The Measure of All Things

Author: Ken Alder
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074324902X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Book Description
In June 1792, amidst the chaos of the French Revolution, two intrepid astronomers set out in opposite directions on an extraordinary journey. Starting in Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre would make his way north to Dunkirk, while Pierre-François-André Méchain voyaged south to Barcelona. Their mission was to measure the world, and their findings would help define the meter as one ten-millionth of the distance between the pole and the equator—a standard that would be used “for all people, for all time.” The Measure of All Things is the astonishing tale of one of history’s greatest scientific adventures. Yet behind the public triumph of the metric system lies a secret error, one that is perpetuated in every subsequent definition of the meter. As acclaimed historian and novelist Ken Alder discovered through his research, there were only two people on the planet who knew the full extent of this error: Delambre and Méchain themselves. By turns a science history, detective tale, and human drama, The Measure of All Things describes a quest that succeeded as it failed—and continues to enlighten and inspire to this day.

A Measure of All Things

Author: Ian Whitelaw
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312370268
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Book Description
Discusses the origins of standard units of measurement and how they have changed from ancient times to modern day, and describes systems of measurement, including the metric and Imperial systems and the Système International.

The Measure of a Man

Author: Gene A. Getz
Publisher: Revell
ISBN: 1493404253
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
More Than a Million Copies Have Been Sold of this Powerful Book for Men, Now Revised for a New Generation For forty years, The Measure of a Man has taught hundreds of thousands of men around the world how to live according to God's direction--faithfully, lovingly, and spiritually. Now revised this classic guide to biblical masculinity is poised to impact a new generation of men. True masculinity is not measured by the strength of a man, but by these twenty biblical guidelines drawn from the Apostle Paul's letters to his young protégés Timothy and Titus. Inspiring, encouraging, and practical, this book shows men how they can reach God's standards as fathers, husbands, and mentors to other men. This updated edition includes QR codes that take the reader to online video resources for further study.

A Measure of Everything

Author: Marcus Weeks
Publisher: Richmond Hill, Ont. : Firefly Books
ISBN:
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
A comprehensive reference and history book on what is measured and why. Measurement is one of humankind's oldest and most vital activities. By measuring height, speed, size, temperature, strength and many other factors, humans can compare, improve and progress. In fact, measurement is an essential tool for survival. A Measure of Everything is a wide-ranging and comprehensive guide to what is measured and why. The book begins when the basic measurements were as simple as more, less and enough. As societies evolved, relative measurements were no longer sufficient. Advances in language allowed more precise measurements. Short distances were measured in relation to parts of the human body. For example, the ancient measurement cubit was the length of a pharaoh's arm plus the width of his hand. As society and culture progress and change, so do measurements. The rise of astronomy and the sciences demanded more exact measurements. These measurements are typically named after the discovering scientist, e.g., henry, curie, watt, rutherford, fahrenheit. This book features 28 categories organized into three sections: Earth and Life Sciences: astronomy, distance, time, meteorology, medicine, and five others. Physical Sciences: chemistry, mathematics, physics, speed, weight, temperature, and three others. Technology and Leisure: computers, engineering, finance, food, textiles, and four others. A Measure of Everything is an informative and entertaining book that will appeal to a wide range of readers.

Sex the Measure of All Things

Author: Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253337344
Category : Sex
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Book Description
The life story of the sex researcher whose statistics were so extensive that only ten percent went into his two published books, and most of the data "is still being actively mined today."--Jacket.

The Measure of All Things

Author: Shlomo Giora Shoham
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443866652
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
The Measure of All Things is the final volume in a trilogy about man as related to the genesis of the world, to metaphysics, and to the ontological vicissitudes of the human species. This book reviews the condition of man and his relationship with the forces of evolution, in both a biological and a spiritual sense. It is, therefore, an innovative excursion into the present day arguments between the evolutionist and creationist regarding the fate of man.

Voltaire’s Riddle: Micromégas and the Measure of All Things

Author: Andrew Simoson
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0883853450
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Book Description
Did you know that Voltaire was the first to publish the legend of Isaac Newton discovering gravity upon seeing an apple fall? That he tried for about eight years to be a mathematician? That in 1752 he wrote Micromégas, a story about a French expedition to the arctic (1736-7) whose purpose was to test Newton's controversial theories about gravity? This book is about that story and its underlying mathematics. In summary, an alien giant visits earth and encounters the expedition returning from north of the Baltic Sea. Their ensuing dialogue ranges from measurements of the very small to the very large, from gnats and microorganisms to planets and stars, from man's tendency to make war to dreams of understanding his own spirit. At the end of their conversation, the giant gives man a book with the answers to all things. But when they open it, it is blank. That is the riddle of this book. What does such an ending mean? As a series of vignettes and chapters, the author gives some riddle resolutions. The vignettes (requiring no special mathematics knowledge) describe the people, traditions, and events of the expedition and story. The chapters (accessible to anyone with a background in undergraduate linear algebra, vector calculus, and differential equations) show why a rotating earth must be flattened at the poles, why the tip of the earth's polar axis traces out a curve with period of nearly twenty-six thousand years, why the path of a small black hole dropped at the earth's equator must be a hypocycloid, why an old problem studied by Maupertuis (the leader of the French expedition) is a pursuit curve, and why in measuring phenomena we sometimes get it wrong. All in all, this book is a case study in how mathematical and scientific knowledge becomes common knowledge.

Man, the Measure of All Things

Author: Sri Madhava Ashish
Publisher: Quest Books
ISBN: 0835631877
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Book Description
This volume is a study of the symbols of cosmic origins. It throws a new and searching light upon The Stanzas of Dzyan, a little-known collection of cosmogenic verses relating to cosmogenesis as set forth in H. P. Blavatsky’s great work The Secret Doctrine. “We are considering the universe as a tissue of psychic experience,” say the authors. “Our categories are psychic ones, and with their help we have attempted to show that the process of conscious manifestation is entirely a movement within the unity of consciousness being toward the achievement of self-conscious experience.”

Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism

Author: Steven Mailloux
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521467803
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
The anti-sceptical relativism and self-conscious rhetoric of the pragmatist tradition, which began with the Older Sophists of Ancient Greece and developed through an American tradition including William James and John Dewey has attracted new attention in the context of late twentieth-century postmodernist thought. At the same time there has been a more general renewal of interest across a wide range of humanistic and social science disciplines in rhetoric itself: language use, writing and speaking, persuasion, figurative language, and the effect of texts. This book, written by leading scholars, explores the various ways in which rhetoric, sophistry and pragmatism overlap in their current theoretical and political implications, and demonstrates how they contribute both to a rethinking of the human sciences within the academy and to larger debates over cultural politics.

The Measure of All Things

Author: Ken Alder
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 074321675X
Category : Arc measures
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
The Measure of All Things is the astonishing story of one of history's greatest scientific quests, a mission to measure the Earth and define the meter for all nations and for all time.".