Wetenschap en Techniek

Among all the forms of early humans, the Neandertals hold a special place in our imaginations. Thriving through the Ice Age rigors of Europe and western Asia for 150,000 years, they combined enormous physical strength with manifest intelligence. They could not lose. And then, somehow, they lost. The Neandertals disappeared some 35,000 years ago, just as a new kind of human made its gaudy entrance on the continent: Homo sapiens sapiens, the "double wise" species that left its handprints on the walls of caves and the mark of its mind everywhere on the globe. How did it happen? What part did the Neandertals play? Who were they, and what was their fate?

We live in the age of a new scientific revolution, one as sweeping and profound as that launched by Copernicus, one that continues to unfold. Beginning at the turn of the century, with the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics, this second revolution has collapsed the elegant old Newtonian universe. Yet physicists have yet to complete a replacement, as they search for a grand unified theory. Now cosmologist Lee Smolin offers a startling new approach--a theory of the universe that is at once elegant, comprehensive, and radically different from anything proposed before.
In The Life of the Cosmos, Smolin cuts the Gordian knot of cosmology with a simple, powerful idea: "The underlying structure of our world," he writes, "is to be found in the logic of evolution." Today's physicists, he writes, have overturned Newton's view of the universe, yet they continue to cling to an understanding of reality not unlike Newton's own--as a clock, an intricate yet static mechanism. Smolin sees the very fabric of reality as changing and developing. "The laws of nature themselves," he argues, "like the biological species, may not be eternal categories, but rather the creations of natural processes occurring in time." A process of self organization like that of biologal evolution shapes the universe, as it develops and eventually reproduces through black holes, each of which may result in a new big bang and a new universe. Natural selection may guide the appearance of the laws of physics, favoring those universes which best reproduce. Smolin's ideas are based on recent developments in cosmology, quantum theory, relativity and string theory, yet they offer, at the same time, a completely new view of how these developments may fit together to form a new theory of cosmology. The result will be a cosmology according to which the fact that the universe is a home to life will be seen to be a natural consequence of the fundamental principles on which it has been built. This will be in direct contrast with the older point of view, coming from Newtonian physics, according to which the fact that the universe contains life, or any form of organization, is accidental. We exist in a universe filled with an array of beautiful structures ranging from the molecular organization of living things upwards to the galaxies, and science must ultimately explain why. In so doing, science will give us a picture of the universe in which, as the author writes, "the occurrence of novelty, indeed the perpetual birth of novelty, can be understood."
Lee Smolin is one of the leading cosmologists at work today, and he writes with an expertise and force of argument that will command attention throughout the world of physics. As startling as many of his ideas sound, each is subject to testing, and he includes several ideas on how they might be confirmed or disproved. Perhaps most important, however, is the humanity and sharp clarity of his prose, offering access for the layperson to the mind bending space at the forefront of today's physics.

In this jargon-free review of one of the most fascinating topics in modern science, acclaimed science writer Kitty Ferguson examines the discovery of black holes, their nature, and what they can teach us about the mysteries of the universe. In search of the answers, we trace a star from its birth to its death throes, take a hypothetical journey to the border of a black hole and beyond, spend time with some of the world's leading theoretical physicists and astronomers, and take a whimsical look at some of the wild ideas black holes have inspired. Prisons of Light--Black Holes is comprehensive and detailed. Yet Kitty Ferguson's lightness of touch and down-to-earth analogies set this book apart from all others on black holes and make it a wonderfully stimulating and entertaining read.

"All life in all worlds" -- this was the object of the author's seventeen-year quest for knowledge and discovery, culminating in this book. In a manner unmistakably his own, Murchie delves into the interconnectedness of all life on the planet and of such fields as biology, geology, sociology, mathematics, and physics. He offers us what the poet May Sarton has called "a good book to take to a desert island as sole companion, so rich is it in knowledge and insight".

Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) is rightly regarded as one of the founders of modern anthropology. This volume is the author's own abridgement of his great work, and was first published in 1922. It offers the thesis that man progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought.

