Wetenschap en Techniek algemeen

 Space and time are the most fundamental features of our experience of the world, and yet they are also the most perplexing. Does time really flow, or is that simply an illusion? Did time have a beginning? What does it mean to say that time has a direction? Does space have boundaries, or is itinfinite? Is change really possible? Could space and time exist in the absence of any objects or events? Are our space and time unique, or could there be other, parallel worlds with their own space and time? What, in the end, are space and time? Do they really exist, or are they simply theconstructions of our minds?Robin Le Poidevin provides a clear, witty, and stimulating introduction to these deep questions, and many other mind-boggling puzzles and paradoxes. He gives a vivid sense of the difficulties raised by our ordinary ideas about space and time, but he also gives us the basis to think about theseproblems independently, avoiding large amounts of jargon and technicality.His book is an invitation to think philosophically rather than a sustained argument for particular conclusions, but Le Poidevin does advance and defend a number of controversial views. He argues, for example, that time does not actually flow, that it is possible for space and time to be both finiteand yet be without boundaries, and that causation is the key to an understanding of one of the deepest mysteries of time: its direction.Travels in Four Dimensions draws on a variety of vivid examples and stories from science, history, and literature to bring its questions to life. No prior knowledge of philosophy is required to enjoy this book. The universe might seem very different after reading it.

De mensheid heeft altijd al een bijzondere band met de planeet Mars gehad. Zo bestaat er een oud Australisch cultusvoorwerp waarop ons zonnestelsel is afgebeeld met als middelpunt de planeet Mars, in de Sahara bevinden zich in de rotsen 8000 jaar oude beelden die reusachtige Marsgoden voorstellen en de drie grote piramides van Gizeh lijken op de Tharsis-regio op Mars georiënteerd. Maar de planeet Mars heeft meer mysteries te bieden die ook de moderne mens blijven boeien. In 1976 maakte de Amerikaanse ruimtesonde Viking 1 foto's van de planeet waarop duidelijk een menselijk gezicht en de sporen van piramides en andere rulines te herkennen zijn - een ontdekking die zou kunnen wijzen op leven op Mars. Een intrigerende gedachte die mogelijk een verklaring zou kunnen zijn voor het toenemen van het aantal UFO-meldingen in periodes waarin Mars zich dicht bij de aarde bevindt. Zouden daarom wellicht ook zoveel Marssondes - zoals de Amerikaanse 'Mars Observer' op mysterieuze wijze verdwijnen of zelfs geheel defect raken? In het gezicht van Mars licht de Oostenrijkse Marsdeskundige Walter Hain (ontdekker van het Marsgezicht) een tipje van de sluier op. Een spannend relaas over de mysterieuze ontdekkingen die met deze intrigerende planeet samenhangen.

Hoe slim techniek in elkaar steekt, snap je pas als je er een tekening van ziet. Dit boek bevat een keur aan technische illustraties waarvan de meeste eerder verschenen in het tijdschrift De Ingenieur. De aantrekkelijke illustraties maken de techniek om ons heen tastbaar, begrijpelijk en leuk. Je ziet in een oogopslag hoe dingen werken, hoe een bouwproject verloopt, hoe een mechanische constructie in elkaar zit of hoe een biologisch proces werkt.

The #1 NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller
The basis for the PBS Ken Burns Documentary The Gene: An Intimate History

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a fascinating history of the gene and “a magisterial account of how human minds have laboriously, ingeniously picked apart what makes us tick” (Elle).

“Sid Mukherjee has the uncanny ability to bring together science, history, and the future in a way that is understandable and riveting, guiding us through both time and the mystery of life itself.” —Ken Burns

“Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee dazzled readers with his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies in 2010. That achievement was evidently just a warm-up for his virtuoso performance in The Gene: An Intimate History, in which he braids science, history, and memoir into an epic with all the range and biblical thunder of Paradise Lost” (The New York Times). In this biography Mukherjee brings to life the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.

“Mukherjee expresses abstract intellectual ideas through emotional stories…[and] swaddles his medical rigor with rhapsodic tenderness, surprising vulnerability, and occasional flashes of pure poetry” (The Washington Post). Throughout, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—reminds us of the questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In riveting and dramatic prose, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome.

“A fascinating and often sobering history of how humans came to understand the roles of genes in making us who we are—and what our manipulation of those genes might mean for our future” (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel), The Gene is the revelatory and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master. “The Gene is a book we all should read” (USA TODAY).

