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Author: Michael W Friedlander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429970714
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
Scientific discoveries are constantly in the news. Almost daily we hear about new and important breakthroughs. But sometimes it turns out that what was trumpeted as scientific truth is later discredited, or controversy may long swirl about some dramatic claim. What is a nonscientist to believe? Many books debunk pseudoscience, and some others present only the scientific consensus on any given issue. In At the Fringes of Science Michael Friedlander offers a careful look at the shadowlands of science. What makes Friedlander's book especially useful is that he reviews conventional scientific method and shows how scientists examine the hard cases to determine what is science and what is pseudoscience. Emphasizing that there is no clear line of demarcation between science and nonscience, Friedlander leads the reader through case after entertaining case, covering the favorites of "tabloid science" such as astrology and UFOs, scientific controversies such as cold fusion, and those maverick ideas that were at first rejected by science only to be embraced later. There are many good stories here, but there is also much learning and wisdom. Students of science and interested lay readers will come away from this book with an increased understanding of what science is, how it works, and how the nonscientist should deal with science at its fringes.
Author: Michael W Friedlander
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429970714
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Get Book Here
Book Description
Scientific discoveries are constantly in the news. Almost daily we hear about new and important breakthroughs. But sometimes it turns out that what was trumpeted as scientific truth is later discredited, or controversy may long swirl about some dramatic claim. What is a nonscientist to believe? Many books debunk pseudoscience, and some others present only the scientific consensus on any given issue. In At the Fringes of Science Michael Friedlander offers a careful look at the shadowlands of science. What makes Friedlander's book especially useful is that he reviews conventional scientific method and shows how scientists examine the hard cases to determine what is science and what is pseudoscience. Emphasizing that there is no clear line of demarcation between science and nonscience, Friedlander leads the reader through case after entertaining case, covering the favorites of "tabloid science" such as astrology and UFOs, scientific controversies such as cold fusion, and those maverick ideas that were at first rejected by science only to be embraced later. There are many good stories here, but there is also much learning and wisdom. Students of science and interested lay readers will come away from this book with an increased understanding of what science is, how it works, and how the nonscientist should deal with science at its fringes.
Author: Margaret Wertheim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802778739
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
For the past fifteen years, acclaimed science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting the works of "outsider physicists," many without formal training and all convinced that they have found true alternative theories of the universe. Jim Carter, the Einstein of outsiders, has developed his own complete theory of matter and energy and gravity that he demonstrates with experiments in his backyard,-with garbage cans and a disco fog machine he makes smoke rings to test his ideas about atoms. Captivated by the imaginative power of his theories and his resolutely DIY attitude, Wertheim has been following Carter's progress for the past decade. Centuries ago, natural philosophers puzzled out the laws of nature using the tools of observation and experimentation. Today, theoretical physics has become mathematically inscrutable, accessible only to an elite few. In rejecting this abstraction, outsider theorists insist that nature speaks a language we can all understand. Through a profoundly human profile of Jim Carter, Wertheim's exploration of the bizarre world of fringe physics challenges our conception of what science is, how it works, and who it is for.
Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197555764
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137
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Book Description
"Pseudoscience is not a real thing. The term is a negative category, always ascribed to somebody else's beliefs, not to characterize a doctrine one holds dear oneself. People who espouse fringe ideas never think of themselves as "pseudoscientists"; they think they are following the correct scientific doctrine, even if it is not mainstream. In that sense, there is no such thing as pseudoscience, just disagreements about what the right science is. This is a familiar phenomenon. No believer ever thinks she is a "heretic," for example, or an artist that he produces "bad art." Those are attacks presented by opponents. Yet pseudoscience is also real. The term of abuse is used quite frequently, sometimes even about ideas that are at the core of the scientific mainstream, and those labels have consequences. If the reputation of "pseudoscience" solidifies, then it is very hard for a doctrine to shed the bad reputation. The outcome is plenty of scorn and no legitimacy (or funding) to investigate one's theories. In this, "pseudoscience" is a lot like "heresy": if the label sticks, persecution follows"--
Author: Frank Biess
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022612651X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 439
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Book Description
Through the first half of the twentieth century, emotions were a legitimate object of scientific study across a variety of disciplines. After 1945, however, in the wake of Nazi irrationalism, emotions became increasingly marginalized and postwar rationalism took central stage. Emotion remained on the scene of scientific and popular study but largely at the fringes as a behavioral reflex, or as a concern of the private sphere. So why, by the 1960s, had the study of emotions returned to the forefront of academic investigation? In Science and Emotions after 1945, Frank Biess and Daniel M. Gross chronicle the curious resurgence of emotion studies and show that it was fueled by two very different sources: social movements of the 1960s and brain science. A central claim of the book is that the relatively recent neuroscientific study of emotion did not initiate – but instead consolidated – the emotional turn by clearing the ground for multidisciplinary work on the emotions. Science and Emotions after 1945 tells the story of this shift by looking closely at scientific disciplines in which the study of emotions has featured prominently, including medicine, psychiatry, neuroscience, and the social sciences, viewed in each case from a humanities perspective.
