Download or read book Broca s Brain written by Carl Sagan and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-07-06 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating book on the joys of discovering how the world works, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Cosmos and Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. “Magnificent . . . Delightful . . . A masterpiece. A message of tremendous hope for humanity . . . While ever conscious that human folly can terminate man’s march into the future, Sagan nonetheless paints for us a mind-boggling future: intelligent robots, the discovery of extraterrestrial life and its consequences, and above all the challenge and pursuit of the mystery of the universe.”—Chicago Tribune “Go out and buy this book, because Carl Sagan is not only one of the world’s most respected scientists, he’s a great writer. . . . I can give a book no greater accolade than to say I’m planning on reading it again. And again. And again.”—The Miami Herald “The brilliant astronomer . . . is persuasive, provocative and readable.”—United Press International “Closely reasoned, impeccably researched, gently humorous, utterly devastating.”—The Washington Post

Download or read book A Scientific Romance written by Ronald Wright and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this critically acclaimed and bestselling novel, Ronald Wright has fashioned a story for our times, an unforgettable chronicle of love, plague and time travel in the tradition of Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale.

Download or read book The Romance of Reality written by Bobby Azarian and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do we exist? For centuries, this question was the sole province of religion and philosophy. But now science is ready to take a seat at the table. According to the prevailing scientific paradigm, the universe tends toward randomness; it functions according to laws without purpose, and the emergence of life is an accident devoid of meaning. But this bleak interpretation of nature is currently being challenged by cutting-edge findings at the intersection of physics, biology, neuroscience, and information theory—generally referred to as “complexity science.” Thanks to a new understanding of evolution, as well as recent advances in our understanding of the phenomenon known as emergence, a new cosmic narrative is taking shape: Nature’s simplest “parts” come together to form ever-greater “wholes” in a process that has no end in sight. In The Romance of Reality, cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian explains the science behind this new view of reality and explores what it means for all of us. In engaging, accessible prose, Azarian outlines the fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics at the heart of the old assumptions about the universe’s evolution, and shows us the evidence that suggests that the universe is a “self-organizing” system, one that is moving toward increasing complexity and awareness. Cosmologist and science communicator Carl Sagan once said of humanity that “we are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” The Romance of Reality shows that this poetic statement in fact rests on a scientific foundation and gives us a new way to know the cosmos, along with a riveting vision of life that imbues existence with meaning—nothing supernatural required.

Download or read book Love and Science written by Jan Vilcek and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2016-12-20 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before he became one of the world's most celebrated immunologists, Jan Vilcek began life in Slovakia as the child of Jewish parents at a time when Jews were being exterminated all across Europe. He owes his and his mother’s survival to the courage of brave people and good luck. As a young man growing up in Czechoslovakia in the aftermath of the Second World War, Vilcek went to medical school and chose a career in virology and immunology at a time when these fields were still in their infancy. While still in his twenties he published a paper in the prestigious journal Nature, and he hosted the first international conference on interferon. Fleeing Communist Czechoslovakia with his wife Marica, Vilcek continued his research at NYU School of Medicine, going on to establish a highly successful career in biomedical research, and creating one of the most important and trailblazing medicines of our age. After his arrival in the US in 1965 as a penniless refugee, he soon went on to spearhead some of the key advances in the research of interferon that enabled its therapeutic application, and through his research into tumor necrosis factor (TNF) made advances that led to the discovery of new genes and proteins and signaling pathways, opening up previously uncharted areas of medical innovation that have led to important new treatments for a wide range of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases. Along the way Vilcek acquired material wealth he had never aspired to, catapulting him into the world of philanthropy. Love and Science shows how advances in science sometimes result from the greatest disappointments, and how achievement in medical research is usually a team effort, where ideas are shared, where friendship and love sometimes matter most and serendipity is as important as a will to succeed—and where, over time, the least expected thing sometimes becomes the most important. In Vilcek's case the vaunted cure for cancer that many saw in TNF never materialized. However, out of the ashes of that hope came many related treatments that have changed countless lives and alleviated much suffering.

Download or read book The Romantic Machine written by John Tresch and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-06-05 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: Mechanical Romanticism -- DEVICES OF COSMIC UNITY -- Ampère's Experiments: Contours of a Cosmic Cubstance -- Humboldt's Instruments: Even the Tools Will Be Free -- Arago's Daguerreotype: The Labor Theory of Knowledge -- SPECTACLES OF CREATION AND METAMORPHOSIS -- The Devil's Opera: Fantastic Physiospiritualism -- Monsters, Machine-Men, Magicians: The Automaton in the Garden -- ENGINEERS OF ARTIFICIAL PARADISES -- Saint-Simonian Engines: Love and Conversions -- Leroux's Pianotype: The Organogenesis of Humanity -- Comte's Calendar: From Infinite Universe to Closed World -- Conclusion: Afterlives of the Romantic Machine.