Though we have other distinguishing characteristics (walking on two legs, for instance, and relative hairlessness), the brain and the behavior it produces are what truly set us apart from the other apes and primates. And how this three-pound organ composed of water, fat, and protein turned a mammal species into the dominant animal on earth today is the story John S. Allen seeks to tell.

Adopting what he calls a “bottom-up” approach to the evolution of human behavior, Allen considers the brain as a biological organ; a collection of genes, cells, and tissues that grows, eats, and ages, and is subject to the direct effects of natural selection and the phylogenetic constraints of its ancestry. An exploration of the evolution of this critical organ based on recent work in paleoanthropology, brain anatomy and neuroimaging, molecular genetics, life history theory, and related fields, his book shows us the brain as a product of the contexts in which it evolved: phylogenetic, somatic, genetic, ecological, demographic, and ultimately, cultural-linguistic. Throughout, Allen focuses on the foundations of brain evolution rather than the evolution of behavior or cognition. This perspective demonstrates how, just as some aspects of our behavior emerge in unexpected ways from the development of certain cognitive capacities, a more nuanced understanding of behavioral evolution might develop from a clearer picture of brain evolution.

In 2001 publiceerde cardioloog Pim van Lommel in het gerenommeerde medische tijdschrift The Lancet over zijn onderzoek naar bijna-dood ervaringen (BDE) bij 344 Nederlandse patiënten. Zij hadden een hartstilstand in het ziekenhuis gehad. Van hen bleken er 62 een BDE te hebben meegemaakt. Van Lommels artikel was wereldnieuws.Sindsdien kunnen we niet meer om het verschijnsel bijna-dood ervaring heen. Het is een authentieke ervaring, niet te herleiden tot fantasie, psychose of zuurstoftekort, een BDE verandert mensen blijvend. In dit boek legt van Lommel stap voor stap uit hoe mensen die klinisch dood zijn toch zon indringende ervaring kunnen hebben. Hij doorspekt zijn betoog met verhalen van mensen die een BDE hebben meegemaakt. Met de meesten van hen heeft Van Lommel persoonlijk contact gehad.Volgens Van Lommel is de heersende, materialistische visie van artsen, filosofen en psychologen op de relatie tussen hersenen en bewustzijn te beperkt is om het verschijnsel te kunnen duiden. Er zijn goede redenen om aan te nemen dat ons bewustzijn niet altijd samenvalt met het functioneren van onze hersenen: het kan ook los van ons lichaam ervaren worden.

Populairwetenschappelijke uitgave over natuurwetenschappelijke concepten van 'niets': van de presocratici tot Newton en daaraan voorbij en van quantumfysica tot quantumkosmologie en gekromde ruimtetijd.

(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.' "

Roger Penrose's groundbreaking and bestselling The Road to Reality (2005) provided a comprehensive yet readable guide to our present understanding of the laws that are currently believed to govern our universe. In Cycles of Time, he moves far beyond this to develop a completely new perspective on cosmology, providing a quite unexpected answer to the often-asked question, ‘what came before the Big Bang?’The two key ideas underlying this novel proposal are a penetrating analysis of the Second Law of thermodynamics—according to which the ‘randomness’ of our world is continually increasing—and a thorough examination of the light-cone geometry of space-time. Penrose is able to combine these two central themes to show how the expected ultimate fate of our accelerating, expanding universe can actually be reinterpreted as the ‘Big Bang’ of a new one.On the way, many other basic ingredients are presented, and their roles discussed in detail, though without any complex mathematical formulae (these all being banished to the appendices). Various standard and non-standard cosmological models are presented, as is the fundamental and ubiquitous role of the cosmic microwave background. Also crucial to the discussion are the huge black holes lying in galactic centres, and their eventual disappearance via the mysterious process of Hawking evaporation.

Overzicht van de belangrijkste wiskundige ontdekkingen.

Dit boek beschrijft de basisbegrippen uit de wiskunde in vijftig heldere essays. Het behandelt onder meer de oorsprong van de
wiskunde, de Egyptische deelsommen en de Romeinse getallen, de bijna mystieke bijklank van het getal Pi, de priemgetallen, de gouden ratio en Fibonacci-getallen. De grote ideeën van relativiteit, chaostheorie, fractals en hyperspace ontbreken evenmin in dit onmisbare overzichtswerk. Het boek begint bij de uitvinding van het getal nul en eindigt met het grootste onopgeloste wiskundige probleem. Wie het oplost kan een miljoen dollar winnen: u hoeft slechts de Riemannhypothese te bewijzen. Rijk geïllustreerd met tabellen en anekdotes, en daarmee het perfecte en toegankelijke overzichtswerk.

