Download or read book Consilience written by E. O. Wilson and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-11-26 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal One of our greatest scientists—and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants—gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.

Download or read book Sophie s World written by Jostein Gaarder and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-03-20 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Download or read book The Information written by James Gleick and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory. Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live. A New York Times Notable Book A Los Angeles Times and Cleveland Plain Dealer Best Book of the Year Winner of the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award

Download or read book The Ants written by Bert Hölldobler and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Arctic to South Africa - one finds them everywhere: Ants. Making up nearly 15% of the entire terrestrial animal biomass, ants are impressive not only in quantitative terms, they also fascinate by their highly organized and complex social system. Their caste system, the division of labor, the origin of altruistic behavior and the complex forms of chemical communication makes them the most interesting group of social organisms and the main subject for sociobiologists. Not least is their ecological importance: Ants are the premier soil turners, channelers of energy and dominatrices of the insect fauna. TOC:The importance of ants.- Classification and origins.- The colony life cycle.- Altruism and the origin of the worker caste.- Colony odor and kin recognition.- Queen numbers and domination.- Communication.- Caste and division of labor.- Social homeostasis and flexibility.- Foraging and territorial strategies.- The organization of species communities.- Symbioses among ant species.- Symbioses with other animals.- Interaction with plants.- The specialized predators.- The army ants.- The fungus growers.- The harvesters.- The weaver ants.- Collecting and culturing ants.- Glossary.- Bibliography.- Index.

Download or read book Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New written by Walter Crane and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Corcoran Gallery of Art written by Corcoran Gallery of Art and published by Lucia Marquand. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.

Download or read book A Century of Artists Books written by Riva Castleman and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 1997-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published to accompany the 1994 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, this book constitutes the most extensive survey of modern illustrated books to be offered in many years. Work by artists from Pierre Bonnard to Barbara Kruger and writers from Guillaume Apollinarie to Susan Sontag. An importnt reference for collectors and connoisseurs. Includes notable works by Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

Download or read book The Disappearing Spoon written by Sam Kean and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2010-07-12 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From New York Times bestselling author Sam Kean comes incredible stories of science, history, finance, mythology, the arts, medicine, and more, as told by the Periodic Table. Why did Gandhi hate iodine (I, 53)? How did radium (Ra, 88) nearly ruin Marie Curie's reputation? And why is gallium (Ga, 31) the go-to element for laboratory pranksters? The Periodic Table is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of adventure, betrayal, and obsession. These fascinating tales follow every element on the table as they play out their parts in human history, and in the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them. The Disappearing Spoon masterfully fuses science with the classic lore of invention, investigation, and discovery -- from the Big Bang through the end of time. Though solid at room temperature, gallium is a moldable metal that melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit. A classic science prank is to mold gallium spoons, serve them with tea, and watch guests recoil as their utensils disappear.

Download or read book Chebyshev and Fourier Spectral Methods written by John P. Boyd and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2001-12-03 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Completely revised text focuses on use of spectral methods to solve boundary value, eigenvalue, and time-dependent problems, but also covers Hermite, Laguerre, rational Chebyshev, sinc, and spherical harmonic functions, as well as cardinal functions, linear eigenvalue problems, matrix-solving methods, coordinate transformations, methods for unbounded intervals, spherical and cylindrical geometry, and much more. 7 Appendices. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. Over 160 text figures.

Download or read book The Annotated Mona Lisa written by Carol Strickland and published by Andrews McMeel Publishing. This book was released on 2007-10 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like music, art is a universal language. Although looking at works of art is a pleasurable enough experience, to appreciate them fully requires certain skills and knowledge." --Carol Strickland, from the introduction to The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern * This heavily illustrated crash course in art history is revised and updated. This second edition of Carol Strickland's The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern offers an illustrated tutorial of prehistoric to post-modern art from cave paintings to video art installations to digital and Internet media. * Featuring succinct page-length essays, instructive sidebars, and more than 300 photographs, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern takes art history out of the realm of dreary textbooks, demystifies jargon and theory, and makes art accessible-even at a cursory reading. * From Stonehenge to the Guggenheim and from Holbein to Warhol, more than 25,000 years of art is distilled into five sections covering a little more than 200 pages.

Download or read book But Is It Art written by Cynthia Freeland and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-02-07 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today's art world many strange, even shocking, things qualify as art. In this book, Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many fascinating examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, museums, sex, and politics, clarifying contemporary and historical accounts of the nature, function, and interpretation of the arts. Freeland also propels us into the future by surveying cutting-edge web sites, along with the latest research on the brain's role in perceiving art. This clear, provocative book engages with the big debates surrounding our responses to art and is an invaluable introduction to anyone interested in thinking about art.

Download or read book Are Clothes Modern written by Bernard Rudofsky and published by Chicago Paul Theobald. This book was released on 1947 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Personal Recollections from Early Life to Old Age written by Mary Somerville and published by . This book was released on 1874 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Blind Watchmaker written by Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science Richard Dawkins and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 1996-09-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patiently and lucidly, this Los Angeles Times Book Award and Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize winner identifies the aspects of the theory of evolution that people find hard to believe and removes the barriers to credibility one by one. As readable and vigorous a defense of Darwinism as has been published since 1859.--The Economist.

Download or read book Cut and Paste written by Patrick Elliott and published by . This book was released on 2019-06 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collage is one of the defining subjects in Modern Art. It is as important and popular today as it has ever been. This definitive survey of collage and 3-D sculpture (made from bits and pieces stuck and nailed together) spans the whole period from about 1600 to the present day. Each page of this book is filled with fascination. The lavish illustrations include images of items such as books with fold-out flaps, Victorian collage, Valentine and greeting cards, double exposure photographs, album covers such as Sgt Peppers, the Hungry Caterpillar, many curiosities and items from Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Pop, 70s counterculture, video and computerised collage. AUTHOR: Patrick Elliott is Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary art. Recent publications include Another World: Dalí, Magritte, Miró and the Surrealists (2010), Tony Cragg (2011), The Two Roberts: Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde (2014), The Amazing World of M.C. Escher (2015), Joan Eardley, A Sense of Place (2016) and True to Life (2017). SELLING POINT: * There are no other affordable books available on this important subject * This is the only book that looks closely at the early centuries of Collage * Collage is popular, fascinating and historically revealing 240 colour images

Download or read book Writing Culture written by James Clifford and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Humanists and social scientists alike will profit from reflection on the efforts of the contributors to reimagine anthropology in terms, not only of methodology, but also of politics, ethics, and historical relevance. Every discipline in the human and social sciences could use such a book."--Hayden White, author of Metahistory

Download or read book The Machine as Art The Machine as Artist written by Juliette Bessette and published by Mdpi AG. This book was released on 2020-10-21 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles collected in this volume from the two companion Arts Special Issues, "The Machine as Art (in the 20th Century)" and "The Machine as Artist (in the 21st Century)", represent a unique scholarly resource: analyses by artists, scientists, and engineers, as well as art historians, covering not only the current (and astounding) rapprochement between art and technology but also the vital post-World War II period that has led up to it; this collection is also distinguished by several of the contributors being prominent individuals within their own fields, or as artists who have actually participated in the still unfolding events with which it is concerned