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History & Philosophy |
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Albertus
Seba Cabinet of Natural Curiosities
by Irmgard Musch
Albertus Seba's "Cabinet of Curiosities" is one of the 18th century's
greatest natural history achievements and remains one of the most prized
natural history books of all time. Though it was common for men of his
profession to collect natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based
pharmacist Albertus Seba (1665-1736) had a passion that led him far beyond
the call of duty. His amazing, unprecedented collection of animals, plants
and insects from all around the world gained international fame during
his lifetime. In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned illustrations
of each and every specimen and arranged the publication of a four-volume
catalog detailing his entire collection-from strange and exotic plants
to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, insects, butterflies and
more, as well as fantastic beasts, such as a hydra and a dragon. Seba's
scenic illustrations, often mixing plants and animals in a single plate,
were unusual even for the time. Many of the stranger and more peculiar
creatures from Seba's collection, some of which are now extinct, were as
curious to those in Seba's day as they are to us now. The Publisher
Hardcover:
TASCHEN America Llc; ISBN: 3822816000; (November 2001)
Disturbing
the Universe
by Freeman J. Dyson
Book Description: The classic intellectual autobiography of
a great theoretical physicist Spanning the years from World War II, when
he was a civilian statistician in the operations research section of the
Royal Air Force Bomber Command, through his studies with Hans Bethe at
Cornell University, his early friendship with Richard Feynman, and his
postgraduate work with J. Robert Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson has composed
an autobiography unlike any other. Dyson evocatively conveys the thrill
of a deep engagement with the world-be it as scientist, citizen, student,
or parent. Detailing a unique career not limited to his groundbreaking
work in physics, Dyson discusses his interest in minimizing loss of life
in war, in disarmament, and even in thought experiments on the expansion
of our frontiers into the galaxies.
Paperback from HarperCollins
Book Published: 08 May, 2001 |
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The
Next Fifty Years : Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century
by John Brockman (Editor)
(Paperback - May 2002)
Tuxedo
Park : A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed
the Course of World War II
by Jennet Conant
This must have been an extremely difficult book to write. Its subject,
Alfred Loomis, never gave interviews during his lifetime and destroyed
all his papers before his death. "Few men of Loomis' prominence and achievement
have gone to greater lengths to foil history," writes author Jennet Conant.
Had he not done these things, his name would be better known--and this
probably wouldn't be the first biography about him. So who was Alfred Loomis?
"He was too complex to categorize--financier, philanthropist, society figure,
physicist, inventor, amateur, dilettante--a contradiction in terms," writes
Conant. Loomis established a private laboratory in New York and hired scientists
whose work in the 1930s wound up making possible both the radar and the
atomic bomb. These developments were essential to Allied victory in the
Second World War. Conant is perhaps the only person who could have pierced
Loomis's obsessive secrecy and written this book; she grew up with Loomis's
children and other members of his family. Her grandfather, Harvard president
James Bryant Conant, was one of Loomis's scientists. Tuxedo Park is an
important book about the development of military technology in the United
States; admirers of The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes and
similar titles won't want to miss it. --John Miller - Amazon.com
Hardcover: 330 pages
Simon & Schuster; ISBN: 0684872870; (May 2002)
It
Must Be Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science
by Graham Farmelo (Editor)
(Hardcover - February 2002)
Science
and Technology in World History : An Introduction
by James E. McClellan, Harold Dorn
Paperback: 424 pages
Johns Hopkins Univ Pr; ISBN: 0801858690; (April 1999)
Einstein, History, and Other Passions: The Rebellion Against Science
at the End of the Twentieth Century
by Gerald Holton
Listed under Albert Einstien
The
Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional,
and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge History of Science)
by Edward Grant
Book Description: Contrary to prevailing opinion, the roots
of modern science were planted in the ancient and medieval worlds long
before the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Indeed, that
revolution would have been inconceivable without the cumulative antecedent
efforts of three great civilizations: Greek, Islamic, and Latin. With the
scientific riches it derived by translation from Greco-Islamic sources
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Christian Latin civilization
of Western Europe began the last leg of the intellectual journey that culminated
in a scientific revolution that transformed the world. The factors that
produced this unique achievement are found in the way Christianity developed
in the West, and in the invention of the university in 1200. A reference
for historians of science or those interested in medieval history, this
volume illustrates the developments and discoveries that culminated in
the Scientific Revolution.
