(MOST OF) THE UNIVERSE IS IN YOUR HANDS

"There is a theory in physics that explains, at the deepest level, nearly all of the phenomena that rule our daily lives.... This theory bears the unassuming name "The Standard Model of Elementary Particles," or the "Standard Model," for short. It deserves to be better known, and it deserves a better name. I call it "The Theory of Almost Everything."

The Standard Model has a surprisingly low profile for such a fundamental and successful theory.... In physics news items, the Standard Model usually plays the whipping boy. Reports of successful experimental tests of the theory have an air of disappointment, and every hint of the theory' s inadequacy is greeted with glee. It is the Rodney Dangerfield of physical theories, it "don' t get no respect." But it is, perhaps, the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement to date.

--From the IntroductionPraise for "THE THEORY OF ALMOST EVERYTHING

"In an era when enormous attention is being paid to the promising but highly speculative superstring/M-theory, a great triumph of science has gone nearly unnoticed, except by physicists. Robert Oerter provides here an accessible introduction to the Standard Model--a towering example of human creativity. He outlines how the Standard Model can serve as the launching pad for humanity to--paraphrasing Einstein--see better the secrets of ' the Ancient One.' "

Time - relentless, ever-present but intangible and the single element over which human beings have no absolute control - has long proved a puzzle. The author examines the phenomenon of time and asks such fascinating questions as how time impinges on people, to what extent our awareness of time is culturally conditioned, how societies deal with temporal problems and whether time can be considered a `resource' to be economized. More specifically, he provides a consistent and detailed analysis of theories put forward by a number of thinkers such as Durkheim, Evans-Pritchard, Lévi-Strauss, Geertz, Piaget, Husserl and Bourdieu. His discussion encompasses four main approaches in time research, namely developmental psychology, symbolic anthropology (covering the bulk of post-Durkheimian social anthropology) `economic' theories of time in social geography and, finally, phenomenological theories. The author concludes by presenting his own model of social/cognitive time, in the light of these critical discussions of the literature.

The Universe Is Made Of Bits. The Way In Which The Universe Registers And Processes Information Determines What It Is And How It Behaves. It Has Been Known For More Than A Century That Every Piece Of The Universe - Every Electron, Atom, And Molecule - Registers Bits Of Information. It Is Only In The Last Ten Years, However, With The Discovery And Development Of Quantum Computers, That Scientists Have Gained A Fundamental Understanding Of Just How That Information Is Registered And Processed. Seth Lloyd Calls This Fundamental Understanding Of The Universe In Terms Of Information Processing 'The Computational Universe', And The Purpose Of This Book Is To Show How The Programmed, Computational Universe Works. Starting From Basic Concepts Of Physics, Programming The Universe Shows How All Physical Systems Register Information. It Gives An Accessible Account Of How Information Is Stored And Processed At The Level Of Electrons, Atoms, And Molecules. It Shows How The Information Processing Power Of The Universe Can Be Harnessed To Build Quantum Computers And Explains How The Universe Itself Behaves Like A Gigantic Computer, Transforming And Processing Information. It Traces The History Of Information Processing From The Big Bang To The Present Day, And Reveals How The Computational Ability Of The Universe Promotes The Evolution Of Complex Structures Such As Life. Programming The Universe Is The Story Of The Universe And The Bits It Is Made Of.

What is human consciousness and how is it possible? These questions fascinate thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. This is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains and human culture. Part philosophical whodunnit, part bold scientific conjecture, this landmark work enlarges themes that have sustained Dennett's career at the forefront of philosophical thought. In his inimitable style, laced with wit and thought experiments, Dennett shows how culture enables reflection by installing a profusion of thinking tools, or memes, in our brains, and how language turbocharges this process. The result: a mind that can comprehend the questions it poses, has emerged from a process of cultural evolution.

An agenda-setting book for a new generation of philosophers and thinkers, From Bacteria to Bach and Back is essential for anyone who hopes to understand human creativity in all its applications.

Natuurkunde inzichtelijk gemaakt aan de hand van proeven en demonstraties. Walter Lewin is niet alleen een geniaal wetenschapper, hij staat er vooral ook om bekend de meest ingewikkelde formules begrijpelijk te maken, en zelfs tot leven te wekken. Zo liet hij in de collegezaal een sloopkogel op zich af slingeren en zette hij zichzelf onder stroom met meer dan driehonderdduizend volt. Lewins colleges zijn een ware online hit; ze worden jaarlijks door meer dan twee miljoen mensen bekeken. Ook reist Lewin de hele wereld rond om iedereen de schoonheid van de natuurkunde aan den lijve te laten ondervinden. Gek op natuurkunde is een even aanstekelijk als erudiet boek dat je ogen opent voor de wereld om je heen: hét natuurkundeboek dat iedereen op de middelbare school gehad zou willen hebben.

Beknopt overzicht van de belangrijkste mijlpalen in de wetenschap, de filosofie, de Nederlandse geschiedenis en de Nederlandse literatuur.

How could such an intricate object as the human eye - so complex and so precise - have come about by chance? In this masterful piece of popular science, Richard Dawkins builds a powerful and carefully reasoned argument for evolutionary adapatation as the force behind all life on earth. The metaphor of 'Mount Improbable' represents the combination of perfection and improbability that we find in the seemingly 'designed' complexity of living things. And through it all runs the thread of DNA, the molecule of life, responsible for its own destiny on an unending pilgrimage through time. Evocative illustrations accompany Dawkins' eloquent descriptions of astonishing adaptations in the living world.

Readers worldwide know the work of Stephen Hawking through his phenomenal bestseller A Brief History of Time.

