Can the existence of God by proven by science? The answer will still surprise you. Since the advent of science in the 16th century, it has navigated mankind in the direction of mechanistic materialism, and as a consequence to atheism. Since the beginning of the 20th century this direction has changed. Relativity and quantum physics, in conjunction with Big Bang cosmology, laid the foundation for a revolution in physics, in what became labelled as the "New Physics". Subsequently during the 1970's it was discovered that the universe, at every level and from its first billionth of a second at the time of its creation, was mysteriously fine-tuned. This fine-tuning comprises the inexplicable and delicate balance of the four fundamental forces that rule the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and the weak nuclear forces. This discovery implies that even the most basic building blocks of matter, such as atoms and its sub-atomic particles, can only exist by the grace of an inexplicable, complex and delicate balance between these forces. The chance that this fine-tuning could have emerged spontaneously and fortuitously, is not only improbable, but utterly impossible. Intelligence or Chaos elucidates that the complexity and fine-tuning of the universe can only be explained by the presence of an all-pervasive intelligence, the source and reservoir of the Information that actually guides and controls the universe. For the first time in history such a conclusion is confirmed by indubitable scientific evidence. The existence of an all-pervading intelligence, as expressed in the principle of fine-tuning, is also at the core of the ancient Vedanta philosophy of India. The author explores how Vedanta disentangles some of the paradoxes encountered in quantum physics and major cosmological questions such as the Big Bang and its origin. Using the latest empirical and scientific evidence Intelligence or Chaos clearly shows that the universe is ruled by intelligence and information, and not by chance and chaos.

In the visionary tradition of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring, One Square Inch of Silence "alerts us to beauty that we take for granted and sounds an urgent environmental alarm. Natural silence is our nation's fastest-disappearing resource, warns Emmy-winning acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, who has made it his mission to record and preserve it in all its variety--before these soul-soothing terrestrial soundscapes vanish completely in the ever-rising din of man-made noise. Recalling the great works on nature written by John Muir, John McPhee, and Peter Matthiessen, this beautifully written narrative, co-authored with John Grossmann, is also a quintessentially American story--a road trip across the continent from west to east in a 1964 VW bus. But no one has crossed America like this. Armed with his recording equipment and a decibel-measuring sound-level meter, Hempton bends an inquisitive and loving ear to the varied natural voices of the American landscape--bugling elk, trilling thrushes, and drumming, endangered prairie chickens. He is an equally patient and perceptive listener when talking with people he meets on his journey about the importance of quiet in their lives. By the time he reaches his destination, Washington, D.C., where he meets with federal officials to press his case for natural silence preservation, Hempton has produced a historic and unforgettable sonic record of America. With the incisiveness of Jack Kerouac's observations on the road and the stirring wisdom of Robert Pirsig repairing an aging vehicle and his life, "One Square Inch of Silence "provides a moving call to action. More than simply a book, it is an actual place, too, located in one of America's last naturally quiet places, in Olympic National Park in Washington State.

Introduction to Deep Learning and Neural Networks with Python (TM): A Practical Guide is an intensive step-by-step guide for neuroscientists to fully understand, practice, and build neural networks. Providing math and Python (TM) code examples to clarify neural network calculations, by book's end readers will fully understand how neural networks work starting from the simplest model Y=X and building from scratch. Details and explanations are provided on how a generic gradient descent algorithm works based on mathematical and Python (TM) examples, teaching you how to use the gradient descent algorithm to manually perform all calculations in both the forward and backward passes of training a neural network.

Teyler's Foundation in Haarlem and its 'Book and Art Room' of 1779, edited by Ellinoor Bergvelt and Debora Meijers, examines for the first time this institution in the context of scientific, museological, political, artistic, religious and philosophical developments. The key moment was the decision in 1779 to give a free interpretation to the testament of its founder, the Mennonite entrepreneur Pieter Teyler van der Hulst (1702-1778): stimulated by the naturalist Martinus van Marum, the Foundation's board decided to build an impressive museum room and to establish a natural science collection. The institution thus entered an era in which older scientific and collecting traditions engaged with new developments towards a research institution and a public museum of natural history, physics and art. Contributors: Ellinoor S. Bergvelt, Terry van Druten, Arnold Heumakers, Eric Jorink, Paul Knolle, Debora Meijers, Wijnand Mijnhardt, Bert Sliggers, Koenraad Vos, and Holger Zaunstoeck.

This book is a theoretical inquiry into alternative pedagogies that challenge current standardized practices in the field of science education. Through Mandy Hoffen, a fictional persona, Dana McCullough, the author, explores how stories of Henrietta Lacks become part of a conspiracy to change science education. Mandy Hoffen, however, never expected to find herself in the middle of a conspiracy. As a science teacher of 20 plus years, she worked diligently to meet the needs of her charges, who are currently ninth and tenth grade biology students in an age of standardized testing. The author also creates imaginary dialogues which serve as the theoretical framework for each chapter. Each chapter unfolds in a form of a play with imaginary settings and events that bring Henrietta Lacks back from the grave to participate in conversations about science, society, and social justice. The imaginary conversations are based on the author's experiences in graduate courses, direct quotations from philosophers of science, historians of science, science educators, curriculum theorists, and stories of students in their study of Henrietta Lacks in a high school biology classroom. The play describes the journey of a graduate student/high school teacher as she researches the importance of the philosophy of science, history of science, science curriculum and social justice in science education. Through reflections on fictional conversations, stories of Henrietta Lacks are examined and described in multiple settings, beginning in an imaginary academic meeting, and ending with student conversations in a classroom. Each setting provides a space for conversations wherein participants explore their personal connections with science, science curriculum, issues of social justice related to science, and Henrietta Lacks. This book will be of interest to graduate students, scholars, and undergraduates in curriculum studies, educational foundations, and teacher education, and those interested in alternative research methodologies. This is the first book to intentionally address the stories of Henrietta Lacks and their importance in the field of curriculum studies, science studies, and current standardized high school science curriculum.

This volume contains eighteen papers that have been collected by the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics. It showcases rigorously-reviewed contemporary scholarship on an interesting variety of topics in the history and philosophy of mathematics, as well as the teaching of the history of mathematics.   Some of the topics explored include Arabic editions of Euclid’s Elements from the thirteenth century and their role in the assimilation of Euclidean geometry into the Islamic intellectual tradition Portuguese sixteenth century recreational mathematics as found in the Tratado de Prática Darysmetica  A Cambridge correspondence course in arithmetic for women in England in the late nineteenth century The mathematical interests of the famous Egyptologist Thomas Eric (T. E.) Peet  The history of Zentralblatt für Mathematik and Mathematical Reviews and their role in creating a publishing infrastructure for a global mathematical literature The use of Latin squares for agricultural crop experiments at the Rothamsted Experimental Station The many contributions of women to the advancement of computing techniques at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in the 1960s The volume concludes with two short plays, one set in Ancient Mesopotamia and the other in Ancient Egypt, that are well suited for use in the mathematics classroom. Written by leading scholars in the field, these papers are accessible not only to mathematicians and students of the history and philosophy of mathematics, but also to anyone with a general interest in mathematics.