Paperback: 263 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.64 x
8.84 x 5.91
Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr (Pap Txt); (November 1996)
ISBN: 0521567629
Mauve:
How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World
by Simon Garfield
In 1856, while trying to synthesize artificial quinine, 18-year-old
chemistry student William Perkin instead produced a murky residue. Fifty
years later, he described the event: he "was about to throw a certain residue
away when I thought it might be interesting. The solution of it resulted
in a strangely beautiful color." Perkin had stumbled across the world's
first aniline dye, a color that became known as mauve.
"So what?" you might say. "A teenager invented a new color." As Simon
Garfield admirably points out in Mauve, the color really did change the
world. Before Perkin's discovery all the dyes and paints were colored by
roots, leaves, insects, or, in the case of purple, mollusks. As a result,
colors were inconsistent and unpredictably strong, often fading or washing
out. Perkin found a dye that would always produce a uniform shade--and
he pointed the way to other synthetic colors, thus revolutionizing the
world of both dyemaking and fashion. Mauve became all the rage. Queen Victoria
wore it to her daughter's wedding in 1858, and the highly influential Empress
Eugénie decided the color matched her eyes. Soon, the streets of
London erupted in what one wag called the "mauve measles."
Mauve had a much wider impact as well. By finding a commercial use for
his discovery--much to the dismay of his teacher, the great August Hofmann,
who believed there needed to be a separation between "pure" and "applied"
science--Perkin inspired others to follow in his footsteps: "Ten years
after Perkin's discovery of mauve, organic chemistry was perceived as being
exciting, profitable, and of great practical use." The influx of bright
young men all hoping to earn their fortunes through industrial applications
of chemistry later brought significant advances in the fields of medicine,
perfume, photography, and even explosives. Through it all, Garfield tells
his story in clever, witty prose, turning this odd little tale into a very
entertaining read. --Sunny Delaney - Amazon.com
Paperback: 242 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.60 x
8.20 x 5.48
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company; (May 2002)
ISBN: 0393323137 |
The
Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed
the World
by Ken Alder
The
Mismeasure of Man
by Stephen Jay Gould
How smart are you? If that question doesn't spark a dozen more questions
in your mind (like "What do you mean by 'smart,'" "How do I measure it,"
and "Who's asking?"), then The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould's masterful
demolition of the IQ industry, should be required reading. Gould's brilliant,
funny, engaging prose dissects the motivations behind those who would judge
intelligence, and hence worth, by cranial size, convolutions, or score
on extremely narrow tests. How did scientists decide that intelligence
was unipolar and quantifiable, and why did the standard keep changing over
time? Gould's answer is clear and simple: power maintains itself. European
men of the 19th century, even before Darwin, saw themselves as the pinnacle
of creation and sought to prove this assertion through hard measurement.
When one measure was found to place members of some "inferior" group such
as women or Southeast Asians over the supposedly rightful champions, it
would be discarded and replaced with a new, more comfortable measure. The
20th-century obsession with numbers led to the institutionalization of
IQ testing and subsequent assignment to work (and rewards) commensurate
with the score, shown by Gould to be not simply misguided--for surely intelligence
is multifactorial--but also regressive, creating a feedback loop rewarding
the rich and powerful. The revised edition includes a scathing critique
of Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve, taking them to task for rehashing
old arguments to exploit a new political wave of uncaring and belt tightening.
It might not make you any smarter, but The Mismeasure of Man will certainly
make you think. --Rob Lightner - Amazon.com
Paperback: ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.89 x 8.20 x 5.48
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company; (June 1996)
ISBN: 0393314251
Science
and Technology in World History: An Introduction
by James E. McClellan, Harold Dorn
Science Teaching: The Role of History and Philosophy of Science (Philosophy
of Education Research Library)
by Michael R. Matthews
Listed under Science Education
Time's
Arrow/Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time
(Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures)
by Stephen Jay Gould
Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science
(Cambridge History of Science Series)
by Jan Golinski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press; (May 1998)
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