The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5 PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521467735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This fifth volume abridgement of Joseph Needham's monumental work is concerned with the staggering civil engineering feats made in early and medieval China.

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5 PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521467735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This fifth volume abridgement of Joseph Needham's monumental work is concerned with the staggering civil engineering feats made in early and medieval China.

Energy and Civilization

Energy and Civilization PDF Author: Vaclav Smil
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262536161
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 7, Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 7, Military Technology: The Gunpowder Epic PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521303583
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 742

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Book Description
The Gunpowder Epic is one of three planned publications on military technology within Dr Needham's immense undertaking. The discovery of gunpowder in China by the 9th century AD was followed by its rapid applications. It is now clear that the whole development from bombs and grenades to the invention of the metal-barrel hand gun took place in the Chinese culture area before Europeans had any knowledge of the mixture itself. Uses in civil engineering and mechanical engineering were equally important, before the knowledge of gunpowder spread to Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Dr Needham's new work continues to demonstrate the major importance of Chinese science and technology to world history and maintains the tradition of one of the great scholarly works of the twentieth century.

The Science of Empire

The Science of Empire PDF Author: Zaheer Baber
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791429204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Investigates the complex social processes involved in the introduction and institutionalization of Western science in colonial India.

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 1

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 1 PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521292863
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Volumes I and II of the major series: China: its language, geography and history ; Chinese philosophy and scientific thought.

New Perspectives in Indian Science and Civilization

New Perspectives in Indian Science and Civilization PDF Author: Makarand R. Paranjape
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0429534353
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This book examines key aspects of the history, philosophy, and culture of science in India, especially as they may be comprehended in the larger idea of an Indian civilization. The authors, drawn from a range of disciplines, discuss a wide array of issues — scientism and religious dogma, dialectics of faith and knowledge, science under colonial conditions, science and study of grammar, western science and classical systems of logic, metaphysics and methodology, and science and spirituality in the Mahabharata. This collection of essays aims to evolve a framework in which science, culture, and society in India may be studied fruitfully across disciplines and historical periods. With its diverse themes and original approaches, the book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the fields of the history and philosophy of science, science and religion, cultural studies and colonial studies, philosophy and history, as well as India studies and South Asian studies.

Civilization and the Culture of Science

Civilization and the Culture of Science PDF Author: Stephen Gaukroger
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198849079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
How did science come to have such a central place in Western culture? How did our ways of thinking, and our moral, political, and social values, come to be modelled around scientific values? Stephen Gaukroger traces the story of how these values developed, and how they influenced society and culture from the 19th to the mid-20th century.

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought

Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521058001
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 746

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Book Description
The second volume of Dr Joseph Needham's great work Science and Civilisation in China is devoted to the history of scientific thought. Beginning with ancient times, it describes the Confucian milieu in which arose the organic naturalism of the great Taoist school, the scientific philosophy of the Mohists and Logicians, and the quantitative materialism of the Legalists. Thus we are brought on to the fundamental ideas which dominated scientific thinking in the Chinese middle ages. The author opens his discussion by considering the remote and pictographic origins of words fundamental in scientific discourse, and then sets forth the influential doctrines of the Two Forces and the Five Elements. Subsequently he writes of the important sceptical tradition, the effects of Buddhist thought, and the Neo-Confucian climax of Chinese naturalism. Last comes a discussion of the conception of Laws of Nature in China and the West.

The Human Cosmos

The Human Cosmos PDF Author: Jo Marchant
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593183045
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
A Best Book of 2020 (NPR) A Best Book of 2020 (The Economist) A Top Ten Best Science Book of 2020 (Smithsonian) A Best Science and Technology Book of 2020 (Library Journal) A Must-Read Book to Escape the Chaos of 2020 (Newsweek) Starred review (Booklist) Starred review (Publishers Weekly) A historically unprecedented disconnect between humanity and the heavens has opened. Jo Marchant's book can begin to heal it. For at least 20,000 years, we have led not just an earthly existence but a cosmic one. Celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are—our art, religious beliefs, social status, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us. It's a disconnect with a dire cost. Our relationship to the stars and planets has moved from one of awe, wonder and superstition to one where technology is king—the cosmos is now explored through data on our screens, not by the naked eye observing the natural world. Indeed, in most countries, modern light pollution obscures much of the night sky from view. Jo Marchant's spellbinding parade of the ways different cultures celebrated the majesty and mysteries of the night sky is a journey to the most awe-inspiring view you can ever see: looking up on a clear dark night. That experience and the thoughts it has engendered have radically shaped human civilization across millennia. The cosmos is the source of our greatest creativity in art, in science, in life. To show us how, Jo Marchant takes us to the Hall of the Bulls in the caves at Lascaux in France, and to the summer solstice at a 5,000-year-old tomb at Newgrange, Ireland. We discover Chumash cosmology and visit medieval monks grappling with the nature of time and Tahitian sailors navigating by the stars. We discover how light reveals the chemical composition of the sun, and we are with Einstein as he works out that space and time are one and the same. A four-billion-year-old meteor inspires a search for extraterrestrial life. The cosmically liberating, summary revelation is that star-gazing made us human.

Science and Technology in World History, Volume 1

Science and Technology in World History, Volume 1 PDF Author: David Deming
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786456574
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Science is a living, organic activity, the meaning and understanding of which have evolved incrementally over human history. This book, the first in a roughly chronological series, explores the development of the methodology and major ideas of science, in historical context, from ancient times to the decline of classical civilizations around 300 A.D. It includes details specific to the histories of specialized sciences including astronomy, medicine and physics--along with Roman engineering and Greek philosophy. It closely describes the contributions of such individuals as Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Euclid, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, and Galen.