How Cold War America came to attribute human evolutionary success to our species' unique capacity for murderAfter World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency.
'The best book ever written' Nicholas Lezard, GuardianRobert Burton's labyrinthine, beguiling, playful masterpiece is his attempt to 'anatomize and cut up' every aspect of the condition of melancholy, from which he had suffered throughout his life.
A scientific adventure story that dramatizes how profoundly our oceans have changed over the past 150 yearsIn December 1872, HMS Challenger embarked on the first round-the-world oceanographic expedition.
How the classic mirror test served as a portal for scientists to explore questions of self-awarenessSince the late eighteenth century, scientists have placed subjects-humans, infants, animals, and robots-in front of mirrors in order to look for signs of self-recognition.
An inspiring anthology of writings by trailblazing women astronomers from around the globeThe Sky Is for Everyone is an internationally diverse collection of autobiographical essays by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy.
Tales of the intrepid early naturalists who set sail on dangerous voyages of discovery in the vast, unknown Pacific On the great Pacific discovery expeditions of the “long eighteenth century,” naturalists for the first time were commonly found aboard ships sailing forth from European ports.
From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent's mightiest river.
The untold story of how hereditary data in mental hospitals gave rise to the science of human heredityIn the early 1800s, a century before there was any concept of the gene, physicians in insane asylums began to record causes of madness in their admission books.
How the latest cutting-edge science offers a fuller picture of life in Rome and antiquityThis groundbreaking book provides the first comprehensive look at how the latest advances in the sciences are transforming our understanding of ancient Roman history.
By the 1920s in Central Europe, it had become a truism among intellectuals that natural science had "e;disenchanted"e; the world, and in particular had reduced humans to mere mechanisms, devoid of higher purpose.
Technology, perhaps the most salient feature of our time, affects everything from jobs to international law yet ranks among the most unpredictable facets of human life.
How the specter of climate has been used to explain history since antiquityScientists, journalists, and politicians increasingly tell us that human impacts on climate constitute the single greatest threat facing our planet and may even bring about the extinction of our species.
A survey of ancient Egyptian mathematics across three thousand yearsMathematics in Ancient Egypt traces the development of Egyptian mathematics, from the end of the fourth millennium BC-and the earliest hints of writing and number notation-to the end of the pharaonic period in Greco-Roman times.
An acclaimed biography of the Enlightenment's greatest mathematicianThis is the first full-scale biography of Leonhard Euler (1707-83), one of the greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists of all time.
A literary and cultural history of coralas an essential element of the marine ecosystem, a personal ornament, a global commodity, and a powerful political metaphorToday, coral and the human-caused threats to coral reef ecosystems symbolize our ongoing planetary crisis.
A vivid portrait of the life and work of Carl LinnaeusCarl Linnaeus (17071778), known as the father of modern biological taxonomy, formalized and popularized the system of binomial nomenclature used to classify plants and animals.
Das Buch „Der Mensch im Kosmos – Lebenswelten und Kosmologien“ (Man within the Cosmos – Lifeworlds and Cosmologies) präsentiert die Vorträge der Tagung der Gesellschaft für Archäoastronomie in Weimar 2023 in 17 Kapiteln – Kulturgeschichte der Astronomie von der Steinzeit bis zur Goethezeit.
auch als Farbversion und preiswerte schwarz-weiß-Version erhältlichDieses Büchlein handelt von dem, was auf den Etiketten, die an den Insekten einer historischen Sammlung hängen, zu lesen steht.
A revisionist, completely accessible and radically inclusive history of maths'Lively, satisfying, good at explaining difficult concepts' The Sunday TimesMathematics shapes almost everything we do.
People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period.
A breathtakingly illustrated look at botanical spirals and the scientists who puzzled over themCharles Darwin was driven to distraction by plant spirals, growing so exasperated that he once begged a friend to explain the mystery ';if you wish to save me from a miserable death.
The role music, sound, and voice played in modern knowledge production in the early twentieth centuryDerived from the Latin words circum (round) and ire (to go), a circuit can refer to any bounded area.
A study of thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon that reveals the medieval thinking that erased non-Christian texts, actors, and cultures from the history of scienceIn his works, thirteenth-century English scholastic philosopher and Franciscan Roger Bacon depicted an enticing future that included, among other technological marvels, vehicles of unimaginable speed without animal power, diving bells for exploring the ocean floor, and mirrors and lenses that could incinerate whole armies.
A study of thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon that reveals the medieval thinking that erased non-Christian texts, actors, and cultures from the history of scienceIn his works, thirteenth-century English scholastic philosopher and Franciscan Roger Bacon depicted an enticing future that included, among other technological marvels, vehicles of unimaginable speed without animal power, diving bells for exploring the ocean floor, and mirrors and lenses that could incinerate whole armies.
