Mostrando resultados por título "It" en Historia y Filosofía

In LIFE AS NO ONE KNOWS IT, physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker argues that solving the origin of life requires radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. This is an urgent issue for efforts to make life from scratch in laboratories here on Earth and missions searching for life on other planets. Walker proposes a new paradigm for understanding what physics encompasses and what we recognize as life.

The theory of evolution unites the past, present, and future of living things. It puts humanity's place in the universe into necessary perspective. Despite a history of controversy, the evidence for evolution continues to accumulate as a result of many separate strands of incredible scientific sleuthing. In The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries, Donald R. Prothero explores the most fascinating breakthroughs in piecing together the evidence for evolution.

In this collection of lectures that Richard Feynman originally gave in 1963, unpublished during his lifetime, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist discusses several of the ultimate questions of science. What is the nature of the tension between science and religious faith? Why does uncertainty play such a crucial role in the scientific imagination? Is this really a scientific age?

In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species - cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions.

The term metaverse is suddenly everywhere, from debates over Fortnite to the pages of the New York Times to the speeches of Mark Zuckerberg, who proclaimed in June 2021 that “the overarching goal” of Facebook is to “bring the metaverse to life”. But what, exactly, is the metaverse? As pioneering theorist and venture capitalist Matthew Ball explains, it is the successor to the mobile internet that has defined the last two decades.

The immune system holds the key to human health. In The Beautiful Cure, leading immunologist Daniel M. Davis describes how the scientific quest to understand how the immune system works - and how it is affected by stress, sleep, age, and our state of mind - is now unlocking a revolutionary new approach to medicine and well-being. The body's ability to fight disease and heal itself is one of the great mysteries and marvels of nature. But in recent years, painstaking research has resulted in major advances in our grasp of this breathtakingly beautiful inner world....

Knowledge is a big subject, says Stuart Firestein, but ignorance is a bigger one. And it is ignorance - not knowledge - that is the true engine of science. Most of us have a false impression of science as a surefire, deliberate, step-by-step method for finding things out and getting things done. In fact, says Firestein, more often than not, science is like looking for a black cat in a dark room, and there may not be a cat in the room.

In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for example, addresses just five per cent of the universe, pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored, and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning.

In a culture in which science is believed to hold the answers to every question, spiritual realities like the soul are often ignored or ridiculed. We are told that neuroscience holds the key to explaining every aspect of human behavior. Yet Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland argues that scripture, sound philosophical reasoning, and everyday experience all point to the reality of an immaterial soul.

Black holes. DNA. The Large Hadron Collider. Ever had that sneaking feeling that you are missing out on some truly spectacular science? You do? Well fear not, for help is at hand. Ben Miller was working on his Physics PhD at Cambridge when he accidentally became a comedian. But first love runs deep, and he has returned to his roots, to share with you all his favourite bits of science. This is the stuff that you really need to know, not only because it matters, but because it will quite simply amaze and delight you.

Size explains the regularities—and peculiarities—of the key processes shaping life (from microbes to whales), the Earth (from asteroids to volcanic eruptions), technical advances (from architecture to transportation), and societies and economies (from cities to wages).

The essential guide to radiation: the good, the bad, and the utterly fascinating, explained with unprecedented clarity. Earth, born in a nuclear explosion, is a radioactive planet; without radiation, life would not exist. And while radiation can be dangerous, it is also deeply misunderstood and often mistakenly feared. Now Robert Peter Gale, M.D. - the doctor to whom concerned governments turned in the wake of the Chernobyl and Fukushima - in collaboration with medical writer Eric Lax draws on an exceptional depth of knowledge to correct myths and establish facts.

From the best-selling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics comes a new audiobook about the mind-bending nature of the universe. What are time and space made of? Where does matter come from? And what exactly is reality? Scientist Carlo Rovelli has spent his whole life exploring these questions and pushing the boundaries of what we know. Here he explains how our image of the world has changed throughout centuries.

The Most Human Human is a provocative, exuberant, and profound exploration of the ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human. Its starting point is the annual Turing Test, which pits artificial intelligence programs against people to determine if computers can “think.” Named for computer pioneer Alan Turing, the Tur­ing Test convenes a panel of judges who pose questions—ranging anywhere from celebrity gossip to moral conundrums—to hidden contestants in an attempt to discern which is human and which is a computer.

From Aristotle to Ada Lovelace: a brief history of the mathematical ideas that have forever changed the world and the everyday people and pioneers behind them. The story of our best invention yet. From our ability to calculate the passing of time to the algorithms that control computers and much else in our lives, numbers are everywhere. They are so indispensable that we forget how fundamental they are to our way of life.

Are human beings immortal? Are apples conscious? Do our legal systems make assumptions about free will that are just plain wrong? Of all the terrific books on quantum physics—from Stephen Hawking to Brian Greene—the questions they never seem to satisfy are the implications of the science. We know that quantum physics is real—our phones and computers wouldn’t work if the science wasn’t right. But what does it all mean?

A cataclysmic planetary phenomenon is gathering force deep within the Earth. The magnetic North Pole will eventually trade places with the South Pole. Satellite evidence suggests to some scientists that the move has already begun, but most still think it won't happen for many decades. All agree that it has happened many times before and will happen again. But this time it will be different. It will be a very bad day for modern civilization.

Nicolelis undertakes the first attempt to explain the entirety of human history, culture, and civilization based on a series of recently uncovered key principles of brain function. This new cosmology is centered around three fundamental properties of the human brain: its insurmountable malleability to adapt and learn; its exquisite ability to allow multiple individuals to synchronize their minds around a task, goal, or belief; and its incomparable capacity for abstraction.

Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Earth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.

The solar system most of us grew up with included nine planets, with Mercury closest to the sun and Pluto at the outer edge. Then, in 2005, astronomer Mike Brown made the discovery of a lifetime: a tenth planet, Eris, slightly bigger than Pluto. But instead of its resulting in one more planet being added to our solar system, Brown’s find ignited a firestorm of controversy that riled the usually sedate world of astronomy and launched him into the public eye.