Penguin Science

In the Art Universe, Barrow explores the close ties between our aesthetic appreciation and the basic nature of the Universe, challenging the commonly held view that our sense of beauty is entirely free and unfettered. Barrow argues that the laws of the Universe, its environments and its astronomical appearance, have imprinted themselves upon our thoughts and actions in subtle and unexpected ways. Why do we like certain types of art or music? What games and puzzles do we find challenging? Why do so many myths and legends have common elements? Who created the cornucopia of constellations in the night sky? And why? In this eclectic and entertaining survey, Barrow answers these questions and more as he explains how the landscape of the Universe has influenced the development of philosophy and mythology, and how millions of years of evolutionary history have fashioned our attraction to certain patterns of sound and color. Barrow casts the story of human creativity and thought in a fascinating light, considering such diverse topics as our instinct for language, the origins and uses of color in Nature, why we divide time into intervals as we do, the sources of our appreciation of landscape painting, and whether computer-generated fractal art is really art. Barrow reconsiders the question of whether intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, showing that the benefits (and even the likelihood) that might follow from the discovery of life on other worlds could be very different from what we might have been led to expect. Remarkably, we find that some of the properties of the Universe that are essential for the existence of any form of life play a key role in determining psychological and religious responses to the Cosmos.

"The dramatic story of the brain's role in creating our world, our experience of it, and ourselves; the basis for a PBS television series by the bestselling David Eagleman. How does a three pound mass of biological matter locked in the dark, silent fortress of the skull produce the extraordinary multi-sensory experience that comprises us, while also constructing reality and guiding us through the endless need to make decisions and determine our judgments and into a future that we are convinced we are shaping? David Eagleman compares the brain to a cityscape with different neighborhoods where neural networks vie for supremacy and determine our behavior in ways we are not always aware or in control of. At the same time, he suggests that the brain works as a storyteller--creating a narrative that allows us to navigate and make sense of a world that it is busy constructing for us"--

In De blinde horlogemaker spelen zowel Paley als Darwin een belangrijke rol. De eerstgenoemde als belichaming van het geloof in een voor ede mens onbekende doelgerichtheid van de natuur. Darwin als ontdekker van het principe van de natuurlijke selectie. Uiterst boeiend schrijft Dawkins over zijn pogingen Darwins evolutieleer met behulp van computers na te bootsen. Het kunstmatige landschap van de computer verschaft meer inzicht in de ontwikkeling van de genen, de belangrijkste bouwstenen van het leven.

Written for general readers, The Cosmic Code goes on a fantastic journey into the microcosmos. Without complicated mathematics, physicist Heinz Pagels presents an understanding of scientific discoveries that have extended human consciousness to the far readches of space & time. Anecdotes from the personal documents of Einstein, Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr & Max Planck provide an intimate glimpse into brilliant persons who've shaped civilzation & changed the world. Elegantly written, this is an opportunity to celebrate the physicist's vision of reality...& how physics is moving toward an understanding of the cosmos. Acknowledgments Foreword The last classical physicist Inventing general relativity The first quantum physicists Heisenberg on Helgoland Uncertainty and complementarity Randomness The invisible hand Statistical mechanics Making waves Schrödinger's cat A quantum mechanical fairy tale Bell's inequality The reality marketplace The matter microscopes Beginning the voyage: molecules, atoms and nuclei The riddle of the hadrons Quarks Leptons Gluons Fields, particles and reality Being and nothingness Identity and difference The gauge field theory revolution Proton decay The quantum and the cosmos Laying down the law The cosmic code Bibliography Index.

Une compilation de trente essais parus pour la plupart dans ##Natural history magazine## et articulés autour de la théorie de l'évolution. Sept parties : Des bizarreries raisonnables - Personnalités - Adaptation et évolution - Teilhard et Piltdown - Science et politique - L'extinction - Une trilogie du zèbre. L'auteur, professeur à l'Université de Harvard, a précédemment publié deux autres recueils : ##Darwin et les grandes énigmes de la vie## (1979) et ##Le pouce du panda## (1982). [SDM].

These are six lectures taken from the 3 volume Feynmann Lectures on Physics: Vectors (Vol I chapter 11) Symmetry in Physical Laws (Vol I chapter 52) The Special Theory of Relativity (Vol I chapter 15) Relativistic Energy and Momentum (Vol I chapter 16) Space-Time (Vol I chapter 17) Curved Space (Vol II chapter 42)

Essays from the author's column This view of life, published in Natural history.

Contemplative essays speaking often of the importance of the unbroken connection of modern man and our ancestors.

From fads to fungus, baseball to beeswax, Gould always circles back to the great themes of time, change, and history, carrying readers home to the centering theme of evolution.