Onderzoek naar de hersenen als basis van menselijk gedrag.

How America's high standard of living came to be and why future growth is under threat.

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. Gordon contends that the nation's productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government, and that we must find new solutions. A critical voice in the most pressing debates of our time, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.

Since the beginning of the New Deal, American liberals have insisted that the government must do more--much more--to help the poor, to increase economic security, to promote social justice and solidarity, to reduce inequality, and to mitigate the harshness of capitalism. Nonetheless, liberals have never answered, or even acknowledged, the corresponding question: What would be the size and nature of a welfare state that was not contemptibly austere, that did not urgently need new programs, bigger budgets, and a broader mandate? Even though the federal government's outlays have doubled every eighteen years since 1940, liberal rhetoric is always addressed to a nation trapped in Groundhog Day, where every year is 1932, and none of the existing welfare state programs that spend tens of billions of dollars matter, or even exist.

Never Enough explores the roots and consequences of liberals' aphasia about the welfare state's ultimate size. It assesses what liberalism's lack of a limiting principle says about the long-running argument between liberals and conservatives, and about the policy choices confronting America in a new century. Never Enough argues that the failure to speak clearly and candidly about the welfare state's limits has grave policy consequences. The worst result, however, is the way it has jeopardized the experiment in self-government by encouraging Americans to regard their government as a vehicle for exploiting their fellow-citizens, rather than as a compact for respecting one another's rights and safeguarding the opportunities of future generations.

Most people become rich by spotting opportunities, pioneering new technologies, or besting opponents in negotiations. Fugger did all that, but he had an extra quality that allowed him to rise even higher: nerve. In an era when kings had unlimited power, Fugger had the nerve to stare down heads of state and ask them to pay back their loans—with interest. It was this coolness and self-assurance, along with his inexhaustible ambition, that made him not only the richest man ever, but a force of history as well. Before Fugger came along it was illegal under church law to charge interest on loans, but he got the Pope to change that. He also helped trigger the Reformation and likely funded Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe. His creation of a news service, which gave him an information edge over his rivals and customers, earned Fugger a footnote in the history of journalism. And he took Austria’s Habsburg family from being second-tier sovereigns to rulers of the first empire where the sun never set.

The ultimate untold story, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived is more than a tale about the richest and most influential businessman of all time. It is a story about palace intrigue, knights in battle, family tragedy and triumph, and a violent clash between the 1 percent and everybody else. To understand our financial system and how we got it, it pays to understand Jacob Fugger.

In this accessible book, Gavin Kennedy takes a fresh look at Adam Smith's moral philosophy and its links to his political economy and his lectures on Jurisprudence. The book provides a new analysis of Wealth of Nations , and argues that Adam Smith's intellectual legacy was completely transformed in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries by economists pursuing different agendas, to create ideas and policies that Smith did not advocate. It also provides a new explanation for the main mysteries about Smith's later life.

Who was the greater economist--Adam Smith or Charles Darwin? The question seems absurd. Darwin, after all, was a naturalist, not an economist. But Robert Frank, New York Times economics columnist and best-selling author of The Economic Naturalist, predicts that within the next century Darwin will unseat Smith as the intellectual founder of economics. The reason, Frank argues, is that Darwin's understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Smith's. And the consequences of this fact are profound. Indeed, the failure to recognize that we live in Darwin's world rather than Smith's is putting us all at risk by preventing us from seeing that competition alone will not solve our problems.

Smith's theory of the invisible hand, which says that competition channels self-interest for the common good, is probably the most widely cited argument today in favor of unbridled competition--and against regulation, taxation, and even government itself. But what if Smith's idea was almost an exception to the general rule of competition? That's what Frank argues, resting his case on Darwin's insight that individual and group interests often diverge sharply. Far from creating a perfect world, economic competition often leads to "arms races," encouraging behaviors that not only cause enormous harm to the group but also provide no lasting advantages for individuals, since any gains tend to be relative and mutually offsetting.

