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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > History of science
Anxiety, the latest volume in the Vitamins and Hormones series
first published in 1943, and the longest-running serial published
by Academic Press, provides up-to-date information on the roles
that hormones and other factors play in anxiety and stress. Each
volume focuses on a single molecule or disease that is related to
vitamins or hormones, with the topic broadly interpreted to include
related substances, such as transmitters, cytokines, growth
factors, and others thoroughly reviewed.
J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) is widely appreciated as one of the
greatest and most influential British scientists of the 20th
century, making significant contributions to genetics, physiology,
biochemistry, biometry, cosmology, and other sciences. More
remarkable, then, is the fact that Haldane had no formal
qualification in science. He made frequent appearances in the
media, making pronouncements on a variety of poignant topics
including mining disasters, meteorites, politics, and the economy,
and was a popular scientific essay writer. Haldane also was famed
for conducting painful experiments on himself, including several
instances in which he permanently himself. A staunch Marxist and
convert to Hinduism, Haldane lived a diverse, lively and
interesting life that is still revered by today's science
community. A biography of Haldane has not been attempted since
1968, and that book provided an incomplete account of the man's
scientific achievement. "The Life and Works of J.B.S. Haldane"
serves to fix this glaring omission, providing a complete
biographical sketch written by Krishna Dronamraju, one of the last
living men to have worked personally with Haldane. A new genre of
biographies of 20th-century scientists has come into being, and
thus far works have been written about men like Einstein,
Oppenheimer, Bernal, Galton, and many more; the inclusion of
Haldane within this genre is an absolute necessity. Dronamraju
evaluates Haldane's social and political background, as well as his
scientific creativity and accomplishments. Haldane embodies a
generation of intellectuals who believed and promoted knowledge for
its own sake, and that spirit of scientific curiosity and passion
is captured in this biography.
This book describes the profound changes that occurred in the
teaching of chemistry in western countries in the years immediately
following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, the first
artificial Earth satellite, in 1957. With substantial government
and private funding, chemistry educators introduced new curricula,
developed programs to enhance the knowledge and skills of chemistry
teachers, conceived of new models for managing chemistry education,
and experimented with a plethora of materials for visualization of
concepts and delivery of content. They also began to seriously
study and apply findings from the behavioral sciences to the
teaching and learning of chemistry. Now, many chemistry educators
are contributing original research in the cognitive sciences that
relates to chemistry education. While Sputnik seemed to signal the
dawn of far-reaching effects that would take place in political,
diplomatic, and strategic, as well as in educational spheres, the
seeds of these changes were sown decades before, mainly through the
insight and actions of one individual, Neil Gordon, who, virtually
singlehandedly, launched the ACS Division of Chemical Education and
the Journal of Chemical Education. These two institutions provided
the impetus for the United States to eventually become the
undisputed leader in chemistry education worldwide.
This book examines the history and fundamentals of the physical
organic chemistry discipline. With the recent flowering of the
organic synthesis field, physical organic chemistry has seemed to
be shrinking or perhaps is just being absorbed into the toolkit of
the synthetic chemist. The only Nobel Prize that can be reasonably
attributed to a physical organic chemist is the 1994 award to
George Olah, although Jeffrey I. Seeman has recently made a strong
case that R. B. Woodward was actually a physical organic chemist in
disguise (I). 2014 saw the awarding of the 50th James Flack Norris
Award in Physical Organic Chemistry. James Flack Norris was an
early physical organic chemist, before the discipline received its
name. This book provides insight into the fundamentals of the
field, and each chapter is devoted to a major discovery or to noted
physical organic chemists, including Paul Schleyer, William
Doering, and Glen A. Russell.
Written by an immunologist, this book traces the concept of
immunity from ancient times up to the present day, examining how
changing concepts and technologies have affected the course of the
science. It shows how the personalities of scientists and even
political and social factors influenced both theory and practice in
the field. With fascinating stories of scientific disputes and
shifting scientific trends, each chapter examines an important
facet of this discipline that has been so central to the
development of modern biomedicine. With its biographical dictionary
of important scientists and its lists of significant discoveries
and books, this volume will provide the most complete historical
reference in the field.
