検索キーワード： 歴史・哲学

Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time—fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them—and still living them—today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called "modern myths." But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Sherlock Holmes are doing the kind of cultural work that the ancient myths once did.

The term metaverse is suddenly everywhere, from debates over Fortnite to the pages of the New York Times to the speeches of Mark Zuckerberg, who proclaimed in June 2021 that “the overarching goal” of Facebook is to “bring the metaverse to life”. But what, exactly, is the metaverse? As pioneering theorist and venture capitalist Matthew Ball explains, it is the successor to the mobile internet that has defined the last two decades.

From the masters of storytelling-meets-science and co-authors of Quackery, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Written in the...

The perfect remedy for our culture of fake news, bad science, and propaganda. We have more scientific information at our fingertips today than ever before. And more disinformation too. Online, on television, and in print, science is often communicated through shorthand analogies and phrases that...

"Fascinating . . . Surprising entertainment, combining deep learning with dad jokes . . . [Schutt] is a natural teacher with an easy way with metaphor.”—The Wall Street Journal In this lively, unexpected look at the hearts of animals—from fish to bats to humans—American Museum of Natural...

Nel 1990, il telescopio spaziale più avanzato mai messo a punto venne lanciato con un inglorioso difetto di fabbricazione, grazie al quale anni dopo si riuscì a fare diagnosi più precoci di cancro al seno. Percival Lowell sbagliò alcuni calcoli sull'orbita di Urano, che però portarono alla scoperta di Plutone. Albert Michelson ed Edward Morley lavorarono anni per realizzare un apparato sperimentale che dimostrasse l'esistenza dell'etere luminifero: non lo trovarono, ma il loro esperimento pose le basi per la nascita della relatività.

Antoine Lavoisier reinvented chemistry, overthrowing the long-established principles of alchemy and inventing an entirely new terminology, one still in use by chemists. Madison Smartt Bell’s enthralling narrative comes across like a race to the finish line, as the very circumstances that enabled Lavoisier to secure his reputation as the father of modern chemistry—a considerable fortune and social connections with the likes of Benjamin Franklin—also caused his glory to be cut short by the French Revolution.

Paul Thagard explores the physiological workings and metaphorical resonance of balance in the brain, the body, and society. He describes the neural mechanisms that keep bodies balanced and explains why their failures can result in nausea, falls, or vertigo. Thagard connects bodily balance with leading ideas in neuroscience, including the nature of consciousness.

Ernest Rutherford, who grew up in colonial New Zealand and came to Cambridge on a scholarship, made numerous revolutionary discoveries, among them the orbital structure of the atom and the concept of the “half-life” of radioactive materials, which led to a massive re-evaluation of the age of the Earth―previously judged just 100 million years old. Above all, perhaps, Rutherford and the young men working under him were the first to split the atom, unlocking tremendous forces―forces, as Rutherford himself predicted, that would bring us the atomic bomb.

Many people assert that all of reality, including life, has simply emerged as a result of natural law and circumstance. How credible is that assumption? This audiobook provides a clinician’s perspective on the evidence for design in living things. Hear about the critical processes that must be successfully navigated at the time of birth for every individual to have any prospect of survival. Beyond that, think about thinking itself. This book is a powerful challenge to the belief that the universe, life, and conscious experience can result only from unguided, natural processes.

Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded groundbreaking work, including techniques that remain in use today. The duo pioneered comprehensive surveys of the night sky, carefully categorizing every visible object in the void. Caroline wrote an influential catalogue of nebulae, and William discovered infrared radiation.

The Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical narratives by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy. This audiobook vividly describes how, before 1900, a woman who wanted to study the stars had to have a father, brother, or husband to provide entry, and how the considerable intellectual skills of women astronomers were still not enough to enable them to pry open doors of opportunity for much of the twentieth century. After decades of difficult struggles, women are closer to equality in astronomy than ever before.

From poverty and policing, homelessness and overrun prisons to Grenfell and hostile environments, Britain has long been failing those who need our help the most. There is arguably one unifying theme that links all these afflictions: proximity. Proximity is how close we are to the action and how that affects how we assess, relate to and address whatever that action happens to be. Almost every job requires a level of experience and training with the notable exception of the most powerful people in the country—our political class.

The first major biography of Peter Higgs, revealing how a short burst of work changed modern physics On July 4, 2012, the announcement came that one of the longest-running mysteries in physics had been solved: the Higgs boson, the missing piece in understanding why particles have mass, had...

Detrás de cada fármaco se esconde una historia. Puede ser la de un investigador excéntrico que resultó ser un genio, un momento decisivo en la historia geopolítica, un nuevo avance tecnológico o un inesperado pero afortunado efecto secundario descubierto en un ensayo clínico. A través de datos curiosos, anécdotas poco conocidas y personajes un tanto extravagantes, Thomas Hager propone un recorrido por las diez drogas más significativas de la historia a la vez que muestra la evolución de nuestra cultura y práctica de la medicina.

Old Wine and New New Wine can kick-start your imagination into a profound, new, and true view of the intersection of science, philosophy, and supernatural religion. At the end of the day—if you reach it—you will grasp the essential relation between our qualitative experience and science, see science in a new light, trade in your materialism for materiality, and have an uncanny knowledge of what happens at death.

Science is in trouble. Real questions in desperate need of answers—especially those surrounding ethnicity, gender, climate change, and almost anything related to “health and safety”—are swiftly buckling to the fiery societal demands of what ought to be rather than what is. Can true, fact-based discovery be redeemed? In Science in an Age of Unreason, legendary professor of psychology and biology, John Staddon, unveils the identity crisis afflicting today’s scientific community, and provides an actionable path to recovery.

Come custodire il più prezioso dei sentimenti in un tempo che sembra fagocitare le emozioni, le scelte, i desideri per crearne sempre di nuovi? Come ricavare, nella fretta dei giorni, lo spazio per il giardino emotivo dove l’amore nasce e cresce, per prendercene cura e per dedicarvi le nostre risorse migliori? Uomini e donne vivono l’amore in modo profondamente diverso gli uni dalle altre e questo dà luogo a infiniti equivoci e incomprensioni. In un lavoro durato tre anni Francesco Alberoni e Cristina Cattaneo hanno indagato questi punti controversi.

Sin tener en cuenta la ética ni el bienestar de hombres y mujeres, la historia de la ciencia acumula experimentos transgresores, crueles y con consecuencias irreparables para quienes participaron en ellos. Gabriel León nos presenta investigaciones médicas como las esterilizaciones forzadas, los experimentos dermatológicos en cárceles, la separación al nacer de gemelos idénticos y un largo y horroroso etcétera narrado con la claridad, potencia y los fundamentos que lo han convertido en uno de los autores best sellers de la divulgación científica en Chile.

Può sembrare per lo più ovvio che saper afferrare un oggetto dipenda dal vederlo e non viceversa. Tuttavia, oggi le scienze cognitive e la filosofia della percezione suggeriscono che le cose non stanno così. Alla luce delle scoperte più avanzate nel campo della filosofia della percezione e delle scienze cognitive, gli autori illustrano la relazione tra occhio, cervello e comportamento, mostrando come visione e azione non siano due facoltà distinte ma due parti costitutive di un unico mondo visuo-motorio, due aspetti inscindibili del nostro modo di costruire la realtà.