A New York Times bestseller when it appeared in 1989, Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind was universally hailed as a marvelous survey of modern physics as well as a brilliant reflection on the human mind, offering a new perspective on the scientific landscape and a visionary glimpse of the possible future of science. Now, in Shadows of the Mind, Penrose offers another exhilarating look at modern science as he mounts an even more powerful attack on artificial intelligence. But perhaps more important, in this volume he points the way to a new science, one that may eventually explain the physical basis of the human mind.

Penrose contends that some aspects of the human mind lie beyond computation. This is not a religious argument (that the mind is something other than physical) nor is it based on the brain's vast complexity (the weather is immensely complex, says Penrose, but it is still a computable thing, at least in theory). Instead, he provides powerful arguments to support his conclusion that there is something in the conscious activity of the brain that transcends computation--and will find no explanation in terms of present-day science. To illuminate what he believes this "something" might be, and to suggest where a new physics must proceed so that we may understand it, Penrose cuts a wide swathe through modern science, providing penetrating looks at everything from Turing machines (computers programmed for artificial intelligence) to the implications of Godel's theorem maintaining that conscious thinking must indeed involve ingredients that cannot adequately be simulated by mere computation. Of particular interest is Penrose's extensive examination of quantum mechanics, which introduces some new ideas that differ markedly from those advanced in The Emperor's New Mind, especially concerning the mysterious interface where classical and quantum physics meet. But perhaps the most interesting wrinkle in Shadows of the Mind is Penrose's excursion into microbiology, where he examines cytoskeletons and microtubules, minute substructures lying deep within the brain's neurons. (He argues that microtubules--not neurons--may indeed be the basic units of the brain, which, if nothing else, would dramatically increase the brain's computational power.)

For physics to accommodate something that is as foreign to our current physical picture as the phenomenon of consciousness, we must expect a profound change--one that alters the very underpinnings of our philosophical viewpoint as to the nature of reality. Shadows of the Mind provides an illuminating look at where these changes may take place and what our future understanding of the world may be.

In this authoritative biography, James Hofmann examines the extraordinary life of Andre-Marie Ampere, who made original, significant contributions to mathematics and chemistry and is renowned for his new branch of physics - electrodynamics. A member of the Academie des Sciences, and professor at the Ecole Polytechnique, his accomplishments are remarkable in view of his tragic personal life. One of the elite of early nineteenth-century Parisian science, yet having no formal education, he embraced the scientific optimism of the Enlightenment, and the Catholic faith. This combination of intellectual expectation and emotional spirituality made Ampere's genius both destructive and extraordinarily creative. This, the only biography available in the English language, illuminates the scientific contributions of an individual and his epoch, and provides a fascinating insight into the workings of the scientific mind.

Even as you read these words, a tiny portion of your brain is physically changing. New connections are being sprouted--a circuit that will create a jab of recognition if you encounter the words again. That is one of the theories of memory presented in this intriguing and splendidly readable book, which distills three researchers' inquiries into the processes that enable us to recognize a face that has aged ten years or remember a melody for decades.

Like masterpieces of art, music, and literature, great mathematical theorems are creative milestones, works of genius destined to last forever. Now William Dunham gives them the attention they deserve.

Dunham places each theorem within its historical context and explores the very human and often turbulent life of the creator -- from Archimedes, the absentminded theoretician whose absorption in his work often precluded eating or bathing, to Gerolamo Cardano, the sixteenth-century mathematician whose accomplishments flourished despite a bizarre array of misadventures, to the paranoid genius of modern times, Georg Cantor. He also provides step-by-step proofs for the theorems, each easily accessible to readers with no more than a knowledge of high school mathematics.

A rare combination of the historical, biographical, and mathematical, Journey Through Genius is a fascinating introduction to a neglected field of human creativity.

Eugene Skolnikoff treats the roles of science and technology across the entire range of relations among nations, including security and economic issues, environmental questions, international economic competitiveness, the spread of weapons technology, the demise of communism, the new content of dependency relations, and the demanding new problems of national and international governance. He shows how the structure and operation of the scientific and technological enterprises have interacted with international affairs to lead to the dramatic evolution of world politics experienced in this century, particularly after World War II.

This book composes the proceedings of the international Conference on Geo-Spatial Technologies and Earth Resources (GTER 2022) which was co-organized by Hanoi University of Mining and Geology and the International Society for Mine Surveying (ISM) held at Hanoi city on October 13-14, 2022. GTER 2022 is technically co-sponsored by Vietnam Mining Science and Technology Association (VMST), Vietnam Association of Geodesy, Cartography and Remote Sensing (VGCR), Vietnam National Coal-Mineral Industries Holding Corporation Limited (VINACOMIN), and the Dong Bac Corporation (NECO). GTER 2022 aims to bring together experts, researchers, engineers, and policymakers to discuss and exchange their knowledge and experiences in recent advances research water resources and environmental systems.

The elements of the periodic table come alive in the first book in a stellar non-fiction comic series by Shiho Pate! From oxygen to hydrogen, carbon to plutonium, Animated Science: Periodic Tablemakes chemistry come alive! In this book you'll meet the building blocks of you, the world, and the universe and see how they come together to make everything you see, do and use every day. With a narrative non-fiction text, kid-friendly information and Shiho Pate's engaging illustrations, Animated Science: Periodic Table is a perfect introduction and ready reference, appealing and laugh-out-loud funny. Easily accessible for readers just learning the elements It also has more interesting facts and details for older kids honing their knowledge! The perfect gift for your science fans. Great for all ages!

