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Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief
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Apr 15, 2013 08:54AM
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Kathy, good addition. There is a technology thread ~ https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...You have to scroll way down on the home page, may be why you did not find it.
For the most part, except when it is not. :-) There are a lot of threads but once you get past the priority threads then yes they are alphabetic, and then the archived threads.
Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception
by Claudia Hammond (no photo)Synopsis:
Drawing on the latest research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and biology, plus original research, writer and broadcaster Claudia Hammond delves into the mysteries of time perception and offers advice for how to better manage our own.
Why does life speed up as we get older? Why does the clock in your head sometimes move at a different speed from the one on the wall? Have you ever tried to spend a day without looking at a clock or checking your watch? It's almost impossible. Time rules our lives, but how much do we understand it? And is it possible to retrain our brains and improve our relationship with it?
Drawing on the latest research from the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and biology, and using original research on the way memory shapes our understanding of time, the acclaimed writer and BBC broadcaster Claudia Hammond delves into the mysteries of time perception.
Along the way, Claudia introduces us to an extraordinary array of characters willing to go to great length in the interests of research, including the French speleologist Michel Siffre, who spends two months in an ice cave in complete darkness. We meet one group of volunteers who steer themselves towards the edge of a stairwell, blindfolded, and another who are strapped into a harness and dropped off the edge of a building.
Time Warped is an absorbing and interactive guide to one of the strongest, most inescapable forces in our lives, which ultimately teaches us how we can improve our own relationship with time. Claudia Hammond offers insight into how to manage our time more efficiently, speed time up and slow it down at will, plan for the future with more accuracy, and, ultimately, use the warping of time to our own advantage.
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Kathy wrote: "An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist
by 
Richard DawkinsSynopsis:
With the 2006 p..."
Added to my list.
I recently read another one of his books and would highly recommend it. It lays out as simply as possible (although at its core it isn't simple) the evidence for evolution. I learned more about it from this book than in years of biology classes. (It is my first time posting a recommendation so please let me know if I got the format wrong.)
by
Richard DawkinsSynopsis:
Charles Darwin’s masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, shook society to its core on publication in 1859. Darwin was only too aware of the storm his theory of evolution would provoke but he would surely have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the controversy still raging a century and a half later. Evolution is accepted as scientific fact by all reputable scientists and indeed theologians, yet millions of people continue to question its veracity.
In The Greatest Show on Earth Richard Dawkins takes on creationists, including followers of ‘Intelligent Design’ and all those who question the fact of evolution through natural selection. Like a detective arriving on the scene of a crime, he sifts through fascinating layers of scientific facts and disciplines to build a cast-iron case: from the living examples of natural selection in birds and insects; the ‘time clocks’ of trees and radioactive dating that calibrate a timescale for evolution; the fossil record and the traces of our earliest ancestors; to confirmation from molecular biology and genetics. All of this, and much more, bears witness to the truth of evolution.
The Greatest Show on Earth comes at a critical time: systematic opposition to the fact of evolution is now flourishing as never before, especially in America. In Britain and elsewhere in the world, teachers witness insidious attempts to undermine the status of science in their classrooms. Richard Dawkins provides unequivocal evidence that boldly and comprehensively rebuts such nonsense. At the same time he shares with us his palpable love of the natural world and the essential role that science plays in its interpretation. Written with elegance, wit and passion, it is hard-hitting, absorbing and totally convincing.
Alicja wrote: "I recently read another one of his books and would highly recommend it. It lays out as simply as possible (although at its core it isn't simple) the evidence for evolution. I learned more about it ..."Dawkins, when he is writing about science, is one of the best there is.
Kathy wrote: "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
by 
Thomas S. KuhnSynopsis:
A good book ma..."
I love history and philosophy of science, and this book is seminal. Not sure if I will buy the anniversary edition though.
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Release date: September 25, 2014
The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science
by Armand Marie Leroi (no photo)Synopsis:
The philosophical classics of Aristotle loom large over the history of Western thought, but the subject he most loved was biology. He wrote vast volumes about animals. He described them, classified them, told us where and how they live and how they develop in the womb or in the egg. He founded a science. It can even be said
that he founded science itself.