Download or read book The Science of Happily Ever After written by Ty Tashiro and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2014 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this playful and informative exploration of the science behind how to choose a great mate, acclaimed relationship psychologist Dr. Ty Tashiro explores how to find enduring love. Dr. Tashiro translates reams of scientific studies and research data into the first book to revolutionize the way we search for love. His research pinpoints why our decision-making abilities seem to fail when it comes to choosing mates and how we can make smarter choices. Dr. Tashiro has discovered that if you want a lifetime of happiness--not just togetherness--it all comes down to how you choose a partner in the first place. With wit and insight, he explains the science behind finding a soul mate and distills his research into actionable tips, including: Why you get only three wishes when choosing your ideal partner. Why most people squander their wishes and end up in unfulfilling relationships. How wishing for the three traits that really matter can help you find enduring love. Illustrated using entertaining stories based on real-life situations and backed by scientific findings from fields such as demography, sociology, medical science and psychology, Dr. Tashiro provides an accessible framework to help singles find their happily-ever-afters.

Download or read book Einstein in Love written by Dennis Overbye and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2001-10-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Einstein in Love, Dennis Overbye has written the first profile of the great scientist to focus exclusively on his early adulthood, when his major discoveries were made. It reveals Einstein to be very much a young man of his time-draft dodger, self-styled bohemian, poet, violinist, and cocky, charismatic genius who left personal and professional chaos in his wake. Drawing upon hundreds of unpublished letters and a decade of research, Einstein in Love is a penetrating portrait of the modern era's most influential thinker.

Download or read book The Romantic Conception of Life written by Robert J. Richards and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the people who held it and the development of nineteenth-century science. Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory. Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology.

Download or read book The Love Hypothesis written by Ali Hazelwood and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Instant New York Times Bestseller and TikTok Sensation! As seen on THE VIEW! A BuzzFeed Best Summer Read of 2021 When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos. As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding...six-pack abs. Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.

Download or read book The Science and Romance of Selected Herbs Used in Medicine and Religious Ceremony written by Anthony K Andoh and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author has accomplished a feat worthy of the greatest botanist's life's work. He has painstakingly labored to scientifically and correctly classify some of the world's plants which are held in highest esteem, either for their medicinal value or for their religious and spiritual significance. In so doing, he has managed to demonstrate that legend and lore, as well as medicinal practices and herbal usage of traditional doctors, can be scientifically supported. Traditional medicine on all continents and from all cultures seem to have a common beginning. Perhaps this knowledge of the healing wonders of the plant world is available to all persons through some source which we do not as yet understand. Dr. Andoh has been pursuing the task of collecting data for this book for some eleven years and his meticulous work will, surely, be greatly appreciated by anyone interested in plants and especially students of ethnobotany. He deserves our gratitude for his perseverance and achievement. This book is special in that it gives scientific data in an interesting, entertaining and intriguing manner. It opens the door for other scientists to take a more open-minded and investigative look at the healing practices of traditional cultures. Further investigation must come soon, so as to preserve this ancient knowledge -- before it has been swept away and discarded, along with the trees and forests, by the new technology.

Download or read book The Romance of Science Essays in Honour of Trevor H Levere written by Jed Buchwald and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Romance of Science pays tribute to the wide-ranging and highly influential work of Trevor Levere, historian of science and author of Poetry Realised in Nature, Transforming Matter, Science and the Canadian Arctic, Affinity and Matter and other significant inquiries in the history of modern science. Expanding on Levere’s many themes and interests, The Romance of Science assembles historians of science -- all influenced by Levere's work -- to explore such matters as the place and space of instruments in science, the role and meaning of science museums, poetry in nature, chemical warfare and warfare in nature, science in Canada and the Arctic, Romanticism, aesthetics and morals in natural philosophy, and the “dismal science” of economics. The Romance of Science explores the interactions between science's romantic, material, institutional and economic engagements with Nature.

Download or read book The Romance of American Psychology written by Ellen Herman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996-01-01 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A wonderfully written book . . . [about] a little-recognized but enormously significant process that has shaped contemporary American political culture."--Cynthia Enloe, author of The Morning After

