The discovery of life on other planets would be perhaps the most momentous revelation in human history, more disorienting and more profound than either the Copernican or Darwinian revolutions, which knocked the earth from the center of the universe and humankind from its position of lofty self-regard.
Nancy Andreasen, a leading neuroscientist who is also Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious American Journal of Psychiatry as well as the winner of the illustrious National Medal of Science, offers here a state-of-the-art look at what we know about the human brain and the human genome--and shows how these two vast branches of knowledge are coming together in a boldly ambitious effort to conquer mental illness.
Most of what has been learned about how the brain mediates behavior comes from experiments of nature where a stroke or other damage to the brain produces changes in a person's behavior.
Written by a physicist with professional dance training, Physics and the Art of Dance explains how dancers can achieve better, safer performances through an understanding of physics in motion.
As author of the bestselling Why People Believe Weird Things and How We Believe, and Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer has emerged as the nation's number one scourge of superstition and bad science.
Beam is the story of the race to make the laser, the three intense years from the birth of the laser idea to its breakthrough demonstration in a California laboratory.
"e;Peking Man,"e; a cave man once thought a great hunter who had first tamed fire, actually was a composite of the gnawed remains of some fifty women, children, and men unfortunate enough to have been the prey of the giant cave hyena.
Few people know that nearly 100 native languages once spoken in what is now California are near extinction, or that most of Australia's 250 aboriginal languages have vanished.
When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts--indeed, so great that the sum far transcends the parts and represents something utterly new and different--we call that phenomenon emergence.
City of Light tells the story of fiber optics, tracing its transformation from 19th-century parlor trick into the foundation of our global communications network.
When Archimedes, while bathing, suddenly hit upon the principle of buoyancy, he ran wildly through the streets of Syracuse, stark naked, crying "e;eureka!
From the revolutionary discoveries of Galileo and Newton to the mind-bending theories of Einstein and Heisenberg, from plate tectonics to particle physics, from the origin of life to universal entropy, and from biology to cosmology, here is a sweeping, readable, and dynamic account of the whole of Western science.
The internationally acclaimed story of Hannah's Heirs now resumes in this updated paperback edition with the discovery in June, 1995 of Hannah's gene--now known to account for the majority of mutations causing early onset familial Alzheimer's disease--and the equally important identification of the major genetic risk factor rendering increased susceptibility to the more frequently occurring late-onset Alzheimer's.
Scores of wild species and ecosystems around the world face a variety of human-caused threats, from habitat destruction and fragmentation to rapid climate change.
Recent events have vividly underscored the societal importance of science, yet the majority of the public are unaware that a large proportion of published scientific results are simply wrong.
Recent events have vividly underscored the societal importance of science, yet the majority of the public are unaware that a large proportion of published scientific results are simply wrong.
This fascinating study examines the rise of American molecular biology to disciplinary dominance, focusing on the period between 1930 and the elucidation of DNA structure in the mid 1950s.
Do a little armchair time-travel, rub elbows with a four-dimensional intelligent life form, or stretch your mind to the furthest corner of an uncharted universe.
Psychobiography is often attacked by critics who feel that it trivializes complex adult personalities, "e;explaining the large deeds of great individuals,"e; as George Will wrote, "e;by some slight the individual suffered at a tender age--say, 7, when his mother took away a lollipop.
Thinking bees, ice-skating buffaloes, dreaming rats, happy foxes, ecstatic elephants, despondent dolphins--in Minding Animals, Marc Bekoff takes us on an exhilarating tour of the emotional and mental world of animals, where we meet creatures who do amazing things and whose lives are filled with mysteries.
'A careful and thoughtful provocation' (Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury) Ambitiously placed at the intersection of scientific insights and spiritual wisdom, Human Flourishing prompts us to reflect on what constitutes a good life and the choices that can help achieve it.
The Royal Institution of Great Britain is renowned the world over, first, because it is a premier arena for the advancement of new scientific and technological knowledge; and second because it highlights the advance of knowledge of all kinds.
