John Russell Napier

"In Rajasthan, India, a caste of musicians and mendicants, the Nath-Jogis, sing stories of kings, and of a god, Mahadeva, Shiva, who must abandon his world. This book represents the first detailed ethnomusicological study of the music of this caste. It offers a transcription, translation and musical and ethnographic analysis of one performance, by Kishori Nath"--Provided by publisher.

A Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithmes is said to be the book that freed the world from a logjam of calculations. John Napier spent more than twenty years working alone on his sytem of logarithms, during a time when the multiplication and division of large numbers, as well as the finding of square roots, was considered to be extremely difficult. Because of his discovery of logarithms, these tedious mathematical operations could be replaced by the much easier processes of simple addition, subtraction and division by two. Never again would astronomers, architects, merchants and navigators become bogged down with calculations that were simply too difficult or time consuming to carry out. The French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Simon Laplace said that logarithms, '...by shortening the labours, doubled the life of the astronomer.'

Briefly explains man's evolution from the first primates and traces his development as he learns to use his hands, make tools, hunt, use his spare time, and develop agriculture.

Social behaviour - General characteristics - Human evolution_