Author: Susan Wise Bauer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393243273
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
A riveting road map to the development of modern scientific thought. In the tradition of her perennial bestseller The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer delivers an accessible, entertaining, and illuminating springboard into the scientific education you never had. Far too often, public discussion of science is carried out by journalists, voters, and politicians who have received their science secondhand. The Story of Western Science shows us the joy and importance of reading groundbreaking science writing for ourselves and guides us back to the masterpieces that have changed the way we think about our world, our cosmos, and ourselves. Able to be referenced individually, or read together as the narrative of Western scientific development, the book's twenty-eight succinct chapters lead readers from the first science texts by Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle through twentieth-century classics in biology, physics, and cosmology. The Story of Western Science illuminates everything from mankind's earliest inquiries to the butterfly effect, from the birth of the scientific method to the rise of earth science and the flowering of modern biology. Each chapter recommends one or more classic books and provides entertaining accounts of crucial contributions to science, vivid sketches of the scientist-writers, and clear explanations of the mechanics underlying each concept. The Story of Western Science reveals science to be a dramatic undertaking practiced by some of history's most memorable characters. It reminds us that scientific inquiry is a human pursuit—an essential, often deeply personal, sometimes flawed, frequently brilliant way of understanding the world. The Story of Western Science is an "entertaining and unique synthesis" (Times Higher Education), a "fluidly written" narrative that "celebrates the inexorable force of human curiosity" (Wall Street Journal), and a "bright, informative resource for readers seeking to understand science through the eyes of the men and women who shaped its history" (Kirkus). Previously published as The Story of Science.
Author: Susan Wise Bauer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393285979
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
“If you read only one book on educating children, this should be the book.… With a warm, informative voice, Bauer gives you the knowledge that will help you flex the educational model to meet the needs of your child.” —San Francisco Book Review Our K–12 school system isn’t a good fit for all—or even most—students. It prioritizes a single way of understanding the world over all others, pushes children into a rigid set of grades with little regard for individual maturity, and slaps “disability” labels on differences in learning style. Caught in this system, far too many young learners end up discouraged. This informed, compassionate, and practical guidebook will show you how to take control of your child’s K–12 experience and negotiate the school system in a way that nurtures your child’s mind, emotions, and spirit. Understand why we have twelve grades, and why we match them to ages. Evaluate your child’s maturity, and determine how to use that knowledge to your advantage. Find out what subject areas we study in school, why they exist—and how to tinker with them. Discover what learning disabilities and intellectual giftedness are, how they can overlap, how to recognize them, and how those labels can help (or hinder) you. Work effectively with your child’s teachers, tutors, and coaches. Learn to teach important subjects yourself. Challenge accepted ideas about homework and standardized testing. Help your child develop a vision for the future. Reclaim your families’ priorities (including time for eating together, playing, imagining, traveling, and, yes, sleeping!). Plan for college—or apprenticeships. Consider out-of-the-box alternatives.
Author: Walter Alvarez
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169667
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mount Everest slammed into the Earth, inducing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized detritus blasted through the atmosphere upon impact, falling back to Earth around the globe. Disastrous environmental consequences ensued: a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the plant and animal genera on Earth had perished. This horrific chain of events is now widely accepted as the solution to a great scientific mystery: what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Walter Alvarez, one of the Berkeley scientists who discovered evidence of the impact, tells the story behind the development of the initially controversial theory. It is a saga of high adventure in remote locations, of arduous data collection and intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of friendships made and lost, and of the exhilaration of discovery that forever altered our understanding of Earth's geological history.
Author: Susan Wise Bauer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393059766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 816
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Book Description
A chronicle of the years between 1100 and 1453 describes the Crusades, the Inquisition, the emergence of the Ottomans, the rise of the Mongols, and the invention of new currencies, weapons, and schools of thought.
Author: David Wootton
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062199250
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1068
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Book Description
"Captures the excitement of the scientific revolution and makes a point of celebrating the advances it ushered in." —Financial Times A companion to such acclaimed works as The Age of Wonder, A Clockwork Universe, and Darwin’s Ghosts—a groundbreaking examination of the greatest event in history, the Scientific Revolution, and how it came to change the way we understand ourselves and our world. We live in a world transformed by scientific discovery. Yet today, science and its practitioners have come under political attack. In this fascinating history spanning continents and centuries, historian David Wootton offers a lively defense of science, revealing why the Scientific Revolution was truly the greatest event in our history. The Invention of Science goes back five hundred years in time to chronicle this crucial transformation, exploring the factors that led to its birth and the people who made it happen. Wootton argues that the Scientific Revolution was actually five separate yet concurrent events that developed independently, but came to intersect and create a new worldview. Here are the brilliant iconoclasts—Galileo, Copernicus, Brahe, Newton, and many more curious minds from across Europe—whose studies of the natural world challenged centuries of religious orthodoxy and ingrained superstition. From gunpowder technology, the discovery of the new world, movable type printing, perspective painting, and the telescope to the practice of conducting experiments, the laws of nature, and the concept of the fact, Wotton shows how these discoveries codified into a social construct and a system of knowledge. Ultimately, he makes clear the link between scientific discovery and the rise of industrialization—and the birth of the modern world we know.