The discovery of fundamental laws of nature has influenced the fate of Homo sapiens more than anything else. Has modern physics already understood these laws? Many puzzles formulated by Albert Einstein or Paul Dirac are still unsolved today, in particular the meaning of fundamental constants. In this book, it is argued that a rational description of nature must do without any constants. A thorough analysis of the history of physics leads to the conclusion that there is a serious problem with what have been considered the basis of reality for centuries: Space and time. These may be the most accessible concepts for human perception, but are probably unsuitable for a basic understanding of nature. A methodological and historical analysis shows, however, that the underlying problem of physics is deep, unexpected and fatal: the concepts of space and time themselves, the basis of science since Newton, could be fundamentally inappropriate for the description of reality, although-or precisely because-they are so easily accessible to human perception. A new understanding of reality can only arise from mathematics. By exploring the three-dimensional unit sphere, which could replace the concepts of space and time, the author presents a mathematical vision that points the way to a new understanding of reality.

When Dr Ben Goldacre saw someone on daytime TV dipping her feet in an Àqua Detox' footbath, releasing her toxins into the water and turning it brown, he thought he'd try the same at home. L̀ike some kind of Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General', using his girlfriend's Barbie doll, he gently passed an electrical current through the warm salt water. It turned brown. In his words: b̀efore my very eyes, the world's first Detox Barbie was sat, with her feet in a pool of brown sludge, purged of a weekend's immorality.' Dr Ben Goldacre is the author of the BAD SCIENCE column in the Guardian and his book is about all the b̀ad science' we are constantly bombarded with in the media and in advertising. At a time when science is used to prove everything and nothing, everyone has their own b̀ad science' moments from the useless pie-chart on the back of cereal packets to the use of the word v̀isibly' in cosmetics ads. This book will help people to quantify their instincts that a lot of the so-called s̀cience' which appears in the media and in advertising is just wrong or misleading. Satirical and amusing and unafraid to expose the ridiculous it provides the reader with the facts they need to differentiate the good from the bad.

THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS tells the story of how science, revolutionary politics, and the dream of a new economy converged to produce both the metric system and the first struggle over globalization.
Amidst the scientific fervor of the Revolution two French scientists, Delambre and Mechain, were sent out on an expedition to measure the shape of the world and thereby establish the metre (which was to be one ten-millionth the distance from pole to equator). Their hope was that people would use the globe as the basis of measure rather than an arbitrary system meted out by the monarchs. As one scientist went north along the French meridian and the other south, their experiences diverged just as radically. After seven years, they received a hero's welcome upon their return to Paris. Mechain, however, was obsessed over a minute error in his calculations that he'd discovered and concealed, and which eventually drove him to his grave. His death forced his colleague Delambre to choose between loyalty to his friend and his science.

In Science, Patricia Fara rewrites science's past to provide new ways of understanding and questioning our modern technological society. Aiming not just to provide information but to make people think, this unique book explores how science has become so powerful by describing the financial interests and imperial ambitions behind its success.
Sweeping through the centuries from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi-tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, Fara's book also ranges internationally, challenging notions of European superiority by emphasising the importance of scientific projects based around the world, including revealing discussions of China and the Islamic Empire alongside the more familiar stories about Copernicus's sun-centered astronomy, Newton's gravity, and Darwin's theory of evolution. We see for instance how Muslim leaders encouraged science by building massive libraries, hospitals, and astronomical observatories and we rediscover the significance of medieval Europe--long overlooked--where, surprisingly, religious institutions ensured science's survival, as the learning preserved in monasteries was subsequently developed in new and unique institutions: universities. Instead of focussing on esoteric experiments and abstract theories, she explains how science belongs to the practical world of war, politics and business. And rather than glorifying scientists as idealized heroes, she tells true stories about real people--men (and some women) who needed to earn their living, who made mistakes, and who trampled down their rivals.
Finally, this provocative volume challenges scientific supremacy itself, arguing that science is successful not because it is always indubitably right, but because people have said that it is right. Science dominates modern life, but perhaps the globe will be better off by limiting science's powers and undoing some of its effects.
"Dismantling popular myths, taking a truly global view and dispensing with false idols, Fara's highly readable survey of science's histories is a breath of fresh air. She unerringly pinpoints the defining moods of each age, treating the past with respect and the present with discernment. This wonderfully literate book tells a story that is far, far more interesting than the tidy fictions of hindsight." -- Philip Ball, Consultant Editor of Nature
"It's been a very long time since any reputable historian of science had the desire, the knowledge, or the nerve to undertake a book like this-- an attempt to survey the development of science from Antiquity to the present, notably including non-European materials. Patricia Fara has succeeded: Science is an elegant and compact creative synthesis of the piecemeal researches of generations of academic historians. It deserves the widest possible readership." - Steven Shapin, Professor of the History of Science, Harvard, and author of The Scientific Revolution

