The Age of Everything
| Author | : Matthew Hedman |
| Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
| Total Pages | : 259 |
| Release | : 2008-08-13 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 0226322947 |
Taking advantage of recent advances throughout the sciences, Matthew Hedman brings the distant past closer to us than it has ever been. Here, he shows how scientists have determined the age of everything from the colonization of the New World over 13,000 years ago to the origin of the universe nearly fourteen billion years ago. Hedman details, for example, how interdisciplinary studies of the Great Pyramids of Egypt can determine exactly when and how these incredible structures were built. He shows how the remains of humble trees can illuminate how the surface of the sun has changed over the past ten millennia. And he also explores how the origins of the earth, solar system, and universe are being discerned with help from rocks that fall from the sky, the light from distant stars, and even the static seen on television sets. Covering a wide range of time scales, from the Big Bang to human history, The Age of Everything is a provocative and far-ranging look at how science has determined the age of everything from modern mammals to the oldest stars, and will be indispensable for all armchair time travelers. “We are used to being told confidently of an enormous, measurable past: that some collection of dusty bones is tens of thousands of years old, or that astronomical bodies have an age of some billions. But how exactly do scientists come to know these things? That is the subject of this quite fascinating book. . . . As told by Hedman, an astronomer, each story is a marvel of compressed exegesis that takes into account some of the most modern and intriguing hypotheses.”—Steven Poole, Guardian “Hedman is worth reading because he is careful to present both the power and peril of trying to extract precise chronological data. These are all very active areas of study, and as you read Hedman you begin to see how researchers have to be both very careful and incredibly audacious, and how much of our understanding of ourselves—through history, through paleontology, through astronomy—depends on determining the age of everything.”—Anthony Doerr, Boston Globe
The Age of Science
| Author | : Gerard Piel |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 748 |
| Release | : 2010-12-03 |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9781459609006 |
When historians of the future come to examine western civilization in the twentieth century, one area of intellectual accomplishment will stand out above all others; more than any other era before it, the twentieth century was an age of science. Not only were the practical details of daily life radically transformed by the application of scientific discoveries, but our very sense of who we are, how our minds work, how our world came to be, how it works and our proper role in it, our ultimate origins, and our ultimate fate were all influenced by scientific thinking as never before in human history. In the Age of Science, the former editor and publisher of Scientific American gives us a sweeping overview of the scientific achievements of the twentieth century, with chaers on the fundamental forces of nature, the subatomic world, cosmology, the cell and molecular biology, earth history and the evolution of life, and human evolution. Beautifully written and illustrated, this is a book for the connoisseur; an elegant, informative, magisterial summation of one of the twentieth century's greatest cultural achievements.
Margaret Mead
| Author | : Joan Mark |
| Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 112 |
| Release | : 1999-03-11 |
| Genre | : Juvenile Nonfiction |
| ISBN | : 0190283491 |
The American anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was barely 24 years old when she left New York to study the natives of Samoa, New Guinea, and other remote Pacific islands. Anthropological research to her was not a dull academic discipline but an adventure in which every little detail, from Balinese ritual dances to Polynesian tattooing, held enormous fascination. Her 1928 book--Coming of Age in Samoa--made her both famous and controversial. She boldly challenged the most deeply ingrained principles of the Western way of life: family structure, education, and child-rearing. When she died in 1978, a Pacific tribe she befriended held a five-day ceremony in her honor normally reserved for their greatest chiefs. Joan Mark guides us through the most exciting anthropological discoveries of the 20th century while following Margaret Meads many triumphs around the globe in quick-paced, engrossing prose that reads like an adventure story. Oxford Portraits in Science is an ongoing series of scientific biographies. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.
An Anthology of Nineteenth-Century American Science Writing
| Author | : C. R. Resetarits |
| Publisher | : Anthem Press |
| Total Pages | : 320 |
| Release | : 2013-11-01 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 1783080620 |
This volume is a brief anthology of the most influential writing by American scientists between 1800 and 1900. Arranged thematically and chronologically to highlight the progression of American science throughout the nineteenth century – from its beginnings in self-taught classification and exploration to the movement towards university education and specialization – it is the first collection of its kind. Each section begins with a biography, putting human faces to each time period, and introducing such notable figures as Thomas Jefferson and Louis Agassiz.
A Companion to the History of American Science
| Author | : Georgina M. Montgomery |
| Publisher | : John Wiley & Sons |
| Total Pages | : 726 |
| Release | : 2019-09-23 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 1119130700 |
A Companion to the History of American Science offers a collection of essays that give an authoritative overview of the most recent scholarship on the history of American science. Covers topics including astronomy, agriculture, chemistry, eugenics, Big Science, military technology, and more Features contributions by the most accomplished scholars in the field of science history Covers pivotal events in U.S. history that shaped the development of science and science policy such as WWII, the Cold War, and the Women’s Rights movement
The "true Professional Ideal" in America
| Author | : Bruce A. Kimball |
| Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
| Total Pages | : 462 |
| Release | : 1996 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : 9780847681433 |
Bruce A. Kimball attacks the widely held assumption that the idea of American "professionalism" arose from the proliferation of urban professional positions during the late nineteenth century. This first paperback edition of The "True Professional Ideal" in America argues that the professional ideal can be traced back to the colonial period. This comprehensive intellectual history illuminates the profound relationships between the idea of a "professional" and broader changes in American social, cultural, and political history.
Female Adolescence in American Scientific Thought, 1830–1930
| Author | : Crista DeLuzio |
| Publisher | : JHU Press |
| Total Pages | : 344 |
| Release | : 2007-09-23 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 080189591X |
In this groundbreaking study, Crista DeLuzio asks how scientific experts conceptualized female adolescence in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Revisiting figures like G. Stanley Hall and Margaret Mead and casting her net across the disciplines of biology, psychology, and anthropology, DeLuzio examines the process by which youthful femininity in America became a contested cultural category. Challenging accepted views that professionals "invented" adolescence during this period to understand the typical experiences of white middle-class boys, DeLuzio shows how early attempts to reconcile that conceptual category with "femininity" not only shaped the social science of young women but also forced child development experts and others to reconsider the idea of adolescence itself. DeLuzio’s provocative work permits a fuller understanding of how adolescence emerged as a "crisis" in female development and offers insight into why female adolescence remains a social and cultural preoccupation even today.
Ferdinand V. Hayden
| Author | : James G. Cassidy |
| Publisher | : U of Nebraska Press |
| Total Pages | : 436 |
| Release | : 2000-01-01 |
| Genre | : Science |
| ISBN | : 9780803215078 |
Science could contribute to answering these questions, but at the time there were no bureaus or agencies that could apply scientific expertise to these challenges."