Author: Max Brockman
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191628182
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
The next wave of science writing is here. Editor Max Brockman has talent-spotted 19 young scientists, working on leading-edge research across a wide range of fields. Nearly half of them are women, and all of them are great communicators: their passion and excitement makes this collection a wonderfully invigorating read. We hear from an astrobiologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena about the possibilities for life elsewhere in the solar system (and the universe); from the director of Yale's Comparative Cognition Laboratory about why we keep making the same mistakes; from a Cambridge lab about DNA synthesis; from the Tanzanian savannah about what lies behind attractiveness; we hear about how to breed plants to withstand disease, about ways to extract significance from the Interne's enormous datasets, about oceanography, neuroscience, microbiology, and evolutionary psychology.
Author: Taner Edis
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 161614081X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
In this wide-ranging overview, physicist and acclaimed science writer Edis examines the relationship between today's sciences and religious nonbelief. He provides a very readable, nontechnical introduction to the leading scientific ideas that impinge upon religious belief.
Author: Reto U. Schneider
Publisher: Quercus Books
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
You don't have to be an eccentric obsessive to be a scientist, but it helps... In The Mad Science Book, Reto Schneider tells the extraordinary tales of 100 of the more unusual experiments conducted across seven centuries of science. From the attempts of the 14th-century Dominican monk Theodoric von Freiberg to discover the cause of the rainbow, to the efforts of the 20th-century psychologist Harry Harlow to be the perfect mother to a family of reluctant rhesus monkeys, these are stories that are often bizarre, sometimes mind-boggling - occasionally stomach-churning - but always diverting, informative and enlightening.Among the myriad delights on display in this cabinet of scientific curiosities are the renowned doctor from Padua who sat in a pair of scales for 30 years, recording the minutest changes in his weight; the sheep, the duck and the rooster who became the world's first air passengers; the disgusting Dr Stubbins Ffirth, who swallowed other people's vomit in an attempt to prove that yellow fever cannot be transmitted from one person to another; the hapless soldier Alexis St Martin, left with a hole in his stomach after an accident with a musket; and the ever-optimistic Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, who injected himself with essence of guinea pigs' testicles as an anti-ageing remedy. There is trivia here in abundance, but also quirky, but genuinely influential, science, notably Merrill Flood's and Melvin Dresher's experiments with choices of outcomes, which have been widely influential as game theory.A fizzing cocktail of fascinating science and rich entertainment, The Mad Science Book tells the extraordinary stories of some truly, madly, geeky people. It should be top of every self-respecting science buff's Christmas 2008 wishlist.
Author: Harry M. Collins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521645508
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
What is the golem? In Jewish mythology the Golem is an effigy or image brought to life. While not evil, it is a strong, clumsy and incomplete servant. Through a series of case studies, ranging from relativity and cold fusion to memory in worms and the sex lives of lizards, Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch debunk the traditional view that science is the straightforward result of competent theorization, observation and experimentation. Scientific certainty is the interpretation of ambiguous results. The very well received first edition generated much debate, reflected in a substantial new Afterword in this new edition, which seeks to place the book in what have become known as 'the science wars'.
Author: Larry Scheckel
Publisher: The Experiment
ISBN: 1615190872
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Fun and fascinating science is everywhere, and it’s a cinch to learn—just ask a science teacher! We’ve all grown so used to living in a world filled with wonders that we sometimes forget to wonder about them: What creates the wind? Do fish sleep? Why do we blink? These are common phenomena, but it’s a rare person who really knows the answers—do you? All too often, the explanations remain shrouded in mystery—or behind a haze of technical language. For those of us who should have raised our hands in science class but didn’t, Larry Scheckel comes to the rescue. An award-winning science teacher and longtime columnist for his local newspaper, Scheckel is a master explainer with a trove of knowledge. Just ask the students and devoted readers who have spent years trying to stump him! In Ask a Science Teacher, Scheckel collects 250 of his favorite Q&As. Like the best teachers, he writes so that kids can understand, but he doesn’t water things down— he’ll satisfy even the most inquisitive minds. Topics include: •The Human Body •Earth Science •Astronomy •Chemistry Physics •Technology •Zoology •Music and conundrums that don’t fit into any category With refreshingly uncomplicated explanations, Ask a Science Teacher is sure to resolve the everyday mysteries you’ve always wondered about. You’ll learn how planes really fly, why the Earth is round, how microwaves heat food, and much more—before you know it, all your friends will be asking you!
Author: Martin Gardner
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486131629
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385
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Book Description
Fair, witty appraisal of cranks, quacks, and quackeries of science and pseudoscience: hollow earth, Velikovsky, orgone energy, Dianetics, flying saucers, Bridey Murphy, food and medical fads, and much more.
