"Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" : adventures of a curious character by
Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums; painting a naked female toreador. In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.
The magic of reality: how we know what's really true by
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True has been written by Richard Dawkins and illustrated by Dave McKean.
Magic has been known to take several shapes and forms. An ancient Egyptian mythology suggests that night takes place when the goddess Nut swallows the sun. Even the Vikings had a belief that explained rainbows, claiming that they were bridges used by the Gods to come to earth. Even though all of those seem magical, there is a different type of magic. Finding out the answers to important questions is the magic of reality and science.
The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True is filled inspirational answers and explanations to various phenomena such as evolution, space and time. These natural questions are answered with the help of humor and smart-thought experiments. The book asks questions such as what are things made of? What is the age of the universe? How is a tsunami caused? What was the name of the first woman or man?
The book encourages the reader to think and behave like a scientist and quarry for information from various sciences. The author tries to understand the natural world and opens up its wonders to readers of all ages. This book uses precise and clear text to help readers understand its concepts.
The Scientists: a history of science told through the lives of its greatest inventors by
In this ambitious new book, John Gribbin tells the stories of the people who have made science, and of the times in which they lived and worked. He begins with Copernicus, during the Renaissance, when science replaced mysticism as a means of explaining the workings of the world, and he continues through the centuries, creating an unbroken genealogy of not only the greatest but also the more obscure names of Western science, a dot-to-dot line linking amateur to genius, and accidental discovery to brilliant deduction.
By focusing on the scientists themselves, Gribbin has written an anecdotal narrative enlivened with stories of personal drama, success and failure. A bestselling science writer with an international reputation, Gribbin is among the few authors who could even attempt a work of this magnitude. Praised as “a sequence of witty, information-packed tales” and “a terrifi c read” by The Times upon its recent British publication, The Scientists breathes new life into such venerable icons as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Linus Pauling, as well as lesser lights whose stories have been undeservedly neglected. Filled with pioneers, visionaries, eccentrics and madmen, this is the history of science as it has never been told before.
The Selfish Gene by
Examines the biology of selfishness and altruism in light of Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
A short history of nearly everything by
Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller: but even when he stays safely in his own study at home, he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to find out everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us.
Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. It's not so much about what we know, as about how we know what we know. How do we know what is in the centre of the Earth, or what a black hole is, or where the continents were 600 million years ago? How did anyone ever figure these things out?
On his travels through time and space, he encounters a splendid collection of astonishingly eccentric, competitive, obsessive and foolish scientists, like the painfully shy Henry Cavendish who worked out many conundrums like how much the Earth weighed, but never bothered to tell anybody about many of his findings. In the company of such extraordinary people, Bill Bryson takes us with him on the ultimate eye-opening journey, and reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.
Six Easy Pieces by
Physicist Richard Feynman presents introductions to atoms, basic physics, energy, gravitation, quantum behavior, and the relationship of physics to other sciences, written for the general reader.
Uncertainty by
Werner Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” challenged centuries of scientific understanding, placed him in direct opposition to Albert Einstein, and put Niels Bohr in the middle of one of the most heated debates in scientific history. Heisenberg’s theorem stated that there were physical limits to what we could know about sub-atomic particles; this “uncertainty” would have shocking implications. In a riveting account, David Lindley captures this critical episode and explains one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, which has since transcended the boundaries of science and influenced everything from literary theory to television.-- Goodreads
Fermat's last theorem by
The story of the solving of a puzzle that has confounded mathematicians since the 17th century. The solution of Fermat's Last Theorem is the most important mathematical development of the 20th century. In 1963, a schoolboy browsing in his local library stumbled across the world's greatest mathematical problem: Fermat's Last Theorem, a puzzle that every child can understand but which has baffled mathematicians for over 300 years. Aged just ten, Andrew Wiles dreamed that he would crack it. Wiles's lifelong obsession with a seemingly simple challenge set by a long-dead Frenchman is an emotional tale of sacrifice and extraordinary determination. In the end, Wiles was forced to work in secrecy and isolation for seven years, harnessing all the power of modern maths to achieve his childhood dream. Many before him had tried and failed, including a 18-century philanderer who was killed in a duel. An 18-century Frenchwoman made a major breakthrough in solving the riddle, but she had to attend maths lectures at the Ecole Polytechnique disguised as a man since women were forbidden entry to the school.
Against Method by
A discussion about the philosophy of science, scientific progress, and rationalism versus anarchism in the theory of knowledge.