Written in an elegant style by long-time practicing
immunologist
Discusses the changing theories and technologies that guided the
field
Tells of the exciting disputes among prominent scientists
Lists all the important discoveries and books in the field
Explains in detail the many Nobel prize-winning contributions of
immunologists"
Throughout history, people have tried to construct 'theories of
everything': highly ambitious attempts to understand nature in its
totality. This account presents these theories in their historical
contexts, from little known hypotheses from the past to modern
developments such as the theory of superstrings, the anthropic
principle and ideas of many universes, and uses them to
problematize the limits of scientific knowledge. Do claims to
theories of everything belong to science at all? Which are the
epistemic standards on which an alleged scientific theory of the
universe - or the multiverse - is to be judged?
Such questions are currently being discussed by physicists and
cosmologists, but rarely within a historical perspective. This book
argues that these questions have a history and that knowledge of
the historical development of 'higher speculations' may inform and
qualify the current debate of the nature and limits of scientific
explanation.
Devices of Curiosity excavates a largely unknown genre of early
cinema, the popular-science film. Primarily a work of cinema
history, it also draws on the insights of the history of science.
Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers made films about
scientific topics for general audiences, inspired by a vision of
cinema as an educational medium. This book traces the development
of popular-science films over the first half of the silent era,
from its beginnings in England to its flourishing in France around
1910. Devices of Curiosity also considers how popular-science films
exemplify the circulation of knowledge. These films initially
relied upon previous traditions such as the magic-lantern lecture
for their representational strategies, and they continually had
recourse to established visual iconography, but they also created
novel visual paradigms and led to the creation of ambitious new
film collections. Finally, the book discerns a transit between
nonfictional and fictional modes, seeing affinities between
popular-science films and certain aspects of fiction films,
particularly Louis Feuillade's crime melodramas. This kind of
circulation is important for an understanding of the wider
relevance of early popular-science films, which impacted the
formation of the documentary, educational, and avant-garde cinemas.
This book presents a brief compilation of results from nearly a
century of research on the globular star clusters in the Andromeda
Galaxy (M31). It explores the techniques and limitations of the
observations, the successes and challenges of the models, and the
paradigm for the formation of M31 that has gradually emerged. These
results will eventually be superseded by new data, better analysis
techniques, and more complex models. However, the emphasis of this
book is on the techniques, thought processes, and connections with
other studies.
There have been many recent discussions of the replication crisis
in psychology and other social sciences. This has been attributed,
in part, to the fact that researchers hesitate to submit null
results and journals fail to publish such results. In this book,
Allan Franklin and Ronald Laymon analyze what constitutes a null
result and present evidence, spanning a 400-year history, that null
results play significant roles in physics. They begin with
Galileo's experiments on falling bodies and conclude with tests of
the weak equivalence principle in general relativity, the search
for physics beyond the Standard Model, and the search for
neutrinoless double beta decay, all in the 21st century. As these
case studies make evident, null results have refuted theories,
confirmed theories, provided evidence for potential new theories to
explain, introduced new experimental techniques, corrected previous
incorrect or misinterpreted results, and have been used to explore
previously unstudied phenomena. What makes these many roles
possible is the development of increasingly more accurate
replications of a zero value result and the value of these
replications for the effective treatment of systematic uncertainty.
The book concludes with a brief analysis of certain fundamental
differences between physics and social psychology in the role
played by replication where these differences explain the absence
of a replication crisis in physics.
The goal of this book is to introduce a reader to a new philosophy
of teaching and learning physics - Investigative Science Learning
Environment, or ISLE (pronounced as a small island). ISLE is an
example of an "intentional" approach to curriculum design and
learning activities (MacMillan and Garrison 1988 A Logical Theory
of Teaching: Erotetics and Intentionality). Intentionality means
that the process through which the learning occurs is as crucial
for learning as the final outcome or learned content. In ISLE, the
process through which students learn mirrors the practice of
physics.
The nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is the cornerstone of
nonproliferation and disarmament efforts, yet its negotiation and
success was not inevitable. This book aims to address the
developments that led to the negotiation of the treaty, examine its
implementation, and address challenges that the NPT faces going
forward. It begins with an overview of precursor efforts to
establish international limits on nuclear weapons and why these
efforts failed. It also looks at the changes in the political
environment and technical advances, which together increased the
threat of proliferation and drove states to negotiate the NPT. The
second chapter considers the negotiation of the treaty itself and
looks at the gap between US and Soviet positions on key areas like
alliance control of nuclear weapons, and how the two governments
found common ground on nonproliferation language. It also explores
the critical role played by the non-aligned movement to push
inclusion of disarmament provisions that would become the
foundation for Article VI of the treaty and the hesitancy of
nuclear-armed states to support disbarment language and timelines.
