Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Essays

From the seemingly mundane to the food...

From the seemingly mundane to the food...

Life would not exist without sensitive, or soft, matter. All biological structures depend on it, including red blood globules, lung fluid, and membranes. So do industrial emulsions, gels, plastics, liquid crystals, and granular materials. What makes sensitive matter so fascinating is its inherent versatility. Shape-shifting at the slightest provocation, whether a change in composition or environment, it leads a fugitive existence.

Physicist Michel Mitov brings drama to molecular gastronomy (as when two irreconcilable materials are mixed to achieve the miracle of mayonnaise) and...

Steven Shapin argues that science, for all its immense authority and power, is and always has been a human endeavor, subject to human capacities and limits. Put simply, science has never been pure. To be human is to err, and we understand science better when we recognize it as the laborious achievement of fallible, imperfect, and historically situated human beings.

Shapin's essays collected here include reflections on the historical relationships between science and common sense, between science and modernity, and between science and the moral order. They explore the relevance of...

There are days when, if we hunt or fish or watch birds, we just want to be alone with our thoughts. Other times, however, contemplating the great outdoors that contains so many unknowns, we may wish to learn about moaning moose . . . or mumbling carp . . . or magnetic deer. And this is where Robert M. Zink enters the scene.

A writer who humorously bridges the gap between esoteric information and nature as we have come to know it, Zink distills the latest news from the world of science into three-minute bursts of irresistible lore for the layman. In these brief, engaging...

With great enthusiasm, Lynn shows how she shares her inner geek--the part of her that is gleefully curious and wide-eyed with wonderment--with her children. For Lynn, science is the stardust that makes common things glow. Why not pass that magic along to the kids? When Lynn brought her passion for science into her parenting, it began to make all the...