Philip Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim - known to later ages as Paracelsus - stands on the borderline between medieval and modern. This book reveals this complex man - who used his eyes and ears to learn from nature how to heal, and who wrote influential books on medicine, surgery, alchemy and theology while living a vagabond life.

Traces the threads that link the legendary inventor Daedalus, Goethe's tragic "Faust", the automata-making magicians of "E.T.A. Hoffman" and Mary Shelley's "Victor Frankenstein". This title argues that these old tales and myths are alive and well, subtly manipulating the current debates about assisted conception, embryo research and human cloning.

By examining the rise of curiosity from the dawn of modern science to today, this book examines how it functions in science, how it is spun, packaged and sold, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may ask.

For centuries, scientists have struggled to understand the origins of the patterns and forms found in nature. Now, in this lucid and accessibly written book, Philip Ball applies state-of-the-art scientific understanding from the fields of biology, chemistry, geology, physics, and mathematics to these ancient mysteries, revealing how nature's seemingly complex patterns originate in simple physical laws. Tracing the history of scientific thought about natural patterns, Ball shows how common presumptions--for example, that complex form must be guided by some intelligence or that form always...

As part of a trilogy of books exploring the science of patterns in nature, acclaimed science writer Philip Ball here looks at the form and growth of branching networks in the natural world, and what we can learn from them.
Many patterns in nature show a branching form - trees, river deltas, blood vessels, lightning, the cracks that form in the glazing of pots. These networks share a peculiar geometry, finding a compromise between disorder and determinism, though some, like the hexagonal snowflake or the stones of the Devil's Causeway fall into a rigidly ordered structure. Branching...

'Serving the Reich' tells the story of three world-renowned physicists working under Hitler against the background of the attempt by Nazi scientists to create 'German physics' - an Aryan science that excluded any 'Jewish ideas', in particular Einstein's theory of relativity.

If you could be invisible, what would you do? The chances are that it would have something to do with power, wealth or sex. Perhaps all three. But there's no need to feel guilty. Impulses like these have always been at the heart of our fascination with invisibility: it points to realms beyond our senses, serves as a receptacle for fears and dreams, and hints at worlds where other rules apply. Invisibility is a mighty power and a terrible curse, a sexual promise, a spiritual condition. This is a history of humanity's turbulent relationship with the invisible. It takes on the myths and morals...