Showing results for "World History" in History & Philosophy

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's fascinating and humorous quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization. He takes subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry, and particle physics, and aims to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. In the company of some extraordinary scientists, Bill Bryson reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

From the author of the global bestseller The Secret History of the World comes an epic new history of the relationship between spiritual belief and cutting-edge science. Jonathan Black shows that from Marie Curie to today's architects of AI, many of our greatest scientists have been guided by...

What is archaeology? The word may bring to mind images of golden pharaohs and lost civilizations or Neanderthal skulls and Ice Age cave art. Archaeology is all of these, but also far more: the only science to encompass the entire span of human history - more than three million years! This Little History tells the riveting stories of some of the great archaeologists and their amazing discoveries around the globe.

How have our emotions shaped the course of human history? And how have our experience and understanding of emotions evolved with us? We humans like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, who, as a species, have relied on calculation and intellect to survive. But many of the most important...

Ambassadors from Earth relates the story of the first unmanned space probes and planetary explorers - from the Sputnik and Explorer satellites launched in the late 1950's to the thrilling interstellar Voyager missions of the '70's - that yielded some of the most celebrated successes and spectacular failures of the space age. Jay Gallentine delivers a quirky and unforgettable look at the lives and legacy of the Americans and Soviets who conceived, built, and guided those unmanned missions to the planets and beyond.

‘Based on meticulous research in original sources … Goodman illustrates vividly how adept [Banks] was … Shining a light on individuals whose achievements are relatively uncelebrated’ Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books A bold new history of how botany and global plant collecting –...

By an award-winning astrophysicist and coauthor of Where Did the Universe Come From?, a brisk, lucid tour of the human quest to uncover reality's fundamentals, from the atomic to the cosmological Making sense of our reality has burdened humanity since the very beginning. In their search for...

An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food—and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of...

Like F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises moved beyond economics in his later years to address questions regarding the foundation of all social science. But unlike Hayek's attempts, Mises' writings on these matters have received less attention than they deserve. Theory and History, writes Rothbard in his introduction, "remains by far the most neglected masterwork of Mises". Here Mises defends his all-important idea of methodological dualism: one approach to the hard sciences and another for the social sciences.

Both science and religion explore aspects of reality, providing "a basis for their mutual interaction as they present their different perspectives onto the one world of existent reality," Polkinghorne argues. In One World he develops his thesis through an examination of the nature of science, the nature of the physical world, the character of theology, and the modes of thought in science and theology. He identifies "points of interaction" and points of potential conflict between science and religion.

Throughout the course, students learn that most of the great scientists who lived from AD 500 to the end of this time period were devout Christians who did science because they thought they could learn more about God by studying his handiwork.

To understand something, you need to know its history. Right? Wrong, says Alex Rosenberg in How History Gets Things Wrong. Feeling especially well-informed after reading a book of popular history on the best-seller list? Don't. Narrative history is always, always wrong. It not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy. We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Why do we still believe in historical narrative? Our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long Darwinian pedigree and a genetic basis.

Like many people, you’ve probably asked some of these questions when you were younger or maybe recently. Well, you will be pleasantly surprised to discover the interesting and maybe slightly bizarre origins of the strange things we do. In Wonder Why? Fascinating Stories, Curious Facts, and Answers About the Mysteries of Science, History, Pop Culture, and Traditions Around the World cover 55 of the most regularly asked questions with fascinating origin stories.

Ever wonder why onions make you cry? Or why lizards do pushups? Or why leaves change color in the fall? Don't worry, you're not alone. Acclaimed science writer and broadcaster Jay Ingram wonders the same things. After a long career of asking important questions (does time speed up as we age? How much Neanderthal is in me? Why do some animals throw their feces?), he's here to put our scientific quandaries to rest.

100 Great Scientists Who Changed the World introduces the giants of scientific discovery and examines their achievements - the men and women who, often in the face of extreme skepticism or worse, have striven and succeeded in pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge. Ranging across the spectrum of scientific endeavor from the cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo through the medical revolutions of Hippocrates and Galen, it includes the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, and genetics.

The epic story of the invention of a global network of weights, scales, and instruments for measurement.

Millions of transactions each day depend on a reliable network of weights and measures. This network has been called a greater invention than the steam engine, comparable only to the development of the printing press.

An “incredible, humane, insightful” (Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner) account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body. With...

In this sweeping consideration of Britain in the 18th century, Jeremy Black explores the interconnected roles of power and geography in the creation of a global empire. Geography was at the heart of Britain’s expansion into India, its response to uprisings in Scotland and America, and its revolutionary development of railways.

When does a scientific discovery become accepted fact? Why have scientific facts become easy to deny? And what can we do about it? In The Workshop and the World, philosopher and science historian Robert P. Crease answers these questions by describing the origins of our scientific infrastructure - the “workshop” - and the role of 10 of the world’s greatest thinkers in shaping it. As today’s politicians and government officials increasingly accuse scientists of dishonesty, conspiracy, and even hoaxes, engaged citizens wonder how we got to this level of distrust....

In Science That Changed the World, Tim Radford takes us on a tour of the major scientific breakthroughs from the decade of revolution. Taking us as far back as the origin of the universe, Radford's storytelling examines the impact that each development continues to have on our lives today and how, in less than a decade, the world leapt and lurched forward into the modern era.