following the phenomenal success of his international bestseller Musicophilia , the inimitable Oliver Sacks returns with another book on the extraordinary interaction between our brain and our senses -- in this case, vision. In The Mind's Eye , Sacks examines questions ranging from the primary experiences of how we perceive depth or color or motion to the complex matter of how different individuals have varied ways of thinking and experiencing or recreating the visual world. Like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars , Sacks's new book is based primarily on individual stories -- including Sacks's own experience of an ocular tumor that left him unable to perceive depth. As always, he embeds these case histories in a rich historical and scientific context. Sacks goes beyond basic vision to explore perception, hallucination and the power of visualization, as well as the ocular effects of migraine, epilepsy and other conditions. Oliver Sacks is our perfect guide to the visual world, a realm that, it turns out, is much, much more complicated than we could have imagined.

The former dean of the Yale School of Management and Undersecretary of Commerce in the Clinton administration chronicles the 1971 August meeting at Camp David, where President Nixon unilaterally ended the last vestiges of the gold standard--breaking the link between gold and the dollar--transforming the entire global monetary system. Over the course of three days--from August 13 to 15, 1971--at a secret meeting at Camp David, President Richard Nixon and his brain trust changed the course of history. Before that weekend, all national currencies were valued to the U.S. dollar, which was convertible to gold at a fixed rate. That system, established by the Bretton Woods Agreement at the end of World War II, was the foundation of the international monetary system that helped fuel the greatest expansion of middle-class prosperity the world has ever seen. In making his decision, Nixon shocked world leaders, bankers, investors, traders and everyone involved in global finance. Jeffrey E. Garten argues that many of the roots of America's dramatic retrenchment in world affairs began with that momentous event that was an admission that America could no longer afford to uphold the global monetary system. It opened the way for massive market instability and speculation that has plagued the world economy ever since, but at the same time it made possible the gigantic expansion of trade and investment across borders which created our modern era of once unimaginable progress. Based on extensive historical research and interviews with several participants at Camp David, and informed by Garten's own insights from positions in four presidential administrations and on Wall Street, Three Days at Camp David chronicles this critical turning point, analyzes its impact on the American economy and world markets, and explores its ramifications now and for the future.

From Jeff Pearlman--the New York Times best-selling author of Three Ring Circus--comes the rollicking, outrageous story of the USFL, full of larger-than-life characters and you-can't-make-this-up stories featuring some of the biggest celebrities and buffoons in the game. The United States Football League--known fondly to millions of sports fans as the USFL--did not merely challenge the NFL, but cause its owners and executives to collectively shudder. In its three seasons from 1983-85, it secured multiple television deals, drew millions of fans and launched the careers of legends such as Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Herschel Walker, and Reggie White. But then it died beneath the weight of a particularly egotistical and bombastic team owner--a New York businessman named Donald J. Trump. In Football for a Buck, Jeff Pearlman draws on more than four hundred interviews to unearth all the salty, untold stories of one of the craziest sports entities to have ever captivated America. From 1980s drug excess to airplane brawls and player-coach punch outs, to backroom business deals and some of the most enthralling and revolutionary football ever seen, Pearlman transports readers back in time to this crazy, boozy, audacious, unforgettable era of the game. He shows how fortunes were made and lost on the backs of professional athletes and how, forty years ago, Trump was already a scoundrel and a spoiler. For fans of Terry Pluto's Loose Balls or Jim Bouton's Ball Four and of course Pearlman's own stranger-than-fiction narratives, Football for a Buck is sports as high entertainment--and a cautionary tale of the dangers of ego and excess.

This book, suitable for both course work and self-study, brings together for the first time, in an informal, tutorial fashion, the computer techniques, mathematical tools, and research results that will enable both students and practitioners to apply genetic algorithms to problems in many fields: programmers, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians and management scientists will all find interesting possibilities here. Major concepts are illustrated with running examples, and major algorithms are illustrated by Pascal computer programs. Chapter concludes with exercises and computer assignments. No prior knowledge of Gas or genetics is assumed.

A funny, insightful, and self-contained guide to Einstein's relativity theory and classical field theories--including electromagnetism Physicist Leonard Susskind and data engineer Art Friedman are back. This time, they introduce readers to Einstein's special relativity and Maxwell's classical field theory. Using their typical brand of real math, enlightening drawings, and humor, Susskind and Friedman walk us through the complexities of waves, forces, and particles by exploring special relativity and electromagnetism. It's a must-read for both devotees of the series and any armchair physicist who wants to improve their knowledge of physics' deepest truths.

New York Times , Wired , Atlantic Monthly , Discover bestselling author Steven Kotler has written extensively about those pivotal moments when science fiction became science fact...and fundamentally reshaped the world. Now he gathers the best of his best, updated and expanded upon, to guide readers on a mind-bending tour of the far frontier, and how these advances are radically transforming our lives. From the ways science and technology are fundamentally altering our bodies and our world (the world's first bionic soldier, the future of evolution) to those explosive collisions between science and culture (life extension and bioweapons), we're crossing moral and ethical lines we've never faced before. As Kotler writes, "Life is tricky sport--and that's the emotional core of this story, the real reason we can't put Pandora back in the box. When you strip everything else away, technology is nothing more than the promise of an easier tomorrow. It's the promise of hope. And how do you stop hope?" Join Kotler in this fascinating exploration of our incredible next: a deep dive into those future technologies happening now--and what it means to be a part of this brave new world.

