• History Philosophy
  • Science and technology in twentieth century American life by Christopher Cumo

    By Christopher Cumo

    The 20th century witnessed the best alterations in expertise and technological know-how that people have ever witnessed. those happened swiftly and affected this sort of large variety of individuals. Scientists, inventors, and engineers outfitted upon the good innovations of the nineteenth century to extend the succeed in of contemporary expertise - for a citizen in 1900, conversation, transportation, and agricultural used to be nonetheless essentially neighborhood actions; by way of 2000, an American citizen was once a part of an interconnected worldwide neighborhood. those advancements in technology and expertise have been additionally vital within the social and cultural adjustments of the interval. the good melancholy, the realm Wars and chilly struggle, the civil rights and women's rights pursuits - all have been drastically impacted via the quick clinical and technological developments within the universities and undefined.

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  • History Philosophy
  • Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug by Diarmuid Jeffreys

    By Diarmuid Jeffreys

    Americans take hundreds of thousands of aspirin every year, little dreaming that the likely usual tablet is without doubt one of the such a lot notable creations in clinical background.

    Aspirin is a drug so astonishingly flexible that it might probably relieve your headache, ease your aching limbs, decrease your temperature, and deal with many of the deadliest human illnesses, combating every little thing from center assaults to melanoma to strokes. And the background of the drug is simply as surprising.

    Rich in dramatic twists and discoveries, the tale of aspirin starts off in old Egypt, and embraces wars, epidemics, espionage, an Oxfordshire vicar, a forgotten Jewish scientist, the economic Revolution, a typical tree, the Treaty of Versailles, the world's strongest pharmaceutical businesses, Auschwitz, a mercurial ads genius, and masses extra. Bringing alive a compelling forged of characters in a stunning trip throughout centuries, the writer finds how likelihood and layout introduced the drug into being as we all know it on the finish of the 19th century, and the way intrigue, greed, and ambition mixed to make aspirin the most commercially profitable items of all time.

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  • History Philosophy
  • The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of by Michael D. Gordin

    By Michael D. Gordin

    Properly analyzed, the collective mythological and spiritual writings of humanity show that round 1500 BC, a comet swept perilously with reference to Earth, triggering frequent ordinary mess ups and perilous the destruction of all existence ahead of settling into sunlight orbit as Venus, our nearest planetary neighbor.
     
    Sound incredible? good, from 1950 until eventually the overdue Nineteen Seventies, an incredible variety of humans begged to vary, as they gobbled Immanuel Velikovsky’s significant best-seller, Worlds in Collision, insisting that maybe this polymathic philosopher held the main to a brand new technological know-how and a brand new historical past. Scientists, nonetheless, assaulted Velikovsky’s publication, his fans, and his press mercilessly from the get-go. In The Pseudoscience Wars, Michael D. Gordin resurrects the mostly forgotten determine of Velikovsky and makes use of his unusual profession and unusually influential writings to discover the altering definitions of the road that separates valid medical inquiry from what's deemed bunk, and to teach how very important this query continues to be to us this present day. Drawing on a wealth of formerly unpublished fabric from Velikovsky’s own information, Gordin provides a behind-the-scenes background of the writer’s profession, from his preliminary burst of good fortune via his becoming effect at the counterculture, heated public battles with such luminaries as Carl Sagan, and eventual eclipse. alongside the way in which, he deals interesting glimpses into the histories and results of different fringe doctrines, together with creationism, Lysenkoism, parapsychology, and more—all of that have mind-blowing connections to Velikovsky’s theories.
     
    Science this day is hardly ever universally safe, and scientists appear themselves beset by way of critics, denialists, and people they label “pseudoscientists”—as obvious all too sincerely in battles over evolution and weather switch. The Pseudoscience Wars simultaneously unearths the marvelous chilly struggle roots of our modern obstacle and issues readers to another method of drawing the road among wisdom and nonsense.

