Kategoria BISAC: Science >> History

Particle or Wave is the first popular-level book to explain the origins and development of modern physical concepts about matter and the controversies surrounding them. The dichotomy between particle and wave reflects a dispute--whether the universe's most elementary building blocks are discrete or continuous in nature--originating in antiquity when philosophers first speculated about the makeup of the physical world. Charis Anastopoulos examines two of the earliest known theories about matter--the atomic theory, which attributed all physical phenomena to atoms and their motion...

The Russian science establishment was one of the largest in the world, boasting many Nobel prizes, a world-leading space program, and famous schools in mathematics, physics, and other fields. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the major financial supports for the scientific community were eliminated, with resulting "brain drain." The subsequent expansion of capitalism and globalization revealed that Russian science was ill adapted to compete with other countries in high technology. Science in the New Russia tells the dramatic story of the near collapse of Russian science in...

In Ending the Mendel-Fisher Controversy, leading experts present their conclusions on the legendary controversy surrounding the challenge to Mendel's findings by...

As scholars debate the most appropriate way to teach evolutionary theory, Constance Areson Clark provides an intriguing reflection on similar debates in the not-too-distant past. Set against the backdrop of the Jazz Age, God--or Gorilla explores the efforts of biologists to explain evolution to a confused and conflicted public during the 1920s. Focusing on the use of images and popularization, Clark shows how scientists and anti-evolutionists deployed schematics, cartoons, photographs, sculptures, and paintings to win the battle for public acceptance. She uses representative...

This book offers a comprehensive and inclusive insight into the history of prostate cancer and its sufferers. Until recently, little practical help could be offered for men afflicted with the devastating diseases of the genitourinary organs. This is despite complaints of painful urination from aging men being found in ancient medical manuscripts, despite the anatomical discoveries of the European Renaissance and despite the experimental surgical researches of the eighteen and nineteenth centuries. As diseases of the prostate, including prostate cancer, came to be better understood in the...

Focusing on the period between the 1970s and the present, Life as Surplus is a pointed and important study of the relationship between politics, economics, science, and cultural values in the United States today. Melinda Cooper demonstrates that the history of biotechnology cannot be understood without taking into account the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism as a political force and an economic policy. From the development of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s to the second Bush administration's policies on stem cell research, Cooper connects the utopian polemic of...

In 1929, French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a part of a group of scientists that uncovered a skull that became known as Peking Man, a key evolutionary link that left Teilhard torn between science and his ancient faith, and would leave him ostracized by his beloved Catholic Church. His struggle is at the heart of The Jesuit and the Skull, which takes readers across continents...