The good news is that we have the ability to tame the Darwin economy. The best solution is not to prohibit harmful behaviors but to tax them. By doing so, we could make the economic pie larger, eliminate government debt, and provide better public services, all without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That's a bold claim, Frank concedes, but it follows directly from logic and evidence that most people already accept.

From the bestselling author of 'An English Affair', a dazzlingly original thematic biography which throws fresh light on the greatest economist of the twentieth century.

Amartya Sen argues that most of the conflicts in the contemporary world arise from individuals' notions of who they are, and which groups they belong to - local, national, religious - which define themselves in opposition to others.

For a long time guilds have been condemned as a major obstacle to economic progress in the pre-industrial era. This re-examination of the role of guilds in the early modern European economy challenges that view by taking into account fresh research on innovation, technological change and entrepreneurship. Leading economic historians argue that industry before the Industrial Revolution was much more innovative than previous studies have allowed for and explore the different products and production techniques that were launched and developed in this period. Much of this innovation was fostered by the craft guilds that formed the backbone of industrial production before the rise of the steam engine. The book traces the manifold ways in which guilds in a variety of industries in Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain helped to create an institutional environment conducive to technological and marketing innovations.

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.

A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward?

Time moves forward, not backward—everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself— a period modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed. Increasingly, though, physicists are going out into realms that make the theory of relativity seem like child's play. Carroll's scenario is not only elegant, it's laid out in the same easy-to- understand language that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance, the most popular physics blog on the Net.

From Eternity to Here uses ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical physics to explore how properties of spacetime before the Big Bang can explain the flow of time we experience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that we live in a baby universe, part of a large family of universes in which many of our siblings experience an arrow of time running in the opposite direction. It's an ambitious, fascinating picture of the universe on an ultra-large scale, one that will captivate fans of popular physics blockbusters like Elegant Universe and A Brief History of Time.

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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.

A global view of the demographic and economic development of mankind.

This is the story of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, whose insights transformed the ancient world and still inspire the realms of science, mathematics, philosophy and the arts. Einstein said that the most incredible thing about our universe was that it was comprehensible at all. As Kitty Ferguson explains, Pythagoras had much the same idea - but 2,500 years earlier. Though known by many only for his famous Theorem, in fact the pillars of our scientific tradition - belief that the universe is rational, that there is unity to all things, and that numbers and mathematics are a powerful guide to truth about nature and the cosmos - hark back to the convictions of this legendary scholar. Kitty Ferguson brilliantly evokes Pythagoras' ancient world of, showing how ideas spread in antiquity, and chronicles the incredible influence he and his followers have had on so many extraordinary people in the history of Western thought and science. 'Pythagoras' influence on the ideas, and therefore on the destiny, of the human race was probably greater than that of any single man before or after him' - Arthur Koestler.

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.

Summary: Aan het eind van zijn loopbaan raakt Bert Heemskerk als topman van de Rabobank verzeild in de heftigste crisis in de financiële wereld sinds mensenheugenis. De opmerkelijke gebeurtenissen die wereldwijd plaatsvonden tussen medio 2007 en nu hebben Heemskerk, die in juni 2009 met pensioen gaat, geïnspireerd tot het schrijven van dit boek. In "Een gezonde krimp" schetst hij zijn persoonlijke visie op hoe het zover heeft kunnen komen. Waar kwamen al die zeepbellen opeens vandaan? Hebben de toezichthouders zitten slapen? Waren de bankiers nou echt zo onschuldig? En wie hebben er verder nog een rol gespeeld? Heemskerk blikt ook vooruit.De financiële wereld krijgt met deze crisis namelijk ook een geweldige kans. De kans om beter en duurzamer uit de puinhoop te herrijzen en weer een solide steunpilaar te worden voor toekomstige economische ontwikkelingen. Maar hoe moet dat worden aangepakt? Voor het eerst geeft een topman uit de Nederlandse bankwereld zijn visie op de gang van zaken.