Millions of people have listened to John H. Lienhard's radio program "The Engines of Our Ingenuity." In this fascinating book, Lienhard gathers his reflections on the nature of technology, culture, and human inventiveness. The book brims with insightful observations. Lienhard writes that the history of technology is a history of us--we are the machines we create. Thus farming dramatically changed the rhythms of human life and redirected history. War seldom fuels invention--radar, jets, and the digital computer all emerged before World War II began. And the medieval Church was a driving force behind the growth of Western technology--Cistercian monasteries were virtual factories, whose water wheels cut wood, forged iron, and crushed olives. Lienhard illustrates his themes through inventors, mathematicians, and engineers--with stories of the canoe, the DC-3, the Hoover Dam, the diode, and the sewing machine. We gain new insight as to who we are, through the familiar machines and technologies that are central to our lives.

For centuries, the sorites paradox has spurred philosophers to think and argue about the problem of vagueness. This volume offers a guide to the paradox which is both an accessible survey and an exposition of the state of the art, with a chapter-by-chapter presentation of all of the main solutions to the paradox and of all its main areas of influence. Each chapter offers a gentle introduction to its topic, gradually building up to a final discussion of some open problems. Students will find a comprehensive guide to the fundamentals of the paradox, together with lucid explanations of the challenges it continues to raise. Researchers will find exciting new ideas and debates on the paradox.

The Aboveground Steel Storage Tank Handbook I like the summary of regulations in conjunction with industry standards and products. Usually a book covers one or the other. —Wayne Geyer, Executive Vice-President, Steel Tank Institute I think this is a valuable text in that it does a very good job presenting the two types of ASTs. —Darryl J. Butkos, Hydrogeologist and Environmental Engineer The U.S. aboveground storage tank (AST) market will approach $2.0 billion in 1995 and has an annual growth rate of approximately 5 percent. Shop-built ASTs have proliferated over the last 10 years and are replacing the underground tanks that have caused a large percentage of groundwater contamination. Larger field-erected tanks are now found at almost every industrial facility because of their greater reliability and the lessened risk of environmental spills. The Aboveground Steel Storage Tank Handbook discusses the myriad of regulations, codes, and manufacturing standards and shows how they are intertwined. It is the first handbook on aboveground storage tanks that explains the unique differences between field-erected ASTs and shop-built ASTs. The authors have divided the Handbook into four easy-to-understand sections: Markets, Regulations, Standards, and Products. Anyone who finds himself or herself working through the maze of the AST compliance paperwork will find this book to be a great benefit as a single-source reference guide.

In describing the career of Abraham Yagel, a Jewish physician, kabbalist, and naturalist who lived in northern Italy from 1553 to about 1623, David Ruderman observes the remarkable interplay between early modern scientific thought and religious and occult traditions from a wholly new perspective: that of Jewish intellectual life. Whether he was writing about astronomical discoveries, demons, marvelous creatures and prodigies of nature, the uses of magic, or reincarnation, Yagel made a consistent effort to integrate empirical study of nature with kabbalistic and rabbinic learning. Yagel's several interests were united in his belief in the interconnectedness of all thing-a belief, shared by many Renaissance thinkers, that turns natural phenomena into "signatures" of the divine unity of all things. Ruderman argues that Yagel and his coreligionists were predisposed to this prevalent view because of occult strains in traditional Jewish thought He also suggests that underlying Yagel's passion for integrating and correlating all knowledge was a powerful psychological need to gain cultural respect and acceptance for himself and for his entire community, especially in a period of increased anti-Semitic agitation in Italy. Yagel proposed a bold new agenda for Jewish culture that underscored the religious value of the study of nature, reformulated kabbalist traditions in the language of scientific discourse so as to promote them as the highest form of human knowledge, and advocated the legitimate role of the magical arts as the ultimate expression of human creativity in Judaism. This portrait of Yagel and his intellectual world will well serve all students of late Renaissance and early modern Europe.

By the 1920s in Central Europe, it had become a truism among intellectuals that natural science had "disenchanted" the world, and in particular had reduced humans to mere mechanisms, devoid of higher purpose. But could a new science of "wholeness" heal what the old science of the "machine" had wrought? Some contemporary scientists thought it could. These years saw the spread of a new, "holistic" science designed to nourish the heart as well as the head, to "reenchant" even as it explained. Critics since have linked this holism to a German irrationalism that is supposed to have paved the way to Nazism. In a penetrating analysis of this science, Anne Harrington shows that in fact the story of holism in Germany is a politically heterogeneous story with multiple endings. Its alliances with Nazism were not inevitable, but resulted from reorganizational processes that ultimately brought commitments to wholeness and race, healing and death into a common framework.

Before 1933, holistic science was a uniquely authoritative voice in cultural debates on the costs of modernization. It attracted not only scientists with Nazi sympathies but also moderates and leftists, some of whom left enduring humanistic legacies. Neither a "reduction" of science to its politics, nor a vision in which the sociocultural environment is a backdrop to the "internal" work of science, this story instead emphasizes how metaphor and imagery allow science to engage "real" phenomena of the laboratory in ways that are richly generative of human meanings and porous to the social and political imperatives of the hour.