Being mortal: medicine and what matters in the end. by
Doctors are trained to keep their patients alive as long as possible. But they are never taught how to prepare people to die. And yet for many patients, particularly the old and terminally ill, death is a question of when, not if. Should the medical profession rethink its approach to them? And in what way? With aging populations and hospital costs rising globally, these questions have become increasingly relevant. In his new book, Atul Gawande argues that an acceptance of mortality must lie at the center of the way we treat the dying. Using his experiences (and missteps) as a surgeon, comparing attitudes towards aging and death in the West and in India and drawing a powerful portrait of his father's final years-a doctor who chose how he should go-Gawande has produced a work that is not only an extraordinary account of loss but one whose ideas are truly important. Questioning, profound and deeply moving, Being Mortal is a masterpiece.
A Briefer History of Time by
heoretical physicist Hawking became an international celebrity thanks to his cosmological primer Brief History of Time (1988), one of the twentieth century's biggest best-sellers. According to Hawking, one copy of Brief History has been sold for every 750 people on earth (move over, Scarlett O'Hara!). While Brief History amassed that sales record, however, its subject matter didn't stand still, and some kind of overhaul, Hawking and Mlodinow say, came to seem necessary. They chose to revise in the direction of lesser length, more illustration, and greater accessibility as they updated to incorporate developments in string theory, new indications that a unified theory of physics--one that comprehends gravity as well as the three other physical forces--is possible, and new observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite. Few will be sorry for their choice, for Briefer History may be the clearest introduction to physics ever, and not just because it eschews equations, though that helps. Its clarity arises from firmly adhering to the concept announced by the second chapter's title, "Our Evolving Picture of the Universe." The book is the developmental portrait--a biography, if you will--of the idea of a dynamic cosmos, which took long to catch on: even Einstein, whose relativity theories "broke" the idea as nothing before had done, clung to a cosmological constant (which, Hawking and Mlodinow show, yet has its uses) in the face of quantum mechanical indeterminacy. Like the best biographies, it's an utterly engrossing read
Food of the Gods by
Why, as species, are humans so fascinated by altered states of consciousness? Can altered states reveal something to us about our origins and our place in nature? In Food of the God, ethnobotanist Terence McKenna's research on man's ancient relationship with chemicals opens a doorway to the divine, and perhaps a solution for saving trouble world.
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics by
"This introduction to the philosophy of mathematics focuses on contemporary debates in an important and central area of philosophy. The reader is taken on a fascinating and entertaining journey through some intriguing mathematical and philosophical territory, including such topics as the realism/anti-realism debate in mathematics, mathematical explanation, the limits of mathematics, the significance of mathematical notation, inconsistent mathematics and the applications of mathematics. Each chapter has a number of discussion questions and recommended further reading from both the contemporary literature and older sources. Very little mathematical background is assumed and all of the mathematics encountered is clearly introduced and explained using a wide variety of examples. The book is suitable for an undergraduate course in philosophy of mathematics and, more widely, for anyone interested in philosophy and mathematics"-- Goodreads
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by
An essay in which the author argues that the study of finished scientific achievements can be misleading, and discusses the different concept of science that can emerge from the historical record of the research activity that preceded scientific discoveries.
Why Evolution Is True by
The proof for evolution is vast, varied, and magnificent, drawn from many different fields of scientific inquiry. In this unique summary of the facts supporting the theory of natural selection, Jerry A. Coyne eloquently shows that evolution does nothing to destroy the beauty of life, only enhances it. By demonstrating the "indelible stamp" of the processes first proposed by Darwin. Coyne does not aim to prove creationism wrong. Rather, by using irrefutable evidence, he sets out to prove evolution right.
The fabric of reality by
The author, an Oxford scholar, presents his "Theory of Everything," derived from a belief in multiple universes, and a unification of the scientific theories and philosophies of quantum physics, evolution, computation, and epistemology
The Logic of Scientific Discovery by
An English translation of the 1934 text in which German philosopher Karl Popper refutes the opinion that science is fundamentally inductive in nature and proposes a criterion of testability, or falsifiability, for scientific validity.
The Tao of Physics: an exloration of the parallels between modern physics and eastern mysticism by
Here is the book that brought the mystical implications of subatomic physics to popular consciousness for the very first time--way back in 1975. This special edition celebrates the thirty-fifth anniversary of this early Shambhala best seller that has gone on to become a classic. It includes a new preface by the author, in which he reflects on the further discoveries and developments that have occurred in the years since the book's original publication. Physicists do not need mysticism, Dr. Capra says, and mystics do not need physics, but humanity needs both. It's a message of timeless importance.
The Voyage of the Beagle by
In 1831, Charles Darwin embarked on an expedition that, in his own words, determined my whole career. The Voyage of the Beagle chronicles his five-year journey around the world and especially the coastal waters of South America as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle. While traveling through these unexplored countries collecting specimens, Darwin began to formulate the theories of evolution and natural selection realized in his master work, The Origin of Species. Travel memoir and scientific primer alike, The Voyage of the Beagle is a lively and accessible introduction to the mind of one of history's most influential thinkers.