Download or read book The Romance of Research written by Lawrence Vincent Redman and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Memory of Whiteness written by Kim Stanley Robinson and published by Orb Books. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An early novel from Science Fiction legend Kim Stanley Robinson, The Memory of Whiteness is now available for the first time in decades. In 3229 A.D., human civilization is scattered among the planets, moons, and asteroids of the solar system. Billions of lives depend on the technology derived from the breakthroughs of the greatest physicist of the age, Arthur Holywelkin. But in the last years of his life, Holywelkin devoted himself to building a strange, beautiful, and complex musical instrument that he called The Orchestra. Johannes Wright has earned the honor of becoming the Ninth Master of Holywelkin's Orchestra. Follow him on his Grand Tour of the Solar System, as he journeys down the gravity well toward the sun, impelled by a destiny he can scarcely understand, and is pursued by mysterious foes who will tell him anything except the reason for their enmity. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book The Science of Romance written by Nigel Barber and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2011-03 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ...excellent: accurate, entertaining and thought-provoking... - American ScientistVirtually anyone interested in gender studies, human sexuality, the application of evolutionary theory to behavior, or psychology in general should consider this fascinating book must reading. - BooklistIn this work on how evolution affects how we behave in the romantic and sexual realms, the author . . . kicks away Cupid in favor of Darwin and the result is fascinating . . . . Barber is seemingly inexhaustible when it comes to diversity of thought . . . . His accessible and lively writing keeps the book from feeling too wide-ranging and scholarly. . . . those who don''t mind considering that romantic inclinations may be in one''s genes and not in one''s heart will find much to chew on in this weighty addition to the field of evolutionary psychology. -ForeWord MagazineNigel Barber is one of the most innovative and intriguing investigators currently writing in the field of evolutionary psychology. His insights are always novel and provocative, challenging our preconceptions and encouraging us to consider alternative perspectives on gender differences and romantic and sexual behavior. His observations are certain to generate discussion from scientists, and from anyone who has ever been mystified by love. - Michael Cunningham, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, University of Louisville, and President, International Network on Personal RelationshipsRecent advances in evolutionary psychology and biology have revolutionized the understanding of human courtship, marriage, and relationships. The Science of Romance provides an accessible and entertaining look at this new research and explores many of the implications for sexual and romantic relationships. The book is a pleasure to read and is highly recommended to the reader who wishes to better understand human relationships or wants an introduction to evolutionary psychology. - David C. Geary, Ph.D., Middlebush Professor of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri at Columbia, and author of Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex DifferencesA gripping book throughout--scientifically sound and wonderfully illustrated with real life examples; must reading for everyone concerned with human mating, which is just about everyone. - David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human MatingHave you ever wondered why divorce is so much more common now than a century ago? Why the sex appeal of certain body types and clothing styles changes so dramatically over time? Why so many liberated young women today prefer emotional commitment from men while their male counterparts seem always more interested in sowing their wild oats?According to evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber, each of these aspects of modern life reflects two million years of hominid evolution. In The Science of Romance he explains that much of our present behavior can be traced back to the ancient evolved motives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In short, we exhibit the behaviors that have evolved over millennia to increase the reproductive success of the species. Also drawing on the mating behavior of various animals, Barber finds illuminating comparisons that help to explain human actions and reactions.Barber delves into a host of interesting topics: dating competition and aggression; female courtship signals that subtly manipulate male behavior; how exposure to different sex hormones shapes the evolving brain in utero, which may account for the different behaviors of men and women; and much more.This absorbing book educates and entertains, while showing that many seemingly irrational aspects of our intimate romantic behavior make sense when understood in terms of our prehistoric ancestors and evolution.Nigel Barber, Ph.D. (Portland, ME), formerly an assistant professor of psychology at Birmingham-Southern College, is now a freelance writer and researcher, and the author of Why Parents Matter: Parental Investment and Child

Download or read book Scientific Romance written by Brian Stableford and published by Courier Dover Publications. This book was released on 2017-01-18 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the term "science fiction" was adopted in the 1920s, there were "scientific romances," tales of amazing journeys beyond the limits of the known world. Jules Verne's imaginative novels of the mid-nineteenth century met with international success, whetting the public's appetite for fantastic fiction rooted in actual fact — a craving that H. G. Wells satisfied with his visionary stories. This compilation presents more than two dozen early tales by Verne's and Wells's immediate predecessors, contemporaries, and descendants, focusing on the middle period, when the genre was at its most enterprising and exuberant. Originally published between 1835 and 1924, the stories offer early interpretations of the futuristic societies, rogue stars, rebellious machines, and other now-familiar themes of speculative fiction. Featured authors include Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, H. G. Wells, Jack London, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lesser-known writers. Brian Stableford, a legendary science-fiction author and editor, selected the stories, for which he provides an informative Introduction and brief biographies for each author.

Download or read book The Age of Wonder written by Richard Holmes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Age of Wonder is a colorful and utterly absorbing history of the men and women whose discoveries and inventions at the end of the eighteenth century gave birth to the Romantic Age of Science. When young Joseph Banks stepped onto a Tahitian beach in 1769, he hoped to discover Paradise. Inspired by the scientific ferment sweeping through Britain, the botanist had sailed with Captain Cook in search of new worlds. Other voyages of discovery—astronomical, chemical, poetical, philosophical—swiftly follow in Richard Holmes's thrilling evocation of the second scientific revolution. Through the lives of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, who forever changed the public conception of the solar system; of Humphry Davy, whose near-suicidal gas experiments revolutionized chemistry; and of the great Romantic writers, from Mary Shelley to Coleridge and Keats, who were inspired by the scientific breakthroughs of their day, Holmes brings to life the era in which we first realized both the awe-inspiring and the frightening possibilities of science—an era whose consequences are with us still. BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Richard Holmes's Falling Upwards.