Patricia Fara lectures in the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and is the Senior Tutor of Clare College. She is the author of numerous books, including Fatal Attraction: Magnetic Mysteries of the Enlightenment and Newton: The Making of Genius. Her writing has appeared in History Today, New Scientist, Nature, The Times and New Statesman, and she writes a regular column on scientific portraits for Endeavour.
Books by the same author Fatal Attraction: Magnetic Mysteries of the Enlightenment by Patricia Fara. Published: 2005 Publisher: Icon Books Price: L9.99 Pandora's Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment by Patricia Fara. Published: 2004 Publisher: Pimlico Price: L12.99 Sex, Botany and Empire; the Stories of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks by Patricia Fara. Published: 2003 Publisher: Icon Books Price: L6.99 Newton: the Making of Genius by Patricia Fara. Published: 2002 Publisher: Macmillan Price: L20 An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment by Patricia Fara. Publish

In De maat van het heelal beschrijft Kitty Ferguson de zoektocht naar de grootte van het universum. Het begint met Eratosthenes in Syene, Noord-Afrika, twee eeuwen voor Christus, die de omtrek van de aarde meet met behulp van zonlicht. Hiermee hoopt hij ook de afstand naar de zon en de maan te berekenen. Ferguson volgt deze zoektocht van de Griekse oudheid tot de Hubble-telescoop. Wat lijkt op een beperkt onderwerp, ontvouwt zich als een boeiende geschiedenis van de astronomie, verteld op een begrijpelijke en spannende manier.

Sheldrake argues for a return to the view of nature as a living organism as a precondition for ecological survival. In his opinion, modern mechanistic conceptions of the environment lie at the root of its destruction. His previous books are `A New Science of Life` and `The Presence of the Past`.

The humanities and the sciences face challenging times, each in their own way. The humanities suffer shrinking enrollments and budgets, and are perceived by some as irrelevant in a changing economy. The sciences face a political climate that disrespects academic expertise and challenges settled debates. Meanwhile age-old disputes about their spheres of knowledge continue: does scientific knowledge subsume that of the humanities? Are their forms of knowledge complementary, or ultimately at odds?

Richard Foley, a philosopher of knowledge and the former Dean of Arts and Sciences at New York University, here provides a concise and accessible overview of what the overarching goals of these disciplines are, relative to one another, and what kind of knowledge they aim to produce. His fundamental argument is that the sciences aim at insights that ideally are not limited to particular locations or times and are also perspective-free and wholly descriptive, whereas the humanities appropriately seek insights about specific locations and times, with the insights being perspective-based and having evaluative as well as descriptive elements. He also finds these two spheres of knowledge to be complementary in the search for understanding of our world and the human condition. The ultimate goal of Foley's investigation however is an eloquent defense and celebration of the culture of academic research. In an era of sound-bites and tweet-length falsehoods, this culture values and supports long-term intellectual achievements for the good of humanity - produced with hard work, dedication, and patience. The Geography of Insight is essential reading for readers both inside and outside of the academy.

De beheersing van het vuur was de eerste grote ingreep die de mensheid in de natuur teweeg heeft gebracht en een voorwaarde voor de ontwikkeling van landbouw en industrie. Alleen de mens heeft geleerd vuur te beheersen. Maar die beheersing leidde tot een grotere afhankelijkheid - met vaak onvoorziene gevolgen.

Uiteenzetting over de filosofische consequenties van de nieuwe natuurkundige inzichten.

Popular math at its most entertaining and enlightening. "Zero is really something"-Washington Post

A New York Times Notable Book.

The Babylonians invented it, the Greeks banned it, the Hindus worshiped it, and the Church used it to fend off heretics. Now it threatens the foundations of modern physics. For centuries the power of zero savored of the demonic; once harnessed, it became the most important tool in mathematics. For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.