Chapter 3 of the book focuses on implementation of the NPT and its
initial successes in heading off states with nuclear weapons
research programs. It addresses how the treaty responded to
challenges like the dissolution of the Soviet Union and gaps
identified by the illicit nuclear weapons programs in Iraq and
North Korea in the early 1990s. Chapter 3 also includes a section
on the debate in 1995 over extending the treaty indefinitely, and
the compromises reached to satisfy the concerns of the non-nuclear
weapon states. Finally, Chapter 4 addresses some of the outstanding
challenges to the NPT that remain unresolved, such as the continued
failure to convene a conference on the Middle East WMD-free zone
and specify the consequences of withdrawing from the NPT, and
repurposing civilian nuclear technology transferred under the
treaty weapons purposes. It also looks at how the ban treaty under
negotiations in the United Nations will support or undermine the
NPT's objectives.
The sea is steadily rising, presently at 3.4 mm per year, and it is
already costing billions in Venice, on the Thames river and in New
York City, to counter sea-level-related surges. Experts anticipate
an accelerated rise, and credible predictions for sea-level rise by
the year 2100 range from 12 inches to above six feet. Study of the
Earth's geologic history, through ice-core samples, links sea-level
rise to temperature rise. Since the lifetime of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere is measured in centuries, and it has upset the
balance of incoming and outgoing energy, the Earth's temperature
will continue to rise, even if carbon burning ceases. Engineering
the Earth's solar input appears increasingly attractive and
practical as a means to lower the Earth's temperature and, thus, to
lower the sea level. The cost of engineering the climate appears
small; comparable, even, to the already-incurred costs of sea-level
rise represented by civil engineering projects in London, Venice
and New York City. Feasible deployment of geoengineering,
accompanied by some reduction in carbon burning, is predicted to
lower the sea level by the order of one foot by 2100, which negates
the expected rise and would provide an immense economic benefit.
The accompanying lower global temperature would reduce the severity
of extreme weather and restore habitability to lethally hot parts
of the world.
Dalton's theory of the atom is generally considered to be what made
the atom a scientifically fruitful concept in chemistry. To be
sure, by Dalton's time the atom had already had a two-millenium
history as a philosophical idea, and corpuscular thought had long
been viable in natural philosophy (that is, in what we would today
call physics).
Atoms in Chemistry will examine episodes in the evolution of the
concept of the atom, particularly in chemistry, from Dalton's day
to our own. It begins with an overview of scientific atomic
theories from the 17th through 20th centuries that analyzes
corpuscular theories of matter proposed or entertained by natural
philosophers in the 17th century. Chapters will focus on
philosophical and religious conceptions of matter, 19th-century
organic structural theories, the debate surrounding the truth of
the atomic-molecular theory, and physical evidence accumulated in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries that suggested that atoms
were actually real, even if they were not exactly as Dalton
envisioned them. The final chapter of this book takes the reader
beyond the atom itself to some of the places associated with the
history of scientific atomism. As a whole, this volume will serve
as a passport to important episodes from the more than 200-year
history of atoms in chemistry.
From the beginnings of industrial capitalism to contemporary
disputes over evolution, nature has long been part of the public
debate over the social good. As such, many natural scientists
throughout American history have understood their work as a
cultural activity contributing to social stability and their field
as a powerful tool for enhancing the quality of American life. In
the late Victorian era, interwar period, and post-war decades,
massive social change, economic collapse and recovery, and the
aftermath of war prompted natural scientists to offer up a
civic-minded natural science concerned with the political
well-being of American society. In Science and the Social Good,
John P. Herron explores the evolving internal and external forces
influencing the design and purpose of American natural science, by
focusing on three representative scientists-geologist Clarence
King, forester Robert Marshall, and biologist Rachel Carson-who
purposefully considered the social outcomes of their work.
