Book Description

Winner of the 1988 American Institute of Physics Prize, Ferris's book offers the listener "an exhilarating, wide-ranging journey that takes us from the shores of the Mediterranean, where the second-century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy fashioned his creaky celestial spheres, to modern-day research institutes, where theorists contemplate this and other universes bubbling out of a quantum vacuum." (The New York Times) ... Read more

Reviews (19)

A good history of the sciences and Astronomy in particular.
This book is an excellent tour through history of astronomy and astronomers quest to uncover our place (and time) in the universe. Ferris goes into quite a bit of detail and does not treat his readers with kid gloves. There are many interesting anecdotes about various astronomers and Ferris sometimes gives mini biographies of the more interesting/eccentric of them. Ferris starts with the greek astonomers such has hypocratus, goes through copernicus, kepler, galileo, newton, and then onto the astronmers of the last 200 years. But in his final section, he also talks about how the geosciences, and the theory of evolution began to give us a better perspective of where we fit in the universe not just in space but in time. The last chapters are devoted to the cutting edge of science - quantum physics. Ferris reports discoveries up to the point practically that this book was published! All in all, a good read for anyone interested in science and particularly in Astronomy.

COSMOS on steroids.
This book is an excellent tour through history of astronomy and astronomers quest to uncover our place (and time) in the universe. Ferris goes into quite a bit of detail and does not treat his readers with kid gloves. There are many interesting anecdotes about various astronomers and Ferris sometimes gives mini biographies of the more interesting/eccentric of them. Ferris starts with the greek astonomers such has hypocratus, goes through copernicus, kepler, galileo, newton, and then onto the astronmers of the last 200 years. But in his final section, he also talks about how the geosciences, and the theory of evolution began to give us a better perspective of where we fit in the universe not just in space but in time. The last chapters are devoted to the cutting edge of science - quantum physics. Ferris reports discoveries up to the point practically that this book was published! All in all, a good read for anyone interested in science and particularly in Astronomy.

The more we know, the more we see how little we know
In charting the place of mankind in the universe Timothy Ferris explores as different topics as history, evolution, physics, mathematics, cosmology, theology or philosophy and that from the Big Bang over the Greeks to the end of the 20th century.
Within this tour-de-force I would like to emphasize a few extremely important statements.
First, the importance of Godel's incompleteness theorem:'there is not and never will be a complete and comprehensive scientific account of the universe that can be proved valid'.(p. 374)
Secondly, the killing of the 'monstrous' philosophy of determinism (Einstein's belief) by quantum physics:'Quantum indeterminacy ... celebrates the return of chance to the fundamental affairs of the world.' (p.291)
Thirdly, the all importance of symmetry in the gauge field theory with force as a medium to maintain the invariance and particles as messengers of symmetry.
When one reads a book about the fate of mankind in (or and) the universe, one encounters nearly always approaches from new angles. Timothy Ferris' book is in that league.
I have only one small remark: the short personal biography of Einstein is not correct.
Not to be missed.
I also recommend strongly the works of Lee Smolin and Richard Dawkins.

Old Ideas in science revisited, New ideas introduced
Great book! I finished this 500+ pages book in a week, a record for a slow like myself. "Coming of Age in the Milky Way" tells us how our concept in astronomy and cosmology changes and evolves, how man struggles to understand the universe through diligent research, and what will the future of SETI be. Timothy Ferris tells us how, for example, we develops the idea that earth is spherical from simple observations of Eratosthenes from Alexandria, and that measuring the distance of earth to sun accurately is an endeavour that takes hundreds of years and take hundreds of scientist globe-trotting to observe transit of Venus (the passing of Venus in the sun's disc), which will be an accurate method to determine the earth-sun distance. In short, this books tells us how human can gain all the knowledge that is now a popular knowledge to everybody.

The titles suggest that we, human, are just becoming of age in our universe. Young, passionate, eager to face the world, but brash and hold many future. In the final chapters, Timothy Ferris introduces us to the concept of galactic beacon that will hold all our profile so that it can be transmitted to other civilizations in other stars.

The best starter for anybody.
Professor Ferris 1988 work is absolutely worth of pursuing - beautiful writing style, fantastic read. He researched historical details about voyages, discoveries and lives of the greatest philosophers and scientists. He tells us how people started to observe and realize the depth of the Universe.
Final chapters depict selected important subjects of particle physics, quantum mysteries and SETI dilemma. I have rarely seen topics like: symmetry-invariance, gauge field theory, description of particle accelerator, vacuum inflation (just to mention a few) so brilliantly presented. Topped with practical glossary - book ends where Alan Guth proposed his inflation hypothesis. This book is better than Hawking's original "The Brief History of Time" and would be better (if not a date of publishing) than Fred Adams "Origins of Existence". Robert Kirshner's "Extravagant Universe" would be the good choice to get more updated and ready to absorb whatever new is coming from the space - unless professor Feriss updates his great masterpiece. ... Read more

Book Description

"A fascinating walk through a pivotal period in human history."--USA Today

For many people, the Internet is the epitome of cutting-edge technology. But in the nineteenth century, the first online communications network was already in place--the telegraph. And at the time, it was just as perplexing, controversial, and revolutionary as the Internet is today.

The Victorian Internet tells the story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it. With the invention of the telegraph, the world of communications was forever changed. The telegraph gave rise to creative business practices and new forms of crime. Romances blossomed over its wires. And attitudes toward everything from news gathering to war had to be completely rethought. The saga of the telegraph offers many parallels to that of the Internet in our own time, and is a remarkable episode in the history of technology.