"GIS for Science presents a collection of real-world stories about modern science and a cadre of scientists who use mapping and spatial analytics to expand their understanding of the world. The accounts in this book are written for a broad audience including professional scientists, the swelling ranks of citizen scientists, and people generally interested in science and geography. Scientific data are brought to life with GIS technology to study a range of issues relevant to the functioning of planet Earth in a natural sense as well as the impacts of human activity. In a race against the clock, the scientists profiled in this volume are using remote sensing, web maps, Esri StoryMaps, and spatial analysis to document an array of issues with a geographic dimension that range from climate change, natural disasters, and loss of biodiversity, to political strife, polar ice loss, and resource shortages. These stories present GIS ideas and inspiration that users can apply across many disciplines, making this volume relevant to diverse scientific audience. See how scientists working on the world's most pressing problems apply geographic information systems--GIS." -- Provided by publisher.

Science and Human Values is a thought-provoking book by Jacob Bronowski that explores the relationship between science and human values. The author argues that science is not just a collection of facts and theories, but a way of thinking that shapes our understanding of the world and our place in it. He contends that science and human values are intimately connected, and that science has the power to transform our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.The book is divided into five chapters, each of which explores a different aspect of the relationship between science and human values. The first chapter discusses the nature of scientific inquiry and the role of imagination in scientific discovery. The second chapter examines the relationship between science and art, arguing that both are essential to our understanding of the world. The third chapter explores the ethical implications of scientific research, particularly in the areas of genetics and nuclear physics.The fourth chapter examines the role of science in shaping our understanding of human nature, while the final chapter discusses the implications of scientific progress for our future as a species. Throughout the book, Bronowski emphasizes the importance of human values in shaping scientific research and the need for scientists to be mindful of the ethical implications of their work.Overall, Science and Human Values is a thought-provoking and insightful book that challenges readers to think deeply about the relationship between science and human values. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the role of science in our lives and the ethical implications of scientific research.The Impact Of Science On Ethics And Human Values.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

A Nobel Prize–winning cancer biologist, leader of major scientific institutions, and scientific adviser to President Obama reflects on his remarkable career. A PhD candidate in English literature at Harvard University, Harold Varmus discovered he was drawn instead to medicine and eventually found himself at the forefront of cancer research at the University of California, San Francisco. In this “timely memoir of a remarkable career” ( American Scientist ), Varmus considers a life’s work that thus far includes not only the groundbreaking research that won him a Nobel Prize but also six years as the director of the National Institutes of Health; his current position as the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and his important, continuing work as scientific adviser to President Obama. From this truly unique perspective, Varmus shares his experiences from the trenches of politicized battlegrounds ranging from budget fights to stem cell research, global health to science publishing.

Why are objectivity and reason characterized as male and subjectively and feeling as female? How does this characterization affect the goals and methods of scientific enquiry? This groundbreaking work explores the possibilities of a gender-free science and the conditions that could make such a possibility a reality. "Keller’s book opens up a whole new range of ideas for anyone who cares to think about the history of science, that is, the history of the modern world. . . Let us be glad to be in times when such a sparkling, innovative. . . book can be produced, a book to start all of us thinking in new directions.”--Ian Hacking, New Republic "A brilliant and sensitive undertaking that does credit not only to feminist scholarship but, in the end, to science as well.”--Barbara Ehrenreich, Mother Jones "This book represents the expression of a particular feminist perspective made all the more compelling by Keller’s evident commitment to and understanding of science. As a lively and important contribution to the scholarship of science, it will undoubtedly stimulate argument and controversy.”--Helen Longino, Texas Humanist "Provocative arguments, presented with authority.”-- Kirkus Reviews "Consistently thoughtful, provocative, and interconnected. . . A well-made book that will be useful in upper-level undergraduate and graduate women’s studies, philosophy, and history of science.”--E.C. Patterson, Choice "Written with grace and clarity, [this book] will stand as an important contribution to feminist theory, to the sociology of knowledge and to the continuing critique of the established scientific method.”--Lillian B. Rubin "A powerful book.”--Jessie Bernard

In Science and Survival, Barry Commoner announces that "the age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over." A massive electric power failure all over the Northeast, the admission of children to a St. Louis hospital 15 years after they had been exposed to radio-iodine from Nevada nuclear bomb tests, the disturbing news about DDT, and the potential menace of recombinant DNA - not to mention the threat of "nuclear winter" in the event of thermonuclear war, a prospect Commoner discussed years before most Americans even heard of it - led him to the conclusion that science, like the magic practiced by the legendary Sorcerer's Apprentice, was getting out of control. Therefore, scientists could no longer simply remain at their work; they had to go out and alert the nonscientists to the problems that their work was creating. "Science can reveal the depth of this crisis," the book concluded, "but only social action can resolve it."

From Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva to Luce Irigaray and Jean Baudrillard, the authors document the errors made by some postmodernists using science to bolster their arguments and theories. Fashionable Nonsense dispels the notion that scientific theories are mere "narratives" or social constructions, and explores the abilities and the limits of science to describe the conditions of existence. --from publisher description.

J. Robert Oppenheimer was one of the outstanding physicists of his generation. He was also an immensely gifted writer and speaker, who thought deeply about the way that scientific discoveries have changed the way people live and think. Displaying his subtlety of thought and expression as do few other documents, this book of his lectures discusses the moral and cultural implications of developments in modern physics. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.