In this collection of essays and other pieces - on subjects that range from warmly personal to the wholly scientific- he is revealed variously as the scientist, the man, the concerned world citizen, and - as always - the rigorous and imaginative thinker. Whether remembering his first experience of nursery school; puncturing the arrogance of those who think science can best be understood only by other scientists and should be left to them; exploring the origins and the future of the universe; or reflecting on the phenomenon of A Brief History of Time, Stephen's wit, directness of style and absence of pomp are vital characteristics at all times.

In The Quantum Self, Danah Zohar argues that the insights of modem physics can illuminate our understanding of everyday life -- our relationships to ourselves, to others, and to the world at large. Guiding us through the strange and fascinating workings of the subatomic realm to create a new model of human consciousness, the author addresses enduring philosophical questions. Does the new physics provide a basis by which our consciousness might continue beyond death? How does the material world (for instance, ugly inner cities) impinge upon our sense of self? Is there a subatomic wellspring from which our creativity, our empathy with others, and our feelings of unity with the inanimate world originate?Most important, Zohar shows how the vitality of the new physics combats the alienation and fragmentation of twentieth-century life, and replaces it with a model of reality in which the universe itself may possess a type of consciousness, of which human consciousness is one expression.

Analyse van de gevolgen van resp. het gebruik van kolen en kernenergie voor de opwekking van electriciteit in Nederland

Hoofdzakelijk voor de H.B.S. met 5-jarigen cursus

Voor elke taak bestaat er een juiste aanpak, een verkeerde aanpak en een aanpak die zo ontzettend bizar is dat niemand er ook maar over peinst hem te gebruiken. Hoe dan? is een humoristische handleiding van bestsellerauteur Randall Munroe voor deze derde aanpak. Een wegwijzer boordevol uiterst onpraktisch advies voor van alles en nog wat, van een gat graven tot hoe je een vliegtuig veilig aan de grond zet.

Net als in zijn eerdere boek Wat als? moedigt Randall Munroe ons op briljante wijze aan om de meest absurde uitersten van het mogelijke op te zoeken. In combinatie met zijn scherpe strips en amusante illustraties is Hoe dan? een heerlijke, verbazingwekkende en hilarische manier om de wetenschap en technologie die achter het dagelijkse leven schuilgaan beter te begrijpen

Inleidende informatie in woord en beeld over Charles Darwin (1809-1882) en zijn evolutietheorie.

Bevat her eerste hoofdstuk van het boek over de geschiedenis van onze kalender (De Jaartelling).

"America's most interesting and important essayist." --Eric Kandel, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Age of Insight

"[Gerald Weissmann] bridges the space between science and the humanities, and particularly between medicine and the muses, with wit, erudition, and, most important, wisdom." --Adam Gopnik

Embryonic stem cell research. Evolution vs. intelligent design. The transformation of medicine into "health care." Climate change. Never before has science been so intertwined with politics, never have we been more dependent on scientific solutions for the preservation of the species.

Transporting us across more than four hundred years of pivotal moments in science and medicine, Gerald Weissmann distills history's lessons for today's new age of sect and violence: "The Endarkenment." Among others, he lingers with Galileo and his daughter in seventeenth-century Florence, Diderot and d'Alembert in Enlightenment Paris, William and Alice James in fin de siècle Boston, James Watson as the John McEnroe of DNA, and Craig Venter decoding the genome at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Weissmann's message is clear: "Experimental science is our defense--perhaps our best defense--against humbug and the Endarkenment."

Gerald Weissmann (August 7, 1930 - July 10, 2019) was a physician, scientist, editor, and essayist whose collections include The Fevers of Reason: New and Selected Essays; Epigenetics in the Age of Twitter: Pop Culture and Modern Science; Mortal and Immortal DNA: Science and the Lure of Myth; and Galileo's Gout: Science in an Age of Endarkenment.

This book sets out to do for evolution what Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy did for that subject. Its authors is a leading evolutionary biologist, and unlike many popular books on evolution, it isn't written to prove a particular theory. Instead it reviews the key problems and the main answers to them, in a balanced account which is also authoritative. It will be an invaluable guide to all students of biology, but the clarity of the arguments and the level of writing make it an excellent introduction for general readers as well. Among the concepts and controversies discussed are the nature of heredity, evolution, natural selection, and the existences of species.

Behandeling van de complexiteitstheorie, waarvan de chaostheorie een onderdeel is, die ervanuit gaat dat een paar simpele ordeningsregels de basis van schijnbaar chaotische systemen vormen.

In this book the author sets out to describe and discuss the philosophical foundations and conceptual problems encountered in the theory of quantum physics. The book describes the basic ideas of quantum physics and discusses both the long standing and the more modern conceptual problems. It then goes on to discuss the 'Measurement Problem' which arises when quantum physics is taken to be the fundamental theory of physics, applicable to large-scale physical systems as well as to atomic phenomena. Various attempts to resolve the resulting contradictions have led some physicists to suggest that human consciousness plays a unique role in the physical world and others to postulate that the physical universe is continually splitting into a huge number of copies of itself. Recent suggestions that quantum physics might be capable of explaining so-called paranormal phenomena are critically reviewed.

berekening aangevuld met:  Geïmproviseerde Lichte Hangbruggen

Openbare les bij de aanvaarding van het ambt van lector in e afdeling der werktuigbouwkunde om onderwijs te geven in de hydraulische werktuigen aan de technische hogeschool te Delft op vrijdag 23 oktober 1959

Inleiding in de deeltjesfysica, met name het Higgsdeeltje.

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.

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