World History Philosophy

When does a scientific discovery become accepted fact? Why have scientific facts become easy to deny? And what can we do about it? In The Workshop and the World, philosopher and science historian Robert P. Crease answers these questions by describing the origins of our scientific infrastructure - the “workshop” - and the role of 10 of the world’s greatest thinkers in shaping it. As today’s politicians and government officials increasingly accuse scientists of dishonesty, conspiracy, and even hoaxes, engaged citizens wonder how we got to this level of distrust....

What is embryonic stem cell research? Why is it so controversial? What is its relationship to human cloning? Events are moving so fast and biotechnology seems so complicated that many of us don't have an informed opinion about issues that are remaking the human future before our very eyes.

Pioneering oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer unravels the mystery of marine currents, uncovers the astonishing story of flotsam, and changes the world's view of trash, the ocean, and our global environment. Curtis Ebbesmeyer is no ordinary scientist. He's been a consulting oceanographer for multinational firms and a lead scientist on international research expeditions, but he's never held a conventional academic appointment.

Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science and one of the leading young environmental journalists and bloggers working today, immerses listeners in the world of those who study hurricanes. What was once an arcane branch of meteorology (itself an arcane science) has become embroiled in one of the most politicized and hotly contested debates in American science: whether or not the recent hurricane disasters, culminating in Katrina, are connected to global warming.

From the glaciers of the Alps to the towering cumulonimbus clouds of the Caribbean and the unexpectedly chaotic flows of the North Atlantic, Waters of the World is a tour through 150 years of the history of a significant but underappreciated idea: that the Earth has a global climate system made up of interconnected parts, constantly changing on all scales of both time and space. A prerequisite for the discovery of global warming and climate change, this idea was forged by scientists studying water in its myriad forms. This is their story.

With a foreword by Athene Donald, Professor of Experimental Physics, University of Cambridge and Master of Churchill College. Ten Women Who Changed Science tells the moving stories of the physicists, biologists, chemists, astronomers and doctors who helped to shape our world with their extraordinary breakthroughs and inventions, and outlines their remarkable achievements. These scientists overcame significant obstacles, often simply because they were women. Their science and their lives were driven by personal tragedies and shaped by seismic world events.

It was a time of bold new technology, historic moments, and international jousting on the final frontier. But it was also a time of human drama, of moments less public but no less dramatic in the lives of those who made the golden age of space flight happen. These are the moments and the lives that Into That Silent Sea captures, a book that tells the intimate stories of the men and women, American and Russian, who made the space race their own and gave the era its compelling character.

Can we ever truly comprehend the universe before we fully understand consciousness and the wonders, and limits, of the mind? Ulf Danielsson, an acclaimed theoretical physicist who has dedicated his career to probing the deepest mysteries of nature, thinks not. As he dismantles the arguments of esteemed mathematicians and scientists, who would substitute their mathematical models for reality and equate the mind to a computer, he makes a lucid and passionate case that it is nature, full of beauty and meaning, which must compel us.

From the author's monthly Scientific American columns. An eclectic, inspiring collection exploring a broad range of scientific thought from best-selling author and celebrated skeptic Michael Shermer.

The Devil Wins uncovers the complicated history of lying from the early days of the Catholic Church to the Enlightenment, revealing the diversity of attitudes about lying by considering the question from the perspectives of five representative voices - the Devil, God, theologians, courtiers, and women.

Ever since we started huddling together in communities, the story of human history has been inextricably entwined with the story of microbes. They have evolved and spread amongst us, shaping our culture through infection, disease, and pandemic. At the same time, our changing human culture has itself influenced the evolutionary path of microbes. Dorothy H. Crawford here shows that one cannot be truly understood without the other. Beginning with a dramatic account of the SARS pandemic at the start of the 21st century, she takes us back in time to follow the interlinked history of microbes and man....

By the end of World War I, Albert Einstein had become the face of the new science of theoretical physics and had made some powerful enemies. One of those enemies, Nobel Prize winner Philipp Lenard, spent a career trying to discredit him. Their story of conflict, pitting Germany's most widely celebrated Jew against the Nazi scientist who was to become Hitler's chief advisor on physics, had an impact far exceeding what the scientific community felt at the time.

Civilization and Its Enemies is an extraordinary tour de force by America's reigning philosopher of 9/11, Lee Harris. In it, Harris focuses on the next great conflict: the war between the civilized world and the international terrorists who wish to destroy it.

Higher education is at an impasse. Black Lives Matter and #MeToo show that racism and sexism remain pervasive on campus, while student and faculty movements fight to reverse increased tuition, student debt, corporatization, and adjunctification. Commentators typically frame these issues as crises for an otherwise optimal mode of intellectual and professional development. Eli Meyerhoff instead sees this impasse as inherent to universities. The predominant mode of study, education, must be deromanticized in order to recognize it as a colonial-capitalist institution.

Today, we take for granted that a telescope allows us to see galaxies millions of light years away. But before its invention, people used nothing more than their naked eye to fathom what took place in the visible sky. So how did four men in the 1500s - of different nationality, age, religion, and class - collaborate to discover that the Earth revolved around the Sun? With this radical discovery that went against the Church, they created our contemporary world. Heaven on Earth is an intimate examination of this scientific family.

If you're a person who wants to know the secrets of humankind, nature, and evolution, then you're about to discover how to increase sensitivity to the problems of our planet right now! If you're serious about increase sensitivity to the problems of our planet and you really want to know the answers to these great life's questions, then you need to get a copy of A World without Humans: Pros & Cons of Our Eventual Extinction right now.

This book looks over the greatest battle of human history, the fight between rationalism and the oppressive regimes society constantly imposes on free thinkers. From ancient Greece through to the early 1900s. The author thought that rationalism had won a victory, but the modern listener will feel a creeping dread as parallels with movements in today's society are revealed.

After the Berlin Wall fell, a group of Christian colleges in the US seized the opportunity to begin strategic faculty and student exchanges with universities inside the Soviet Union. They could not have foreseen the doors that would open next. During a 1990 visit to Russia, John Bernbaum and his colleagues received a surprising invitation from a Russian government official: come help build a faith-based university in Moscow. Thus, after 70 years of fierce religious persecution under communism, the Russian-American Christian University (RACU) was born.

For centuries, electricity was seen as little more than a curious property of certain substances that sparked when rubbed. Then, in the 1790s, Alessandro Volta began the scientific investigation that ignited an explosion of knowledge and invention. The force that once seemed inconsequential was revealed to be responsible for everything from the structure of the atom to the functioning of our brains. In harnessing its power, we have created a world of wonders—complete with roller coasters and radar, computer networks and psychopharmaceuticals.

One night in 1661, Nicholas Fouquet, a superintendent under Louis XIV, was arrested. His crime was peculiar: He had dared to construct a grand geometrical garden. In doing so, he violated an irrefutable hierarchy: that geometry, in its perfection, was a testament to divine right. The elegant, symmetrical designs were more than just ornament; they were proofs of incontestable certainty, and thus the authority to rule. But how did the French royalty fall in love with this peculiar landscape design? Wherefore Versailles?