In The Lagoon acclaimed biologist Armand Marie Leroi recovers Aristotle’s science. He revisits Aristotle’s writings and the places where he worked. He goes to the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos to see the creatures that Aristotle saw, where he saw them. He explores Aristotle’s observations, his deep ideas, his inspired guesses—and the things he got wildly wrong. He shows how Aristotle’s science is deeply intertwined with his philosophical system and reveals that he was not only the first biologist, but also one of the greatest.
The Lagoon both a travelogue and a study of the origins of science. And it shows how a philosopher who lived almost two millennia ago still has so much to teach us today.
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Release date: February 10, 2015
To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science
by
Steven WeinbergSynopsis:
A masterful commentary on the history of science from the Greeks to modern times, by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg--a thought-provoking and important book by one of the most distinguished scientists and intellectuals of our time.
In this rich, irreverent, and compelling history, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg takes us across centuries from ancient Miletus to medieval Baghdad and Oxford, from Plato's Academy and the Museum of Alexandria to the cathedral school of Chartres and the Royal Society of London. He shows that the scientists of ancient and medieval times not only did not understand what we understand about the world--they did not understand what there is to understand, or how to understand it. Yet over the centuries, through the struggle to solve such mysteries as the curious backward movement of the planets and the rise and fall of the tides, the modern discipline of science eventually emerged. Along the way, Weinberg examines historic clashes and collaborations between science and the competing spheres of religion, technology, poetry, mathematics, and philosophy.
An illuminating exploration of the way we consider and analyze the world around us, To Explain the World is a sweeping, ambitious account of how difficult it was to discover the goals and methods of modern science, and the impact of this discovery on human knowledge and development.
There's a cloak of magic and religious mystique around unanswered scientific processes. Once the theories are grounded that awe disappears and it becomes mundane 'generally accepted principles.' I wonder how writers in the future will look back at current SciFi once we understand time travel. The Discovery of Modern Science sounds like an interesting read.
message 67:
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Jerome, Assisting Moderator - Upcoming Books and Releases
(last edited Aug 27, 2019 04:47PM)
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Release date: May 11, 2015
The Story of Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory
by
Susan Wise BauerSynopsis:
Far too often, issues based on science are decided by voters and politicians who have received their science secondhand. The Story of Science guides us back to the original texts that have changed the way we think about our world, our cosmos, and ourselves.
Whether referenced individually or read together as the narrative of Western scientific development, the book s twenty-eight succinct chapters lead readers from the first science texts by Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle through twentieth-century classics in biology, physics, and cosmology, including works by Einstein, Schrodinger, and Dawkins. Each chapter recommends one or more classic books and provides an entertaining account of the discovery, a vivid sketch of the scientist-writer, and a clear explanation of any technical issues. The Story of Science reveals science to be a human pursuit an essential, often deeply personal, sometimes flawed, frequently brilliant way of understanding the world.
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Hi Barbara - it sounds interesting - remember to add the book cover, author's photo and the author's link.
by
Steven Weinberg
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Release date: September 15, 2015
The Invention of Science: The Scientific Revolution from 1500 to 1750
by David Wootton (no photo)Synopsis:
A companion to such acclaimed works as The Age of Wonder, A Clockwork Universe, and Darwin’s Ghosts, a groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world
We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today, science and its practitioners have come under political attack. In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history.
The Invention of Science goes back five hundred years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently, but came to intersect and create a new world view. Here are the brilliant iconoclasts—Galileo, Copernicus, Brahe, Newton and many more curious minds from across Europe—whose studies of the natural world challenged centuries of religious orthodoxy and ingrained superstition.
From gunpowder technology, the discovery of the new world, movable type printing, perspective painting, and the telescope to the practice of conducting experiments, the laws of nature, and the concept of the fact, Wotton shows how these discoveries codified into a social construct and a system of knowledge ideas of truth, knowledge, progress. Ultimately, he makes clear the link between scientific discovery and the rise of industrialization—and the birth of the modern world we know
Woha! Great recommendations! Thanks a lot Jerome.
