Frontiers of Science

Frontiers of Science PDF Author: Cameron B. Strang
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469640481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Cameron Strang takes American scientific thought and discoveries away from the learned societies, museums, and teaching halls of the Northeast and puts the production of knowledge about the natural world in the context of competing empires and an expanding republic in the Gulf South. People often dismissed by starched northeasterners as nonintellectuals--Indian sages, African slaves, Spanish officials, Irishmen on the make, clearers of land and drivers of men--were also scientific observers, gatherers, organizers, and reporters. Skulls and stems, birds and bugs, rocks and maps, tall tales and fertile hypotheses came from them. They collected, described, and sent the objects that scientists gazed on and interpreted in polite Philadelphia. They made knowledge. Frontiers of Science offers a new framework for approaching American intellectual history, one that transcends political and cultural boundaries and reveals persistence across the colonial and national eras. The pursuit of knowledge in the United States did not cohere around democratic politics or the influence of liberty. It was, as in other empires, divided by multiple loyalties and identities, organized through contested hierarchies of ethnicity and place, and reliant on violence. By discovering the lost intellectual history of one region, Strang shows us how to recover a continent for science.

Frontiers of Science

Frontiers of Science PDF Author: Cameron B. Strang
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469640481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Cameron Strang takes American scientific thought and discoveries away from the learned societies, museums, and teaching halls of the Northeast and puts the production of knowledge about the natural world in the context of competing empires and an expanding republic in the Gulf South. People often dismissed by starched northeasterners as nonintellectuals--Indian sages, African slaves, Spanish officials, Irishmen on the make, clearers of land and drivers of men--were also scientific observers, gatherers, organizers, and reporters. Skulls and stems, birds and bugs, rocks and maps, tall tales and fertile hypotheses came from them. They collected, described, and sent the objects that scientists gazed on and interpreted in polite Philadelphia. They made knowledge. Frontiers of Science offers a new framework for approaching American intellectual history, one that transcends political and cultural boundaries and reveals persistence across the colonial and national eras. The pursuit of knowledge in the United States did not cohere around democratic politics or the influence of liberty. It was, as in other empires, divided by multiple loyalties and identities, organized through contested hierarchies of ethnicity and place, and reliant on violence. By discovering the lost intellectual history of one region, Strang shows us how to recover a continent for science.

On the Frontier of Science

On the Frontier of Science PDF Author: Leah Ceccarelli
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 087013034X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
“The frontier of science” is a metaphor that has become ubiquitous in American rhetoric, from its first appearance in the public address of early twentieth-century American intellectuals and politicians who aligned a mythic national identity with scientific research, to its more recent use in scientists’ arguments in favor of increased research funding. Here, Leah Ceccarelli explores what is selected and what is deflected when this metaphor is deployed, its effects on those who use it, and what rhetorical moves are made by those who try to counter its appeal. In her research, Ceccarelli discovers that “the frontier of science” evokes a scientist who is typically male, a risk taker, an adventurous loner—someone separated from a public that both envies and distrusts him, with a manifest destiny to penetrate the unknown. It conjures a competitive desire to claim the riches of a new territory before others can do the same. Closely reading the public address of scientists and politicians and the reception of their audiences, this book shows how the frontier of science metaphor constrains American speakers, helping to guide the ends of scientific research in particular ways and sometimes blocking scientists from attaining the very goals they set out to achieve.

Astronomy at the Frontiers of Science

Astronomy at the Frontiers of Science PDF Author: Jean-Pierre Lasota
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400716583
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Astronomy is by nature an interdisciplinary activity: it involves mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. Astronomers use (and often develop) the latest technology, the fastest computers and the most refined software. In this book twenty-two leading scientists from nine countries talk about how astronomy interacts with these other sciences. They describe modern instruments used in astronomy and the relations between astronomy and technology, industry, politics and philosophy. They also discuss what it means to be an astronomer, the history of astronomy, and the place of astronomy in society today.

Chaos and Fractals

Chaos and Fractals PDF Author: Heinz-Otto Peitgen
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1475747403
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 1013

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Book Description
For almost ten years chaos and fractals have been enveloping many areas of mathematics and the natural sciences in their power, creativity and expanse. Reaching far beyond the traditional bounds of mathematics and science to the realms of popular culture, they have captured the attention and enthusiasm of a worldwide audience. The fourteen chapters of the book cover the central ideas and concepts, as well as many related topics including, the Mandelbrot Set, Julia Sets, Cellular Automata, L-Systems, Percolation and Strange Attractors, and each closes with the computer code for a central experiment. In the two appendices, Yuval Fisher discusses the details and ideas of fractal image compression, while Carl J.G. Evertsz and Benoit Mandelbrot introduce the foundations and implications of multifractals.

