検索キーワード： 歴史・哲学

At stake in the "Science Wars" that have raged in academe and in the media is nothing less than the standing of science in our culture. One side argues that science is a "social construct," that it does not discover facts about the world, but rather constructs artifacts disguised as objective truths. This view threatens the authority of science and rejects science's claims to objectivity, rationality, and disinterested inquiry. Drawing Out Leviathan examines this argument in the light of some major debates about dinosaurs.

Brought to you by Penguin. The secret life of gases - the strange, elusive and fascinating substances that shape our world, from the author of the best-selling, prize-winning Stuff Matters Why are most gases invisible, odourless and tasteless? Why do some poison us and others make us laugh? And...

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, North American and European governments generously funded the discoveries of such famous paleontologists and geologists as Henry de la Beche, William Buckland, Richard Owen, Thomas Hawkins, Edward Drinker Cope, O. C. Marsh, and Charles W. Gilmore. In this book, Jane Davidson explores the motivation behind this rush to fund exploration, arguing that eagerness to discover strategic resources like coal deposits was further fueled by patrons who had a genuine passion for paleontology and the fascinating creatures that were being unearthed.

En este manual, René busca desarrollar en el comunicador la capacidad de asombrar al público y de transmitir la emoción de descubrir hechos extraordinarios de la ciencia y la tecnología. El autor busca fortalecer el papel clave en esta época de crisis de los periodistas de ciencia, al promover el pensamiento crítico y fundamenta- do de la sociedad.

In this book, two distinguished scientists tackle common misconceptions about race, human biology, and racism. Using an accessible question-and-answer format, Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Alan H. Goodman explain the differences between social and biological notions of race. Although there are many meaningful human genetic variations, they do not map onto socially constructed racial categories. Drawing on evidence from both natural and social science, Graves and Goodman dismantle the malignant myth of gene-based racial difference.

Bloomsbury presents Breaking the Chains of Gravity written and read by Amy Shira Teitel. The incredible story of spaceflight before the establishment of NASA. NASA’s history is a familiar story, one that typically peaks with Neil Armstrong taking his small step on the Moon in 1969. But...

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist explains what happened at the very beginning of the universe, and how we know “Science writing at its best.” ―New York Review of Books Our universe has been growing for nearly fourteen billion years. But almost everything about it can be traced back to what...

Humanly Possible is a wide-ranging, personal, thought-provoking and entertaining journey through the battle of ideas over some 700 years of history—mostly, but not exclusively, in Europe. Through a mixture of biography and philosophy, Bakewell seeks to understand what humanism is, why it has continued to flourish despite opposition from fanatics, mystics, tyrants and cultural pessimists of all kinds, and exactly why we should value and defend it in the 21st century.

Natalie Angier knows all that scientists know—and sometimes more—about the power of symmetry in sexual relations, about the brutal courting habits of dolphins, about the grand deceit of orchids, about the impact of female and male preferences on evolution. She knows how scientists go about their work, and she describes their ways, their visions, and their arguments. Perhaps most poignantly, she understands the complexities and the sad necessity of death.

The wonders of the universe never seemed so close. Who named the planets? Why isn't Pluto a planet? And what's the future of space? From ancient cave paintings to flying drones on Mars, humanity's relationship with the skies has changed dramatically. Gazing at the Night Sky looks back at over 5,000 years of history, from ancient Mesopotamian astronomers to the next horizons in space travel.

Daniel P. Todes provides concise introduction to the life and science of the great Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov. Beyond a basic biography, Todes devotes particular attention to Pavlov's Nobel Prize-winning research on digestion and his iconic studies of conditional reflexes and higher nervous activity, as well as his experiments with dogs. Todes shows that Pavlov was not a behaviorist, did not use a bell, and was uninterested in training dogs. The Russian scientist sought to explain not merely external behaviors, but the emotional and intellectual life of animals and humans. 

Drawing on conversations with hundreds of the world’s top scientists and on her own work as a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer for the New York Times, Natalie Angier creates a thoroughly entertaining guide to scientific literacy. The Canon is a vital book for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time—from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it’s for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or what electricity is.

Brought to you by Penguin. Humans did not make history - we played host. This humbling and revelatory book shows how infectious disease has shaped humanity at every stage, from the first success of Homo sapiens over the equally intelligent Neanderthals to the fall of Rome and the rise of Islam...

The early history of Earth covers such vast stretches of time that years, centuries, and even millennia become virtually meaningless. Instead, paleontologists and scientists who study geochronology divide time into periods and eras. What humans commonly refer to as the “Ice Age” is actually a series of fluctuating climate events that have occurred throughout the planet’s history. These ongoing historical phenomena are difficult to conceptualize because of both the time frame involved and the natural process by which they cyclically unfold.

Look around. Clearly, we humans are radically different from the other creatures on this planet. But why? Where are the Bronze Age beavers? The Iron Age iguanas? Byron Reese argues that we owe our special status to our ability to imagine the future and recall the past, escaping the perpetual present that all other living creatures are trapped in. Envisioning human history as the development of a societal superorganism he names Agora, Reese shows us how this escape enabled us to share knowledge on an unprecedented scale, and predict—and eventually master—the future.

The ABC of Relativity is still considered today, nearly 90 years after its first appearance, as an authoritative and accessible introduction to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. While there's nothing particularly easy about understanding the Theory of Relativity, many have found that Russell's explanation is easier to understand than Einstein's own writings on the topic. Russell covers topics such as time dilation and curved space-time, using non-scientific examples of train travel and aerial views of the terrain.

Over two millennia ago, a Greek philosopher had a number of wondrous insights that paved the way to cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology, and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. In this elegant work, acclaimed physicist Carlo Rovelli brings to light the importance of Anaximander's overlooked legacy to modern science. He examines Anaximander as a scientist interested in shedding light on the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in his rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again.

Vitamin C begins with scurvy, which afflicted Europe for four hundred years and killed millions. The reasons that a disease whose cure was known from the outset persisted over that time are at once baffling and familiar, and these trials eventually lead to invention of the science of epidemiology. Author Stephen M. Sagar MD then chronicles the discovery of vitamins at the beginning of the twentieth century, a story that encapsulates the rise of a scientific approach to nutrition but with surprising twists and turns.

From the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, an enlightening and personal journey into the practice of groundbreaking science “[Giorgio Parisi is] an extraordinary scientist.” —Carlo Rovelli With In a Flight of Starlings, celebrated physicist Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox...

There may never be another era of science like the first half of the twentieth century, when many of the most important physicists ever to live—Marie Curie, Max Planck, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Ernst Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, and others—came together to uncover the quantum world: a concept so outrageous and shocking, so contrary to traditional physics, that its own founders rebelled against it until the equations held up and fundamentally changed our understanding of reality. Tobias Hürter takes us back to this uniquely momentous and harrowing time.