The Diamond MakersAuthor Synopsis:
Since time immemorial, we have treasured diamonds for their exquisite beauty and unrivaled hardness. Yet, most of the earth's diamonds lie deep underground and totally unaccessible to us--if only we knew how to fabricate them! In The Diamond Makers Robert Hazen vividly recounts the very human desire to exceed nature and create a synthetic diamond. Spanning centuries of ground-breaking science, instances of bitter rivalry, cases of outright fraud and self-delusion, Hazen blends drama and science to reveal the extraordinary technological advances and devastating failures of the diamond industry. Along the way, readers will be introduced to the brilliant, often eccentric and controversial, pioneers of high-pressure research who have harnessed crushing pressures and scorching temperatures to transform almost any carbon-rich material, from road tar to peanut butter, into the most prized of all gems. Robert M. Hazen is the author of fifteen books, including the bestseller, Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy, which he wrote with James Trefil. Dr. Hazen has won numerous awards for his research and scientific writing.
I had a great appreciation for this book, as I completed my masters degree using similar techniques to make diamonds.
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However - the citation needs the book cover, the author's photo if available and the author's link. In the case of your book there is no author's photo on goodreads so we place the words no photo in parentheses after the author's link
by Robert Hazen (no photo)Since your synopsis also mentions other books they must be cited as well as the additional author (in the case of Trefil - he is not cited in goodreads at all)
by Robert Hazen (no photo)
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by David Knight (no photo)Synopsis:
In 1492 Columbus set out across the Atlantic; in 1776 American colonists declared their independence. Between these two events old authorities collapsed—Luther’s Reformation divided churches, and various discoveries revealed the ignorance of the ancient Greeks and Romans. A new, empirical worldview had arrived, focusing now on observation, experiment, and mathematical reasoning.
This engaging book takes us along on the great voyage of discovery that ushered in the modern age. David Knight, a distinguished historian of science, locates the Scientific Revolution in the great era of global oceanic voyages, which became both a spur to and a metaphor for scientific discovery. He introduces the well-known heroes of the story (Galileo, Newton, Linnaeus) as well as lesser-recognized officers of scientific societies, printers and booksellers who turned scientific discovery into public knowledge, and editors who invented the scientific journal. Knight looks at a striking array of topics, from better maps to more accurate clocks, from a boom in printing to medical advancements. He portrays science and religion as engaged with each other rather than in constant conflict; in fact, science was often perceived as a way to uncover and celebrate God’s mysteries and laws. Populated with interesting characters, enriched with fascinating anecdotes, and built upon an acute understanding of the era, this book tells a story as thrilling as any in human history.
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Isaac Newton
by
James GleickSynopsis:
Isaac Newton was born in a stone farmhouse in 1642, fatherless and unwanted by his mother. When he died in London in 1727 he was so renowned he was given a state funeral—an unheard-of honor for a subject whose achievements were in the realm of the intellect. During the years he was an irascible presence at Trinity College, Cambridge, Newton imagined properties of nature and gave them names—mass, gravity, velocity—things our science now takes for granted. Inspired by Aristotle, spurred on by Galileo’s discoveries and the philosophy of Descartes, Newton grasped the intangible and dared to take its measure, a leap of the mind unparalleled in his generation.
James Gleick, one of the most acclaimed science writers of his generation, brings the reader into Newton’s reclusive life and provides startlingly clear explanations of the concepts that changed forever our perception of bodies, rest, and motion. Ideas so basic to the twenty-first century we literally take them for granted.
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Release date: July 28, 2016
The Convergence: The Big History of Science
by
Peter WatsonSynopsis:
Convergence is a history of modern science with an original and significant twist. Various scientific disciplines, despite their very different beginnings, and disparate areas of interest have been coming together over the past 150 years, converging and coalescing, to identify one extraordinary master narrative, one overwhelming interlocking coherent story: the history of the universe. Intimate connections between physics and chemistry have been revealed as have the links between quantum chemistry and molecular biology. Astronomy has been augmented by particle physics, psychology has been increasingly aligned with physics, with chemistry and even with economics. Genetics has been harmonised with linguistics, botany with archaeology, climatology with myth. This is a simple insight but one with profound consequences.
Convergence is, as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg has put it, 'The deepest thing about the universe.' This book does not, however, tell the story by beginning at the beginning and ending at the end. It is much more revealing, more convincing, and altogether more thrilling to tell the story as it emerged, as it began to fall into place, piece by piece, converging tentatively at first, but then with increasing speed, vigour and confidence. The overlaps and interdependence of the sciences, the emerging order that they are gradually uncovering, is without question the most enthralling aspect of twenty-first-century science.