Genome

Genome PDF Author: Matt Ridley
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062253468
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
“Ridley leaps from chromosome to chromosome in a handy summation of our ever increasing understanding of the roles that genes play in disease, behavior, sexual differences, and even intelligence. . . . . He addresses not only the ethical quandaries faced by contemporary scientists but the reductionist danger in equating inheritability with inevitability.” — The New Yorker The genome's been mapped. But what does it mean? Matt Ridley’s Genome is the book that explains it all: what it is, how it works, and what it portends for the future Arguably the most significant scientific discovery of the new century, the mapping of the twenty-three pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genome raises almost as many questions as it answers. Questions that will profoundly impact the way we think about disease, about longevity, and about free will. Questions that will affect the rest of your life. Genome offers extraordinary insight into the ramifications of this incredible breakthrough. By picking one newly discovered gene from each pair of chromosomes and telling its story, Matt Ridley recounts the history of our species and its ancestors from the dawn of life to the brink of future medicine. From Huntington's disease to cancer, from the applications of gene therapy to the horrors of eugenics, Ridley probes the scientific, philosophical, and moral issues arising as a result of the mapping of the genome. It will help you understand what this scientific milestone means for you, for your children, and for humankind.

Computer Science

Computer Science PDF Author: Kyle Kirkland
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 0816074410
Category : Computer science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Investigates the research and discoveries of computer scientists whose efforts have expanded knowledge of the rapidly changing field of computer science.

Frontiers of Science and Philosophy

Frontiers of Science and Philosophy PDF Author: Robert G. Colodny
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822975602
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Six essays by noted philosophers of science include the following topics: explanation in science and in history; philosophy and the scientific image of man; psychoanalysis and parapsychology; the conceptual basis of the biological sciences; the nature of time; and problems of microphysics.

The Changing Frontier

The Changing Frontier PDF Author: Adam B. Jaffe
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022628672X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
In 1945, Vannevar Bush, founder of Raytheon and one-time engineering dean at MIT, delivered a report to the president of the United States that argued for the importance of public support for science, and the importance of science for the future of the nation. The report, Science: The Endless Frontier, set America on a path toward strong and well-funded institutions of science, creating an intellectual architecture that still defines scientific endeavor today. In The Changing Frontier, Adam B. Jaffe and Benjamin Jones bring together a group of prominent scholars to consider the changes in science and innovation in the ensuing decades. The contributors take on such topics as changes in the organization of scientific research, the geography of innovation, modes of entrepreneurship, and the structure of research institutions and linkages between science and innovation. An important analysis of where science stands today, The Changing Frontier will be invaluable to practitioners and policy makers alike.

Science at the Frontier

Science at the Frontier PDF Author: National Academy of Sciences
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309045924
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Science at the Frontier takes you on a journey through the minds of some of the nation's leading young scientists as they explore the most exciting areas of discovery today. Based on the second Frontiers of Science symposium sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, this book describes recent accomplishments and new directions in ten basic fields, represented by outstanding scientists convening to discuss their research. It captures the excitement and personal quality of these exchanges, sometimes pointing to surprising connections spanning the boundaries of traditional disciplines, while providing a context for the reader that explains the basic scientific framework for the fields under discussion. The volume explores: New modifications to scientific theory as geologists probe deep inside the earth and astrophysicists reach to the limits of the observable universe for answers to some of nature's most fundamental and vexing questions. The influence of research in smog formation on the public debate about how to effectively control air pollution. The increasing use of computer modeling in science, from describing the evolution of cellular automata to revealing the workings of the human brain via neural networks. The rise of dynamical systems (the study of chaotic behavior in nature) to a full-fledged science. The search to understand the regulation of gene activity and the many biological problems-such as the onset of cancer-to which it applies. Recent progress in the quest to transform what we know about photosynthesis into functional, efficient systems to tap the sun's energy. Current developments in magnetic resonance imaging and its promise for new breakthroughs in medical diagnosis. Throughout this work the reader is witness to scientific discovery and debate centered on such common concerns as the dramatic and transforming effect of computers on scientists' thinking and research; the development of more cross-disciplinary perspectives; and the very nature of the scientific enterprise itself-what it is to be part of it, and its significance for society. Science at the Frontier is must reading for informed lay readers, scientists interested in fields other than their own, and science students considering a future specialization.

Science Without Frontiers

Science Without Frontiers PDF Author: Robert Fox
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780870718687
Category : Communication in science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description