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  • History Philosophy
  • Lectures on Vanishing Theorems by Helene Esnault, Eckart Viehweg

    By Helene Esnault, Eckart Viehweg

    This publication, a longer number of lectures introduced at "Schloss Reisenburg" in the course of the DMV-Seminar "Algebraic Geometry, 1991", goals at offering Kodaira's vanishing theorem and a number of other generalizations in a manner that's as algebraic as attainable. We boost the idea of logarithmic de Rham complexes, using the corresponding spectral series, lifting homes for manifolds and their Frobenius morphisms in attribute p zero and the facts of the degenration of the Hodge to de Rham spectral series with algebraic tools, because of P. Deligne and L. Illusie. We follow these how you can receive vanishing theorems. a number of common functions and the favourite theorems of M. eco-friendly and R. Lazarsfeld whole the image. The exposition is self-contained and obtainable to someone with heritage in smooth algebraic geometry. the required formalisms from cohomology thought are recalled in an appendix. The workshop equipped via the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (German arithmetic Society) are meant to aid, specifically, scholars and more youthful mathematicians, to acquire an advent to fields of present learn. in the course of the technique of those well-organized seminars, scientists shape different fields is additionally brought to new mathematical rules. The e-book of those workshops within the sequence DMV SEMINAR will make the cloth to be had to a good higher viewers.

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  • History Philosophy
  • Nicolas-Louis De La Caille, Astronomer and Geodesist by Ian Stewart Glass

    By Ian Stewart Glass

    L. a. Caille used to be one of many observational astronomers and geodesists who Newton in constructing rules approximately celestial mechanics and the form of the earth. He supplied info to the good 18th-century mathematicians focused on knowing the complicated gravitational results that the heavenly our bodies have on each other.

    Observing from the Cape of excellent desire, he made the 1st ever telescopic sky survey and gave a number of the southern constellations their present-day names. He measured the trails of the planets and made up our minds their distances through trigonometry. moreover, he made a arguable size of the radius of the earth that appeared to end up it was once pear-shaped.

    On a realistic point, los angeles Caille constructed the strategy of `Lunars' for choosing longitudes at sea. He mapped the Cape. As an influential instructor he propagated Newton's idea of common gravitation at a time while it used to be in basic terms starting to be authorized at the eu continent.

    This ebook provides the main entire review thus far on hand of los angeles Caille's lifestyles and paintings, displaying how he interacted along with his frequently tricky colleagues. It areas distinct emphasis on his lifestyles at, and his observations and reviews on, the Cape of fine wish, the place he spent the years 1751-53.

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  • History Philosophy
  • The Nature of the Physical World by ARTHUR EDDINGTON

    By ARTHUR EDDINGTON

    This paintings has been chosen through students as being culturally very important, and is a part of the data base of civilization as we all know it. This paintings was once reproduced from the unique artifact, and continues to be as real to the unique paintings as attainable. for this reason, you'll find the unique copyright references, library stamps (as every one of these works were housed in our most crucial libraries round the world), and different notations within the paintings.

    This paintings is within the public area within the us of a, and probably different countries. in the usa, you'll freely reproduction and distribute this paintings, as no entity (individual or company) has a copyright at the physique of the work.

    As a duplicate of a historic artifact, this paintings might include lacking or blurred pages, negative photographs, errant marks, and so forth. students think, and we concur, that this paintings is necessary sufficient to be preserved, reproduced, and made in most cases on hand to the general public. We take pleasure in your aid of the renovation method, and thanks for being a major a part of holding this data alive and relevant.

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  • History Philosophy
  • James Joseph Sylvester: Life and Work in Letters by Karen Hunger Parshall

    By Karen Hunger Parshall

    Within the folklore of arithmetic, James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897) is the eccentric, hot-tempered, sword-cane-wielding, nineteenth-century British Jew who, including the taciturn Arthur Cayley, constructed a concept and language of invariants that then died spectacularly within the Nineties due to David Hilbert's groundbreaking, `modern' thoughts. This, like several folklore, has a few grounding in reality yet owes a lot to fiction. the current quantity brings jointly for the 1st time a hundred and forty letters from Sylvester's correspondence so as to determine a more true photo. delivering specific mathematical and ancient remark, the writer describes Sylvester in his assorted roles--friend, guy of precept, mathematician, poet, professor, clinical activist, social observer, and traveller--and presents a detailed examine Sylvester's principles and concept procedures. The complicated portrait that emerges bargains deep insights on either the pro and private lives of mathematicians.

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  • History Philosophy
  • In the grip of the distant universe: the science of inertia by Peter Graneau

    By Peter Graneau

    This can be a publication concerning the historical past of the technological know-how of inertia. The e-book additionally concentrates on inertia learn within the twentieth century, happening below the shadow of common relativity, that's obvious as uncomfortable with Mach's precept. A Newtonian paradigm, in keeping with action-at-a-distance forces, is mentioned through the e-book, permitting the revival of Mach's precept because the basically coherent rationalization of the inertia forces which play such a tremendous position within the laboratory and within the cosmos.

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