検索キーワード： 歴史・哲学

The pandemic, climate change, poverty, conflict and violence, and the refugee emergency: global crises that have an unsuspected silver lining. They bring us to a tipping point where we can choose our destiny. This book outlines the nature of that crucial point and suggests what you—as each and every conscious and responsible human being—can and must do to choose a future of thriving for the human family, rather than one of crises and chaos.

Before the early 20th century, scientists and theologians knew almost nothing about time’s enormity and the corresponding immensity of space. But after Einstein, cosmology offers theology a whole new way of looking at the ageless questions about matter, time, God, cosmic purpose, and the significance of our lives. The universe need no longer be thought of simply as an endless reshuffling of lifeless and mindless atoms in a pointless series of moments.

The bald eagle is regal but fearless, a bird you’re not inclined to argue with. For centuries, Americans have celebrated it as “majestic” and “noble,” yet savaged the living bird behind their national symbol as a malicious predator of livestock and, falsely, a snatcher of babies.

In The Invisible Siege, Werb unpacks the dynamic history and microscopic complexity of an organism that has wreaked cycles of havoc upon the world for millennia. Elegantly tracing decades of scientific investigation, Werb’s book reveals how Baric’s team of scientists hatched an audacious plan not merely to battle COVID-19 but to end pandemics forever.

Decía Carl Sagan que para hacer una tarta de manzana primero hay que crear el universo. Harry Cliff, prestigioso físico de la Universidad de Cambridge, emprende la búsqueda de la receta perfecta recogiendo los ingredientes a través del cosmos, en los núcleos de estrellas moribundas, y retrocediendo en el tiempo hasta la fracción de segundo inmediatamente posterior a la que todo se creó, para entender, entre otras muchas cosas, de dónde proviene la materia.

In den 1920er Jahren schlug die Stunde der Physiker: Sie machten sich auf den Weg zu den Atomen im Innersten der Welt. Dabei sahen sie sich gezwungen, das gewohnte Weltbild vollkommen aufzugeben. Ernst Peter Fischer erzählt so anekdotenreich wie wissenschaftlich anschaulich und versiert vom großen Jahrzehnt der Physik zwischen 1922 und 1932, seinen genialen Protagonisten und von den ungeheuren Folgen, die der damals vollzogene Wandel mit sich bringen sollte.

The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann.

In einer vernetzten Welt müssen wir vernetzt denken und komplexe Phänomene wie Pandemien, Klimakrise und die Destabilisierung von Ökosystemen als Ganzes in den Blick nehmen. Der Komplexitätswissenschaftler Dirk Brockmann schaut auf die Krisen unserer Zeit, sucht nach Mustern, Gesetzmäßigkeiten und Ähnlichkeiten zwischen ihnen und komplexen Prozessen der Natur.

What's sexy about saving the planet? Funny you should ask. Because that is precisely - or, perhaps, broadly - what Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens have spent many years bringing to light in their live art, exhibitions, and films. In 2008, Sprinkle and Stephens married the Earth, which set them on the path to explore the realms of ecosexuality as they became lovers with the Earth and made their mutual pleasure an embodied expression of passion for the environment.

In this rambling essay, Bertrand Russell reflects on the future of the world while the memory of the First World War was still strong in the public imagination. Russell notes the concomitant development of technology and the rise of political autocracies and explores whether man can be considered fit to handle the vast new powers at his disposal.

Origin is the story of who the first peoples in the Americas were, how and why they made the crossing, how they dispersed south, and how they lived based on a new and powerful kind of evidence: their complete genomes. Origin provides an overview of these new histories throughout North and South America, and a glimpse into how the tools of genetics reveal details about human history and evolution.

Throughout history, people have sought to reduce suffering, eliminate disease and enhance desirable qualities in their children. In the Victorian era eugenics, a full-blooded attempt to impose control over unruly biology, began to grow among the powerful and quickly spread to dozens of countries around the world. But these ideas are not merely historical: today, with new gene editing techniques, conversations are happening about tinkering with the DNA of our unborn children to make them smarter, fitter, stronger.

Drawn from historical records and current news headlines, A Taste for Poison weaves together the tales of spurned lovers, shady scientists, medical professionals, and political assassins to show how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison. From the deadly origins of the gin and tonic cocktail to the arsenic-laced wallpaper in Napoleon’s bedroom, A Taste for Poison leads listeners on a fascinating tour of the intricate, complex systems that keep us alive - or don’t.

For fans of Wild and Lab Girl, Heartbreak is a uniquely immersive audiobook, merging science and self-discovery to change the way we think about loneliness, health, and what it means to fall in and out of love. Narrated by the author and accompanied by in-the-moment diary recordings and interviews, Heartbreak is an immersive audiobook that taps into one of the most shared experiences in the animal kingdom: heartbreak.

In 2018, the first genetically modified babies were reportedly born in China, made possible by the invention of CRISPR technology in 2012. This controversial advancement overturned the preexisting moral consensus, which had held for over 50 years before: While gene editing an adult person was morally acceptable, modifying babies, and thus subsequent generations, crossed a significant moral line. John H. Evans here provides a meta-level guide to how these debates move forward and their significance to society.

Sometimes our understanding of our universe is given a huge boost by one insightful thinker. Such a boost came in the first half of the 20th century, when an obscure Belgian priest put his mind to deciphering the nature of the cosmos. The Day Without Yesterday covers the modern history of an evolving universe, and how Georges Lemaître convinced a generation of thinkers to embrace the notion of cosmic expansion and the theory that this expansion could be traced backward to the cosmic origins, a starting point for space and time that Lemaître called "the day without yesterday".

Geneticist Adam Rutherford and mathematician Hannah Fry guide listeners through time and space, through our bodies and brains, showing how emotions shape our view of reality, how our minds tell us lies, and why a mostly bald and curious ape decided to begin poking at the fabric of the universe.

Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may even be in a virtual world already.

In this captivating, sweeping history, Michael Brooks makes clear that mathematics was one of the foundational innovations that catapulted humanity from a nomadic existence to civilization, and that it has been instrumental in every subsequent great leap of humankind: from charting the movements of celestial bodies to navigating the globe to tracking the dissemination of viruses.

A menudo conocemos las teorías que los grandes físicos de la historia han desarrollado, pero ignoramos aspectos biográficos que les han influido, como sus pensamientos teístas o ateos. A veces sus creencias han tenido un efecto en su ciencia y en otras ha sido la ciencia la cual ha influido en sus creencias. ¿Qué ideas religiosas tenían Aristóteles, Copérnico, Galileo, Einstein o Dirac? ¿Cómo influyó el contexto? Eduardo Battaner nos lo cuenta en este audiolibro desde una perspectiva objetiva e histórica.