As comfortable in the royal courts of Europe as the remote field
camps of the American West, Clarence King was the founding director
of the U.S. Geological Survey, and used his standing to integrate
science into late nineteenth century political debates about
foreign policy, immigration, and social reform. In the mid-1930s,
Robert Marshall founded the environmental advocacy group, The
Wilderness Society, which transformed the face of natural
preservation in America. Committed to social justice, Marshall
blended forest ecology and pragmatic philosophy to craft a natural
science ethic that extended the reach of science into political
discussions about the restructuring of society prompted by
urbanization and economic crisis. Rachel Carson deservedly gets
credit for launching the modern environmental movement with her
1962 classic Silent Spring. She made a generation of Americans
aware of the social costs inherent in the human manipulation of the
natural world and used natural science to critique established
institutions and offer an alternative vision of a healthy and
diverse society. As King, Marshall, and Carson became increasingly
wary of the social costs of industrialization, they used their
scientific work to address problems of ecological and social
imbalance. Even as science became professionalized and
compartmentalized. these scientists worked to keep science relevant
to broader intellectual debates.
John Herron offers a new take on King, Marshall, and especially
Carson and their significance that emphasizes the importance of
their work to environmental, political, and cultural affairs, while
illuminating the broader impact of natural science on American
culture.
For modern scientists, history often starts with last week's
journals and is regarded as largely a quaint interest compared with
the advances of today. However, this book makes the case that,
measured by major advances, the greatest decade in the history of
brain studies was mid-twentieth century, especially the 1950s. The
first to focus on worldwide contributions in this period, the book
ranges through dozens of astonishing discoveries at all levels of
the brain, from DNA (Watson and Crick), through growth factors
(Hamburger and Levi-Montalcini), excitability (Hodgkin and Huxley),
synapses (Katz and Eccles), dopamine and Parkinson's (Carlsson),
visual processing (Hartline and Kuffler), the cortical column
(Mountcastle), reticular activating system (Morruzzi and Magoun)
and REM sleep (Aserinsky), to stress (Selye), learning (Hebb) and
memory (HM and Milner). The clinical fields are also covered, from
Cushing and Penfield, psychosurgery and brain energy metabolism
(Kety), to most of the major psychoactive drugs in use today
(beginning with Delay and Deniker), and much more.
The material has been the basis for a highly successful advanced
undergraduate and graduate course at Yale, with the classic papers
organized and accessible on the web. There is interest for a wide
range of readers, academic, and lay because there is a focus on the
creative process itself, on understanding how the combination of
unique personalities, innovative hypotheses, and new methods led to
the advances. Insight is given into this process through describing
the struggles between male and female, student and mentor, academic
and private sector, and the roles of chance and persistence. The
book thus provides a new multidisciplinary understanding of the
revolution that created the modern field of neuroscience and set
the bar for judging current and future advances.
Bishop Harvey Spencer never thought he'd witness a pandemic-just as he never expected to see the election of a Black president, the election of a female vice president (Black or otherwise), or an insurrection. But all of those things have happened, and our lives have been forever altered. In this book, he seeks to discover what God is trying to reveal to us by letting COVID-19 run rampant. By studying the Bible, he discovered it is not silent when it comes to fighting an infectious disease. He answers questions such as: - How did ancient Israel fight the spread of another infectious disease-leprosy? - What does the Bible tell us about quarantining individuals who are sick or may be sick? - Why do some elected officials continue to display a lack of leadership amid the pandemic? The author also examines what the Bible says about using face coverings, what the world has done to fight other outbreaks of disease, and similarities between COVID-19 and other deadly viruses. Get simple, practical explanations from the Bible that will help you understand the spread of COVID-19-and how to protect yourself-with A Biblical Response to COVID-19.
This book is a long-term history of optics, from early Greek
theories of vision to the nineteenth-century victory of the wave
theory of light. It shows how light gradually became the central
entity of a domain of physics that no longer referred to the
functioning of the eye; it retraces the subsequent competition
between medium-based and corpuscular concepts of light; and it
details the nineteenth-century flourishing of mechanical ether
theories. The author critically exploits and sometimes completes
the more specialized histories that have flourished in the past few
years. The resulting synthesis brings out the actors' long-term
memory, their dependence on broad cultural shifts, and the
evolution of disciplinary divisions and connections. Conceptual
precision, textual concision, and abundant illustration make the
book accessible to a broad variety of readers interested in the
origins of modern optics.
When Sir Cyril Burt died in 1971, he was widely recognized as
Britain's most eminent educational psychologist whose studies of
gifted and delinquent children, contributions to the development of
factor analysis, and research on the inheritance of intelligence
brought widespread acclaim. Within five years of his death,
however, he was publicly denounced as a fraud who had fabricated
data to conclude that intelligence is genetically determined.
