Pythagoras' Trousers

Pythagoras' Trousers PDF Author: Margaret Wertheim
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393317244
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
An "immensely accessible tour (which tells) how the physics lab became another Vatican with a no-girls-allowed sign on its door" (Susan Faludi) this spirited look at the relationship between physics and religion argues that gender inequity in physics is a result of the religious origins of the enterprise.

God and the New Physics

God and the New Physics PDF Author: P. C. W. Davies
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671528068
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

Book Description
Argues that the discoveries of twentieth-century physics--relativity and the quantum theory--demand a radical reformulation of the fundamentals of reality and a way of thinking, that is closer to mysticism than materialism.

The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace

The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace PDF Author: Margaret Wertheim
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393320534
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Book Description
Cyberspace may seem an unlikely gateway for the soul, but as science commentator Wertheim argues in this "wonderfully provocative" ("Kirkus Reviews") book, cyberspace has in recent years become a repository for immense spiritual yearning. 37 illustrations.

Figuring

Figuring PDF Author: Maria Popova
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1524748145
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592

Book Description
Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists—mostly women, mostly queer—whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman—and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

Mirror Earth

Mirror Earth PDF Author: Michael D. Lemonick
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802779026
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
In the mid-1990s, astronomers made history when they began to find planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way. More than eight hundred planets have been found since then, yet none of them is anything like Earth and none could support life. Now, armed with more powerful technology, planet hunters are racing to find a true twin of Earth. Science writer Michael Lemonick has unique access to these exoplaneteers, as they call themselves, and Mirror Earth unveils their passionate quest. Unlike competitors in other races, Geoff Marcy, Bill Borucki, David Charbonneau, Sara Seager, and others actually consult and cooperate with one another. But only one will be the first to find Earth's twin. Mirror Earth tells the story of their competition.

Physics on the Fringe

Physics on the Fringe PDF Author: Margaret Wertheim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802778739
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Book Description
For the past fifteen years, acclaimed science writer Margaret Wertheim has been collecting the works of "outsider physicists," many without formal training and all convinced that they have found true alternative theories of the universe. Jim Carter, the Einstein of outsiders, has developed his own complete theory of matter and energy and gravity that he demonstrates with experiments in his backyard,-with garbage cans and a disco fog machine he makes smoke rings to test his ideas about atoms. Captivated by the imaginative power of his theories and his resolutely DIY attitude, Wertheim has been following Carter's progress for the past decade. Centuries ago, natural philosophers puzzled out the laws of nature using the tools of observation and experimentation. Today, theoretical physics has become mathematically inscrutable, accessible only to an elite few. In rejecting this abstraction, outsider theorists insist that nature speaks a language we can all understand. Through a profoundly human profile of Jim Carter, Wertheim's exploration of the bizarre world of fringe physics challenges our conception of what science is, how it works, and who it is for.

Through Two Doors at Once

Through Two Doors at Once PDF Author: Anil Ananthaswamy
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101986107
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
The intellectual adventure story of the "double-slit" experiment, showing how a sunbeam split into two paths first challenged our understanding of light and then the nature of reality itself--and continues to almost two hundred years later. Many of science's greatest minds have grappled with the simple yet elusive "double-slit" experiment. Thomas Young devised it in the early 1800s to show that light behaves like a wave, and in doing so opposed Isaac Newton. Nearly a century later, Albert Einstein showed that light comes in quanta, or particles, and the experiment became key to a fierce debate between Einstein and Niels Bohr over the nature of reality. Richard Feynman held that the double slit embodies the central mystery of the quantum world. Decade after decade, hypothesis after hypothesis, scientists have returned to this ingenious experiment to help them answer deeper and deeper questions about the fabric of the universe. How can a single particle behave both like a particle and a wave? Does a particle exist before we look at it, or does the very act of looking create reality? Are there hidden aspects to reality missing from the orthodox view of quantum physics? Is there a place where the quantum world ends and the familiar classical world of our daily lives begins, and if so, can we find it? And if there's no such place, then does the universe split into two each time a particle goes through the double slit? With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world and through history, down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed. Through Two Doors at Once is the most fantastic voyage you can take.

Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration

Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration PDF Author: James Luchte
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441135227
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
The mythical narrative of transmigration tells the story of myriad wandering souls, each migrating from body to body along a path of recurrence amid the becoming of the All. In this highly original study, James Luchte explores the ways in which the concept of transmigration is a central motif in Pythagoras' philosophy, representing its fundamental meaning. Luchte argues that the many strands of the tale of transmigration come together in the Pythagorean philosophical movement, revealing a unity in which, for Pythagoreans, existence and eschatology are separated only by forgetfulness. Such an interpretation that seeks to retrieve the unity of Pythagorean thought goes against the grain of a long-standing tradition of interpretation that projects upon Pythagoras the segregation of 'mysticism' and 'science'. Luchte lays out an alternative interpretation of Pythagorean philosophy as magical in the sense that it orchestrates a holistic harmonization of theoria and praxis and through this reading discloses the radical character of Pythagorean philosophy.

Crochet Coral Reef

Crochet Coral Reef PDF Author: Margaret Wertheim
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780977962235
Category : Art, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Now perhaps the world's largest participatory art and science project, the Crochet Coral Reef combines mathematics, marine biology, environmental consciousness-raising and community art practice. Almost 8,000 people around the world have contributed to making an ever-evolving archipelago of giant woolen seascapes, which have been exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, the Smithsonian and many other venues. This fully illustrated book, written by the project's creators--Margaret and Christine Wertheim of the Institute For Figuring--brings together the scientific and mathematical content behind the project, along with essays about the artistic and cultural resonances of this unique experiment in radical craft practice. With a wealth of color illustrations, the book serves as a record of the 30-plus Crochet Reefs worldwide and names all 7,000-plus contributors in a specially designed section.
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