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
by Randall Munroe (no photo)Synopsis:
Randall Munroe left NASA in 2005 to start up his hugely popular site XKCD 'a web comic of romance, sarcasm, math and language' which offers a witty take on the world of science and geeks. It now has 600,000 to a million page hits daily. Every now and then, Munroe would get emails asking him to arbitrate a science debate. 'My friend and I were arguing about what would happen if a bullet got struck by lightning, and we agreed that you should resolve it . . . ' He liked these questions so much that he started up What If.
If your cells suddenly lost the power to divide, how long would you survive?
How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm?
If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce?
What if everyone only had one soulmate?
When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British empire?
How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?
What would happen if the moon went away?
In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read.
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by David Wootton (no photo)Synopsis:
We live in a world made by science. How and when did this happen? This book tells the story of the extraordinary intellectual and cultural revolution that gave birth to modern science, and mounts a major challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy of its history.
Before 1492 it was assumed that all significant knowledge was already available; there was no concept of progress; people looked for understanding to the past not the future.
This book argues that the discovery of America demonstrated that new knowledge was possible: indeed it introduced the very concept of 'discovery', and opened the way to the invention of science.
The first crucial discovery was Tycho Brahe's nova of 1572: proof that there could be change in the heavens. The telescope (1610) rendered the old astronomy obsolete. Torricelli's experiment with the vacuum (1643) led directly to the triumph of the experimental method in the Royal Society of Boyle and Newton.
By 1750 Newtonianism was being celebrated throughout Europe.
The new science did not consist simply of new discoveries, or new methods. It relied on a new understanding of what knowledge might be, and with this came a new language: discovery, progress, facts, experiments, hypotheses, theories, laws of nature - almost all these terms existed before 1492, but their meanings were radically transformed so they became tools with which to think scientifically.
We all now speak this language of science, which was invented during the Scientific Revolution.
The new culture had its martyrs (Bruno, Galileo), its heroes (Kepler, Boyle), its propagandists (Voltaire, Diderot), and its patient labourers (Gilbert, Hooke).
It led to a new rationalism, killing off alchemy, astrology, and belief in witchcraft.
It led to the invention of the steam engine and to the first Industrial Revolution.
David Wootton's landmark book changes our understanding of how this great transformation came about, and of what science is.
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Death of the 'grandfather of climate science'
By Matt McGrath - Environment correspondent
Wallace Broecker, the US climate scientist who helped popularise the term "global warming" has died in New York at the age of 87.
Wallace Broecker, the US climate scientist who helped popularise the term "global warming" has died in New York at the age of 87.
Prof Broecker was among the first to connect emissions of CO2 to rising temperatures back in the 1970s.
He also studied the ocean conveyor belt, linking oceanography to climate change.
Scientists the world over have paid tribute, calling Prof Broecker a "genius and pioneer".
Remainder of article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-envi...
Source: BBC News
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Release date: November 9, 2021
Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science
by James Poskett (no photo)Synopsis:
This is the history of science like it has never been told before, uncovering its unsung heroes and revealing that the most important scientific breakthroughs have come from the exchange of ideas from different cultures around the world.
When we think about the origins of modern science we usually begin in Europe. We remember the great minds of Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. But the history of science is not, and has never been, a uniquely European endeavor. Copernicus relied on mathematical techniques that came from Arabic and Persian texts. Newton’s laws of motion used astronomical observations made in India and Africa. When Darwin was writing On the Origin of Species, he consulted a sixteenth-century Chinese encyclopedia. And when Einstein studied quantum mechanics, he was inspired by the young Bengali physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose. In this ambitious and revisionist history, James Poskett recasts the history of science, uncovering the vital contributions that scientists in Africa, America, Asia, and the Pacific have made to this global story.
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The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong (other topics)Horizons: The Global Origins of Modern Science (other topics)
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World (other topics)
The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (other topics)
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Paul A. Offit (other topics)James Poskett (other topics)
Daniel Yergin (other topics)
David Wootton (other topics)
Randall Munroe (other topics)
More...
