The surprising history of the scientific method—from an evolutionary account of thinking to a simple set of steps—and the rise of psychology in the nineteenth century. The idea of a single scientific method, shared across specialties and teachable to ten-year-olds, is just over a hundred years old. For centuries prior, science had meant a kind of knowledge, made from facts gath...(展开全部)

"Quammen brilliantly and powerfully re-creates the 19th century naturalist's intellectual and spiritual journey."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review Twenty-one years passed between Charles Darwin's epiphany that "natural selection" formed the basis of evolution and the scientist's publication of On th...(展开全部)

Few would question the truism that humankind is the crowning achievement of evolution; that the defining thrust of life's history yields progress over time from the primitive and simple to the more advanced and complex; that the disappearance of .400 hitting in baseball is a fact to be bemoaned; or that identifying an existing trend can be helpful in making important life decis...(展开全部)

Gould shows why a more accurate way of understanding our world is to look at a given subject within its own context, to see it as a part of a spectrum of variation and then to reconceptualize trends as expansion or contraction of this "full house" of variation, and not as the progress or degeneration of an average value, or single thing.

As timely now as it was when it was first published in 1997, "Darwin Among the Machines" tells the story of humankind's long journey into the digital age. Historian of technology George Dyson traces the course of the information revolution, illuminating the lives and work of visionaries--from Thomas Hobbes to John von Neumann--who foresaw the development of artificial intellige...(展开全部)

George Dyson grew up at the Institute for Advanced Study, where such scientists as his father, Freeman Dyson, and John von Neumann laid the foundations for the Information Age. From this vantage point, and with an unprecedented cast of characters, Dyson traces the course of the information revolution, illuminating the lives, work and ideas of visionaries who foresaw the develo...(展开全部)

In this astonishing prediction of the World Wide Web's ultimate challenge to human civilization--a globally networked, electronic, sentient being--Dyson traces the course of the information revolution, illuminating the lives, work, and ideas of visionaries who foresaw the development of artificial intelligence, artificial life, and the global mind.

How did human minds become so different from those of other animals? What accounts for our capacity to understand the way the physical world works, to think ourselves into the minds of others, to gossip, read, tell stories about the past, and imagine the future? These questions are not new: they have been debated by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionists, a...(展开全部)

A fresh look at Darwin's most radical idea, and the mysteriously slow process by which he revealed it. Evolution, during the early nineteenth century, was an idea in the air. Other thinkers had suggested it, but no one had proposed a cogent explanation for how evolution occurs. Then, in September 1838, a young Englishman named Charles Darwin hit upon the idea that "natural sel...(展开全部)

This remarkable book presents a rich and up–to–date view of evolution that explores the far–reaching implications of Darwin's theory and emphasizes the power, significance, and relevance of evolution to our lives today. After all, we ourselves are the product of evolution, and we can tackle many of our gravest challenges –– from lethal resurgence of antiobiotic–resistant diseas...(展开全部)