Author: Susan Wise Bauer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393078175
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 768
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Book Description
A masterful narrative of the Middle Ages, when religion became a weapon for kings all over the world. In her earlier work, The History of the Ancient World, Susan Wise Bauer wrote of the rise of kingship based on might. But in the years between the fourth and twelfth centuries, rulers had to find new justification for their power, and they turned to divine truth or grace to justify political and military action. Right began to replace might as the engine of empire. Not just Christianity and Islam but also the religions of the Persians, the Germans, and the Mayas were pressed into the service of the state. Even Buddhism and Confucianism became tools for nation building. This phenomenon—stretching from the Americas all the way to Japan—changed religion, but it also changed the state. The History of the Medieval World is a true world history, linking the great conflicts of Europe to the titanic struggles for power in India and Asia. In its pages, El Cid and Guanggaeto, Julian the Apostate and the Brilliant Emperor, Charles the Hammer and Krum the Bulgarian stand side by side. From the schism between Rome and Constantinople to the rise of the Song Dynasty, from the mission of Muhammad to the crowning of Charlemagne, from the sacred wars of India to the establishment of the Knights Templar, this erudite book tells the fascinating, often violent story of kings, generals, and the peoples they ruled.
Author: John Gribbin
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593134036
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 674
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Book Description
A wonderfully readable account of scientific development over the past five hundred years, focusing on the lives and achievements of individual scientists, by the bestselling author of In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat In this ambitious new book, John Gribbin tells the stories of the people who have made science, and of the times in which they lived and worked. He begins with Copernicus, during the Renaissance, when science replaced mysticism as a means of explaining the workings of the world, and he continues through the centuries, creating an unbroken genealogy of not only the greatest but also the more obscure names of Western science, a dot-to-dot line linking amateur to genius, and accidental discovery to brilliant deduction. By focusing on the scientists themselves, Gribbin has written an anecdotal narrative enlivened with stories of personal drama, success and failure. A bestselling science writer with an international reputation, Gribbin is among the few authors who could even attempt a work of this magnitude. Praised as “a sequence of witty, information-packed tales” and “a terrific read” by The Times upon its recent British publication, The Scientists breathes new life into such venerable icons as Galileo, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Linus Pauling, as well as lesser lights whose stories have been undeservedly neglected. Filled with pioneers, visionaries, eccentrics and madmen, this is the history of science as it has never been told before.
Author: James J Kolata
Publisher: Morgan & Claypool Publishers
ISBN: 1681741644
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Book Description
Cosmology is the study of the origin, size, and evolution of the entire universe. Every culture has developed a cosmology, whether it be based on religious, philosophical, or scientific principles. In this book, the evolution of the scientific understanding of the Universe in Western tradition is traced from the early Greek philosophers to the most modern 21st century view. After a brief introduction to the concept of the scientific method, the first part of the book describes the way in which detailed observations of the Universe, first with the naked eye and later with increasingly complex modern instruments, ultimately led to the development of the "Big Bang" theory. The second part of the book traces the evolution of the Big Bang including the very recent observation that the expansion of the Universe is itself accelerating with time.
Author: Susan Wise Bauer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780329838515
Category : History, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Chronicles the history of the world from 1600 to 1850; discussing important events and prominent figures. Includes maps and illustrations.
Author: Susan Wise Bauer
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393253910
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 500
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Book Description
The enduring and engaging guide to educating yourself in the classical tradition. Have you lost the art of reading for pleasure? Are there books you know you should read but haven’t because they seem too daunting? In The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer provides a welcome and encouraging antidote to the distractions of our age, electronic and otherwise. Newly expanded and updated to include standout works from the twenty-first century as well as essential readings in science (from the earliest works of Hippocrates to the discovery of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs), The Well-Educated Mind offers brief, entertaining histories of six literary genres—fiction, autobiography, history, drama, poetry, and science—accompanied by detailed instructions on how to read each type. The annotated lists at the end of each chapter—ranging from Cervantes to Cormac McCarthy, Herodotus to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Aristotle to Stephen Hawking—preview recommended reading and encourage readers to make vital connections between ancient traditions and contemporary writing. The Well-Educated Mind reassures those readers who worry that they read too slowly or with below-average comprehension. If you can understand a daily newspaper, there’s no reason you can’t read and enjoy Shakespeare’s sonnets or Jane Eyre. But no one should attempt to read the “Great Books” without a guide and a plan. Bauer will show you how to allocate time to reading on a regular basis; how to master difficult arguments; how to make personal and literary judgments about what you read; how to appreciate the resonant links among texts within a genre—what does Anna Karenina owe to Madame Bovary?—and also between genres. In her best-selling work on home education, The Well-Trained Mind, the author provided a road map of classical education for parents wishing to home-school their children; that book is now the premier resource for home-schoolers. In The Well-Educated Mind, Bauer takes the same elements and techniques and adapts them to the use of adult readers who want both enjoyment and self-improvement from the time they spend reading. Followed carefully, her advice will restore and expand the pleasure of the written word.