In Zero, Science Journalist Charles Seife follows this innocent-looking number from its birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its rise and transcendence in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics. Here are the legendary thinkers—from Pythagoras to Newton to Heisenberg, from the Kabalists to today's astrophysicists—who have tried to understand it and whose clashes shook the foundations of philosophy, science, mathematics, and religion. Zero has pitted East against West and faith against reason, and its intransigence persists in the dark core of a black hole and the brilliant flash of the Big Bang. Today, zero lies at the heart of one of the biggest scientific controversies of all time: the quest for a theory of everything.

Korte uitleg van diverse, meest natuurkundige, wetten.

Wat als? geeft hilarische en informatieve antwoorden op belangrijke vragen waar je nooit aan zou denken.

The Growth of Scientific Knowledge

Onderzoekt gebruiksvriendelijkheid bij mens-machine interacties met introductie van het begrip Flow. 

Overzicht van belangrijke wetenschappelijke ontwikkelingen op het gebied van de natuurwetenschappen vanaf de achttiende eeuw.

De wereldberoemde wetenschapper en bestsellerauteur Stephen Hawking laat ons zijn laatste ideeën over de grootste vragen van het universum na in dit briljante, postuum uitgegeven werk. Het laatste boek van professor Stephen Hawking. Hoe is alles begonnen? Is er intelligent leven elders in het heelal? Kunnen we de toekomst voorspellen?Bestaat er een God? Wat zit er in een zwart gat? Zijn tijdreizen mogelijk? Zullen we overleven op aarde? Moeten we de ruimte koloniseren? Zal kunstmatige intelligentie slimmer worden dan wij? Hoe geven wij de toekomst vorm?

Albert Einstein was een uitzonderlijk wetenschappelijk genie. Zijn ruimte-tijdtheorieën legden het fundament van de moderne natuurkunde. Einstein was niet alleen een briljante natuurkundige, maar ook een strijder voor de mensenrechten, een politiek activist en het beelden archetype van de verstrooide geleerde professor. Einstein in 3 minuten is een inleiding over het grote genie van de tijd. In deze behapbare biografie is Einsteins leven in stukken van 3 minuten verdeeld. U leest de stukjes met de snelheid van het licht.

Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted?

Today, number crunching affects your life in ways you might never imagine. In this lively and groundbreaking new book, economist Ian Ayres shows how today's best and brightest organizations are analyzing massive databases at lightening speed to provide greater insights into human behavior. They are the Super Crunchers. From internet sites like Google and Amazon that know your tastes better than you do, to a physician's diagnosis and your child's education, to boardrooms and government agencies, this new breed of decision makers are calling the shots. And they are delivering staggeringly accurate results. How can a football coach evaluate a player without ever seeing him play? Want to know whether the price of an airline ticket will go up or down before you buy? How can a formula outpredict wine experts in determining the best vintages? Super crunchers have the answers. In this brave new world of equation versus expertise, Ayres shows us the benefits and risks, who loses and who wins, and how super crunching can be used to help, not manipulate us.

Gone are the days of solely relying on intuition to make decisions. No businessperson, consumer, or student who wants to stay ahead of the curve should make another keystroke without reading Super Crunchers.

Een kleine stap voor een mens; een reuzensprong voor de mensheid. 'Vijfentwintig jaar geleden, op 21 juli 1969, zette de mens voor het eerst voet op de maan. Vierhonderdduizend kilometer van huis, op een stoffige wereld zonder lucht en water. De maan veranderde van een vertrouwd, zilverwit hemellichaam in een grauwe stenen bal met kraters en keien. Heeft de maan nu haar betovering verloren? Wetenschapsjournalist Govert Schilling meent van niet. De feiten van nu zijn vele malen boeiender en wonderlijker dan de fabels van weleer. Door meer te weten over de maan neemt de verwondering eerder toe. In dit rijk geïllustreerde boek wordt een vrijwel compleet beeld geschetst van onze huidige kennis over de maan. Over haar ontstaan en opbouw en het wetenschappelijk onderzoek; over het spectaculaire Apollo-project; over maanbaan en schijngestalten. Maar ook over samenstanden en verduisteringen; over bijgeloof, mythe en maanbewoners; en over de betekenis van de maan voor het leven op aarde. Gezichten van de maan vormt een waardevolle kennismaking met het dichtstbijzijnde hemellichaam.