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  Image and Reality - Kekulé Kopp...

  Alan J. Rocke

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  Nineteenth-century chemists were faced with a particular problem: how to depict the atoms and molecules that are beyond the direct reach of our bodily senses. In visualizing this microworld, these scientists were the first to move beyond high-level philosophical speculations regarding the unseen. In Image and Reality, Alan Rocke focuses on the community of organic chemists in Germany to provide the basis for a fuller understanding of the nature of scientific creativity. Arguing that visual mental images regularly assisted many of these scientists in thinking through old problems and new possibilities, Rocke uses a variety of sources, including private correspondence, diagrams and illustrations, scientific papers, and public statements, to investigate their ability to not only imagine the invisibly tiny atoms and molecules upon which they operated daily, but to build detailed and empirically based pictures of how all of the atoms in complicated molecules were interconnected. These portrayals of “chemical structures,” both as mental images and as paper tools, gradually became an accepted part of science during these years and are now regarded as one of the central defining features of chemistry.  In telling this fascinating story in a manner accessible to the lay reader, Rocke also suggests that imagistic thinking is often at the heart of creative thinking in all fields.Image and Reality is the first book in the Synthesis series, a series in the history of chemistry, broadly construed, edited by Angela N. H. Creager, John E. Lesch, Stuart W. Leslie, Lawrence M. Principe, Alan Rocke, E.C. Spary, and Audra J. Wolfe, in partnership with the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

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  The World According to Physics

  Jim Al-Khalili

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  This audiobook narrated by quantum physicist, New York Times bestselling author, and BBC host Jim Al-Khalili offers an illuminating look at what physics reveals about the world 
  Shining a light on the most profound insights revealed by modern physics, Jim Al-Khalili invites us all to understand what this crucially important science tells us about the universe and the nature of reality itself. 
  Al-Khalili begins by introducing the fundamental concepts of space, time, energy, and matter, and then describes the three pillars of modern physics—quantum theory, relativity, and thermodynamics—showing how all three must come together if we are ever to have a full understanding of reality. Using wonderful examples and thought-provoking analogies, Al-Khalili illuminates the physics of the extreme cosmic and quantum scales, the speculative frontiers of the field, and the physics that underpins our everyday experiences and technologies, bringing the reader up to speed with the biggest ideas in physics in just a few sittings. Physics is revealed as an intrepid human quest for ever more foundational principles that accurately explain the natural world we see around us, an undertaking guided by core values such as honesty and doubt. The knowledge discovered by physics both empowers and humbles us, and still, physics continues to delve valiantly into the unknown. 
  Making even the most enigmatic scientific ideas accessible and captivating, this deeply insightful book illuminates why physics matters to everyone and calls one and all to share in the profound adventure of seeking truth in the world around us.

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  Beyond Informational Thinking To...

  PH.D. Glenn Aparicio Parry

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  Glenn Parry believes that the way to cure our planetary challenges begins with a return to original thinking. The way we think and interact with nature and each other, he says, affects everything. As long as we divide things up as animate and inanimate, as living and not living we will continue to destroy the earth. “If there’s one thing I would like to change in Western culture, it’s to remember and restore the understanding that all the elements are alive.” There has been a shift to linear thinking which he says is not our natural way. He explains that the ancient Greeks were interested in how things come together in harmony. The word “rational” comes from “ratio” or a relationship between things. “And this is totally the opposite of what rational thought has become today where it’s a fragmented, degraded form of rationality which is no longer connected to a sensuous living universe.” He opens up about his personal experiences of learning and thinking, listening and being, and shares stories that offer deep insights into the living roots of wisdom and the origin of thinking. (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

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  The Fossil Hunter - Dinosaurs...

  Shelley Emling

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  Mary Anning was only twelve years old when, in 1811, she discovered the first dinosaur skeleton—of an ichthyosaur—while fossil hunting on the cliffs of Lyme Regis, England. Until Mary's incredible discovery, it was widely believed that animals did not become extinct. The child of a poor family, Mary became a fossil hunter, inspiring the tongue-twister, "She Sells Sea Shells by the Seashore." She attracted the attention of fossil collectors and eventually the scientific world. Once news of the fossils reached the halls of academia, it became impossible to ignore the truth. Mary's peculiar finds helped lay the groundwork for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, laid out in his On the Origin of Species. Darwin drew on Mary's fossilized creatures as irrefutable evidence that life in the past was nothing like life in the present.A story worthy of Dickens, The Fossil Hunter chronicles the life of this young girl, who became a world-renowned paleontologist. Dickens himself said of Mary: "The carpenter's daughter has won a name for herself, and deserved to win it."Here at last, Shelley Emling returns Mary Anning, of whom Stephen J. Gould remarked, is "probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology," to her deserved place in history.

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  I Human - AI Automation and the...

  Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

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  Will artificial intelligence improve the way we work and live, or will it alienate us? The choice is ours. What will we decide?It's no secret that AI is changing the way we live, work, love, and entertain ourselves. Dating apps are using AI to pick our potential partners. Retailers are using AI to predict our behavior and desires. Rogue actors are using AI to persuade us with Twitter bots and fake news. Companies are using AI to hire us—or not.This is just the beginning. As AI becomes smarter and more humanlike, our societies, our economies, and our humanity will undergo the most dramatic changes we've seen since the Agricultural Revolution. Some of these changes will enhance our species. Others may dehumanize us and make us more machinelike in our interactions with others. It's up to us to adapt and determine how we want to live and work. Are you ready?In I, Human psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic offers a guide for reclaiming ourselves in a world in which most of our decisions will be made for us. To do so, we'll need to double down on what makes us so special—our curiosity, adaptability, and emotional intelligence—while relying on the lost virtues of empathy, humility, and self-control. Filled with big-think fascinations and practical wisdom, I, Human is the book we need to thrive in the future.

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  An Empire of Ice - Scott...

  Edward J. Larson

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  A Pulitzer Prize–winning author examines South Pole expeditions, “wrapping the science in plenty of dangerous drama to keep readers engaged” (Booklist).  An Empire of Ice presents a fascinating new take on Antarctic exploration—placing the famed voyages of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, his British rivals Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton, and others in a larger scientific, social, and geopolitical context.   Recounting the Antarctic expeditions of the early twentieth century, the author reveals the British efforts for what they actually were: massive scientific enterprises in which reaching the South Pole was but a spectacular sideshow. By focusing on the larger purpose of these legendary adventures, Edward J. Larson deepens our appreciation of the explorers’ achievements, shares little-known stories, and shows what the Heroic Age of Antarctic discovery was really about.   “Rather than recounting the story of the race to the pole chronologically, Larson concentrates on various scientific disciplines (like meteorology, glaciology and paleontology) and elucidates the advances made by the polar explorers . . . Covers a lot of ground—science, politics, history, adventure.” —The New York Times Book Review

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