A Natural History of Seeing

A Natural History of Seeing PDF Author: Simon Ings
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393067194
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Ings' work delves into both the evolution of sight and the evolution of the human understanding of sight. The book presents the natural science, while also addressing the history, philosophy, and mythology of how and why people see the way they do. Illustrations throughout.

A Natural History of Seeing

A Natural History of Seeing PDF Author: Simon Ings
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393067194
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Ings' work delves into both the evolution of sight and the evolution of the human understanding of sight. The book presents the natural science, while also addressing the history, philosophy, and mythology of how and why people see the way they do. Illustrations throughout.

The Eye

The Eye PDF Author: Simon Ings
Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780747592860
Category : Evolution (Biology)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
We spend about one-tenth of our waking hours completely blind - only one percent of what we see is in focus at any one time. You don't need eyes to see - blind volunteers have been taught to see through their chests. Through a spellbinding mix of scientific research, mathematics, philosophy, history, myth, anecdote and language theory, Simon Ings brilliantly unravels the never-ending puzzle of how and why we see in the way that we do. With the help of a beguiling mix of illustrated visual conundrums and enigmas, Ings triumphs with a compelling dissection of the eye's age-old mysteries that is both seriously interesting and interestingly fun.

A Natural History of Vision

A Natural History of Vision PDF Author: Nicholas J. Wade
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262731294
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
This illustrated survey covers what Nicholas Wade calls the "observational era of vision," beginning with the Greek philosophers and ending with Wheatstone's description of the stereoscope in the late 1830s.

A Natural History of the Senses

A Natural History of the Senses PDF Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307763315
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth. “Delightful . . . gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.” —The New York Times

A Natural History of Human Thinking

A Natural History of Human Thinking PDF Author: Michael Tomasello
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674986830
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
A Wall Street Journal Favorite Read of the Year A Guardian Top Science Book of the Year Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Once our ancestors learned to put their heads together with others to pursue shared goals, humankind was on an evolutionary path all its own. “Michael Tomasello is one of the few psychologists to have conducted intensive research on both human children and chimpanzees, and A Natural History of Human Thinking reflects not only the insights enabled by such cross-species comparisons but also the wisdom of a researcher who appreciates the need for asking questions whose answers generate biological insight. His book helps us to understand the differences, as well as the similarities, between human brains and other brains.” —David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal

The Eye

The Eye PDF Author: Simon Ings
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
We spend about one-tenth of our waking hours completely blind. Only one percent of what we see is in focus at any one time. We exist in a world we see that's always about half a second behind the real one. In fact you don't need eyes to see - blind volunteers have been taught to see through their chests. Wasps can't see, but map their surroundings instead. If we are stared at, our heartbeat rises and our galvanic skin response alters. How many generations did it take for the first fish to acquire eyes? Answer is 400,000. Why do humans have whites to their eyes when other species don't? Could it be that thinking arose as an evolutionary response to seeing? Without eyes, would minds exist at all? Be prepared to have your eyes opened! Using a spellbinding mix of scientific research, mathematics, philosophy, history, neuroscience, anecdote and language theory, in The Eye, Simon Ings unravels brilliantly the never-ending puzzle of how and why we see in the way that we do. From looking at the work of a huge range of theorists and scientists, to myths and personal experiences, and with the help of a beguiling mix of illustrated visual conundrums and enigmas, Ings triumphs with a compelling dissection of the age-old mysteries of the eye that's both seriously interesting and interestingly fun. He tells the eye's whole story for the very first time, fusing eye and sight into a single story - this is popular science of the highest order.

A Natural History of California

A Natural History of California PDF Author: Allan A. Schoenherr
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520909915
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 806

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Book Description
In this comprehensive and abundantly illustrated book, Allan Schoenherr describes a state with a greater range of landforms, a greater variety of habitats, and more kinds of plants and animals than any area of equivalent size in all of North America. A Natural History of California will familiarize the reader with the climate, rocks, soil, plants and animals in each distinctive region of the state.

The Art of Science

The Art of Science PDF Author: Richard Hamblyn
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1447204158
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 644

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Book Description
Science is about discovery, a journey towards knowledge. With authors as diverse as Galileo and Lewis Carroll, the extracts featured in this anthology span centuries and continents; they include startling revelations that changed the way we think and tackle more prosaic questions such as why the sea is salty; they consider the natural beauty of the snowflake and the man-made wonder of the first computer. What links them all is a desire to understand, explain and enrich the world, and the ability to communicate this in original, clear and engaging prose.

A Natural History of Color

A Natural History of Color PDF Author: Rob DeSalle
Publisher: Pegasus Books
ISBN: 9781643134420
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A star curator at the American Museum of Natural History widens the palette and shows how the physical, natural, and cultural context of color are inextricably tied to what we see right before our eyes. Is color a phenomenon of science or a thing of art? Over the years, color has dazzled, enhanced, and clarified the world we see, embraced through the experimental palettes of painting, the advent of the color photograph, Technicolor pictures, color printing, on and on, a vivid and vibrant celebrated continuum. These turns to represent reality in “living color” echo our evolutionary reliance on and indeed privileging of color as a complex and vital form of consumption, classification, and creation. It’s everywhere we look, yet do we really know much of anything about it? Finding color in stars and light, examining the system of classification that determines survival through natural selection, studying the arrival of color in our universe and as a fulcrum for philosophy, DeSalle’s brilliant A Natural History of Color establishes that an understanding of color on many different levels is at the heart of learning about nature, neurobiology, individualism, even a philosophy of existence. Color and a fine tuned understanding of it is vital to understanding ourselves and our consciousness.

Natural Histories

Natural Histories PDF Author: American Museum of Natural History
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781454912149
Category : Illustrated books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Highlights 40 masterworks of illustrated scientific art from the Rare Book Collection of the American Museum of Natural History.