検索キーワード： 歴史・哲学

The coal-mining town of Fushun in China’s Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit. First excavated in the early twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw over the ensuing decades, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun’s purportedly “inexhaustible” carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality.

As we navigate through life we instinctively model time as having a flowing present that divides a fixed past from open future. This model develops in childhood and is deeply saturated within our language, thought, and behavior, affecting our conceptions of the universe, freedom, and the self. Yet as central as it is to our lives, physics seems to have no room for this flowing present. What Makes Time Special? demonstrates this claim in detail and then turns to two novel positive tasks.

An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food—and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of...

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the...

An all-encompassing guide to skeptical thinking from podcast host and academic neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine Steven Novella and his SGU co-hosts, which Richard Wiseman calls "the perfect primer for anyone who wants to separate fact from fiction." It is intimidating to realize...

Falecido no Rio de Janeiro em 1917, o filósofo cearense Farias Brito é reconhecido no Brasil e no exterior pela excelência de sua obra. Extraídos do livro "A base física do espírito", os textos aqui reunidos abordam as então novas tentativas de localização das funções psíquicas, cunhando-se o termo "frenologia".

Falecido no Rio de Janeiro em 1917, o filósofo cearense Farias Brito é reconhecido no Brasil e no exterior pela excelência de sua obra. Extraídos do livro "A base física do espírito", os textos aqui reunidos abordam o papel dos filósofos Tetens, Weber e Fechner para o desenvolvimento da escola experimental de Psicologia.

Four thousand years ago, someone in Mohenjo-Daro carved a tiny stone seal. On it: a unicorn with muscles so finely rendered you can count the tendons, and above it, a string of mysterious signs that no one has been able to read since the city fell silent. That seal survived earthquakes, floods, and the full weight of four millennia. It looks like it was made yesterday morning. For a century, scholars tried to crack the Indus script the way you crack a code—by finding the language hidden inside. They all failed. Every last one.

Bestselling author and acclaimed physicist Lawrence Krauss offers a paradigm-shifting view of how everything that exists came to be in the first place. “Where did the universe come from? What was there before it? What will the future bring? And finally, why is there something rather than...

Neste livro de estreia, a cientista brasileira Rossana Soletti apresenta os avanços científicos e os personagens que ajudaram a moldar nosso entendimento sobre a reprodução humana. Escritora de mão cheia, e na melhor tradição da divulgação científica, Soletti oferece um texto saboroso que explora desde os conceitos clássicos sobre de onde viemos até as mais recentes pesquisas a respeito do desenvolvimento embrionário e fetal.

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. 'A remarkable achievement' - Stephen Fry In 2015 #thedress captured the world's imagination. Was the dress in the picture white and gold or blue and black? It inspired the author to ask: if people in the same time and place can see the same thing...

Durante siglos hemos creído saber distinguir lo vivo de lo inerte. Un animal está vivo, una máquina no. Pero esa frontera empieza a desdibujarse. La inteligencia artificial, la biología sintética, la exploración del universo y los avances científicos nos están empujando hacia un territorio desconocido: uno en el que las máquinas aprenden, los sistemas evolucionan y la vida podría no ser exclusiva de lo biológico.

In her career as a science reporter, Nell Greenfieldboyce has reported from inside a space shuttle, the bottom of a coal mine, and the control room of a particle collider; she's presented news on the color of dinosaur eggs, ice worms that live on mountaintop glaciers, and signs of life on Venus. In this, her debut book, she delivers a wholly original collection of powerful, emotionally raw, and unforgettable personal essays that probe the places where science touches our lives most intimately.

For much of recorded history, people considered the heart to be the most important organ in the body. In cultures around the world, the heart—not the brain—was believed to be the location of intelligence, memory, emotion, and the soul. Over time, views on the purpose of the heart have transformed. Modern medicine and science dismissed what was once the king of the organs as a mere blood pump subservient to the brain, yet the heart remains a potent symbol of love and health and an important part of our cultural iconography.

A vibrant account of how measurement has invisibly shaped our world, from ancient civilizations to the modern day.

Control is a book about what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions, revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.

"This engaging, conversational book begs to be read aloud, and who better than its author?... Tyson’s warmth and erudition make him a superb narrator of this excellent, thought-provoking book."- Library Journal "Like a spaceship traveling the stars, Tyson's voice flows smoothly as he delivers...

How have our emotions shaped the course of human history? And how have our experience and understanding of emotions evolved with us? We humans like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, who, as a species, have relied on calculation and intellect to survive. But many of the most important...

Aubrey Clayton traces the history of how statistics went astray, beginning with the groundbreaking work of the 17th-century mathematician Jacob Bernoulli and winding through gambling, astronomy, and genetics. Clayton recounts the feuds among rival schools of statistics, exploring the surprisingly human problems that gave rise to the discipline and the all-too-human shortcomings that derailed it.

The periodic table is one of the most potent icons in science. It lies at the core of chemistry and embodies the most fundamental principles of the field. The one definitive text on the development of the periodic table by van Spronsen (1969), has been out of print for a considerable time. The present book provides a successor to van Spronsen, but goes further in giving an evaluation of the extent to which modern physics has, or has not, explained the periodic system. The book is written in a lively style to appeal to experts and interested lay-persons alike.