Examiners of the published data found serious inconsistencies that
raised questions about their authenticity; the case has divided the
scientific community ever since. Were the charges justified, or was
he a victim of critics fearful of validating such a politically
unacceptable scientific theory? This is an up-to-date and unbiased
analysis of one of the most notorious scandals in science, now more
timely and widely discussed than ever with the publication of The
Bell Curve, the best-selling polemic that raises arguments
comparable to Burt's. The distinguished contributors examine the
controversial areas of Burt's work and argue that his defenders
have sometimes, but by no means always, been correct, and that his
critics have often jumped to hasty conclusions. In their haste,
however, these critics have missed crucial evidence that is not
easily reconciled with Burt's total innocence, leaving the
perception that both cases are seriously flawed. An introductory
chapter lays the background to the case, followed by an examination
of Burt's work that relates to the controversy. The book concludes
with a chapter on Burt's character, other cases of apparent
scientific fraud, and the impact of Burt's alleged fabrications.
These findings have profound implications not only for the study of
psychology, but for the wider issues relating to integrity in
scientific research, and the impact of intelligence testing on
social policy.
Was Plato a Pythagorean? Plato's students and earliest critics
thought so, but scholars since the 19th century have been more
skeptical. In Plato and Pythagoreanism, Phillip Sidney Horky argues
that a specific type of Pythagorean philosophy, called
"mathematical" Pythagoreanism, exercised a decisive influence on
fundamental aspects of Plato's philosophy. The progenitor of
mathematical Pythagoreanism was the infamous Pythagorean heretic
and political revolutionary Hippasus of Metapontum, a student of
Pythagoras who is credited with experiments in harmonics that led
to innovations in mathematics. The innovations of Hippasus and
other mathematical Pythagoreans, including Empedocles of
Agrigentum, Epicharmus of Syracuse, Philolaus of Croton, and
Archytas of Tarentum, presented philosophers like Plato with new
approaches to science that sought to reconcile empirical knowledge
with abstract mathematical theories. Plato and Pythagoreanism shows
how mathematical Pythagoreanism established many of the fundamental
philosophical questions Plato dealt with in his central dialogues,
including Cratylus, Phaedo, Republic, Timaeus, and Philebus. In the
process, it also illuminates the historical significance of the
mathematical Pythagoreans, a group whose influence over the
development of philosophical and scientific methods have been
obscured since late antiquity. The picture that results is one in
which Plato inherits mathematical Pythagorean method only to
transform it into a powerful philosophical argument concerning the
essential relationships between the cosmos and the human being.
For nearly 20 years, the author, Mary Virginia Orna has led Science
History tours to Europe and other parts of the world. Given the
broad popularity of her tours among those in the scientific
community, the ACS initiated a symposium on the topic as well as
this book. The goals of both the Orna-led tours and this book
include learning science through travel to sites where the science
actually happened and describing how such travel can interface with
the professional goals of chemists in academe, industry, and other
areas of endeavor. This book makes it possible to plan a
scientifically-oriented visit to well-known scientific sites armed
with information not necessarily available on the internet or in
guidebooks.
This work is a unique introductory A-Z resource detailing the
scientific achievements of the contemporary world and analyzing the
key scientific trends, discoveries, and personalities of the modern
age. Space exploration. Cloning. The Internet. In the past, such
modern scientific marvels would have been dismissed as the wildest
excesses of science fiction. Yet the age in which humans discovered
DNA-the blueprint of all life on earth-has also seen the
development of terrifying weapons capable of destroying all such
life, as well as a heightened public consciousness about science
and technology. An authoritative reference survey of the modern age
of scientific discovery, Science in the Contemporary World is a
scholarly yet accessible chronicle of scientific achievement from
the discovery of penicillin to the latest developments in space
exploration and cloning. Over 200 A-Z entries cover the full
spectrum of contemporary science, with emphasis on its diverse
nature.
ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSION screamed the headline
of the Los Angeles Times. John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who
helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plotline into a
reality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But
reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a
devotee of black magic.
George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling
portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic
possibility. Fueled by childhood dreams of space flight, Parsons
was a leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who
founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the
American space program. But Parsons's wild imagination also led him
into the occult- for if he could make rocketry a reality, why not
magic?
With a cast of characters including Howard Hughes,
L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, Strange Angel explores the
unruly consequences of genius.
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