* Illustrated throughout
* A masterful, lively blend of science and history, in the bestselling tradition of Longitude

"Fascinating...If you've ever hankered for a perspective on media Net hype, this book is for you."--Wired

"Sparkling."--Forbes

"Essential reading for those caught up in our own information revolution."--Christian Science Monitor ... Read more

Reviews (34)

There's nothing new about the new economy
Very easy book to read (did it in a long night). Book makes premise that in the whirlwind of Internet hype and how it's revolutionizing our world, this all first happened a hundred years ago when the Telegraph was invented.

Ironically, Morse had a hard time convincing the initial trials. It was also first seen as a play toy, an oddity. However soon applications came to be and governments, news, business, and personal lives were changed by this first major advance in communications in hundreds of years (likely since the printing press).

When reading about the chapter on how commerce was changed because cross-atlantic orders could be transmitted in a day rather than weeks. Business people became obsessed with keeping up with the new demands for fear of competition(They lived in "Internet Time"). How the first major application in business was transmitting stock quotes (this sound familiar?).

The book makes the premise that in this 'new internet age', we've seen it all before. To that it does a good job in a quick entertaining read.

The Rise & Fall of the Telegraph
From the late 1840s to the advent of the telephone in the early 1880s, the telegraph provided the first modern means of instant communication to a suddenly shrunken world. Standage's book is easy to read with several interesting anecdotes, including appearances by more than a few eccentric characters. Take for example Dr. Edward Orange Wildman Whitehouse, something of a crackpot who, despite a pathetic lack of scientific knowledge, talked his way into becoming the official electrician of the Atlantic Telegraph Company. This organization pioneered the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858. Within a month Whitehouse had fried the wire by mandating the use of excessive voltage to transmit messages. Successful and reliable transatlantic cabling thus had to wait until the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865.

Although we enjoyed the easy to read style in which the book is written, a dearth of footnotes providing source citation is a minor annoyance (thus, we docked Standage a star in Amazon's ranking system). Sometimes quotes appear to be completely unattributable, and it would have been nice to see from where Standage drew them. Regardless, it is an easy and fun read and the book will no doubt open the eyes of the current generation to the fact that "Everything old is new again" holds true today more than ever.

From the Applied Science Sketchbook, but ...
... Can You be Sure it's True?

Standage does for the telegraph what the "How and Why Wonder Books" used to do: outline the history and science of a topic in a basic yet interesting format (though their illustrations were superior). The pitfalls are the same too: my How and Why Wonder Book of Space Travel told me that an aerospace engineer was called a "celestial mechanic", and I believed it. It took me years to discover that it sounded more like a job description for the Supreme Being ... Standage says the telegraph first saw the light of day as an optical device constructed by French inventors in 1791, later adopted by the Admiralty in England and by the French state. I wonder what English forces, who used the various Beacons from the fourteenth century on to signal to troops details of the threat of invaders, and the Romans, and probably Iron Age people before them, would make of this claim ... nothing new under the sun, perhaps. See entries in Geoffrey Grigson's "The Shell Country Alphabet" (1966) for more about beacons and signal stations. "The Timetables of Science" complied by Hellemans and Bunch, published in the US by Simon & Schuster (1988) has an "optical telegraph using torches to signal from hilltop to hilltop" operating in Greece before 421 BC.

... Is It Missing the Point?

More seriously, Standage ignores the most important, economic factor in his comparison between the telegraph and the internet. He quite rightly points out that the use of the telegraph raised concerns about privacy (Chapter 7), since even the automated versions involved some transcription by humans. The fact that unlike the telegraph, there is no human intervention necessary to communicate privately via the Internet, neither via email nor via web site and in chat room, has been a major factor in the growth of the single most important economic driver of the internet, pornography. This is a business now estimated to be of the same economic order of magnitude worldwide as the automobile industry. The difference between internet and telegraph in arrangements for privacy is crucial to differences in their growth and influence; the development of other technology such as webcams and streaming video amplifies it. Yet Standage has a clue in his own narrative; he quotes Edison in Chapter 8 to the effect that the private on-line chat between telegraph operators (rather than the paid-for messages) was frequently "smutty or anatomically explicit".

Nevertheless, it's an informative and fascinating sketch of how technology and communication combine in ways new yet strangely familiar. The differences as well as the similarities need to be understood.

Parallels Galore
The idea of this book is that the telegraph had much the same effect for the Victorians, as the internet has on our own times. The world got smaller: markets became more efficient and larger and diplomats had to respond to crises in real time. Journalists had to adapt and organize syndicates for gathering and sharing information. Codes and ciphers increased in importance and commercial value while governments futilely tried to control and restrict their use. All of these things are as familiar to us, as it was to the Victorians.

Sandage has done a credible job in researching the parallels and tells the story with plenty of amusing asides and anecdotes, making for an easy read. The stories about how the telegraph was used in affairs of the heart, and the ingenuity of criminals to find innovative methods of practicing their craft shows one more time that there is little really new under the sun.

History Repeats Itself
Tom Standage is onto something. It seems that everything we know about the Internet today, we've already done before. The turn of this century was a lot like the turn of the last century.

"The Victorian Internet" is all about our world and the invention of the Telegraph. As cyberpunk author Neal Stephenson once pointed out, the telegraph was the world's first global digital network. It's when we started trying to push voice down the copper lines that we mucked things up.

In this book, you'll find technological wizardry, geek pioneers, global aspirations, long-distance romances, and online scams. You'll discover what 19th-Century chat was like. There are growing pains. We see fear for the future and fear of moral decline. The Telegraph represented a sudden, massive interconnection of people thousands of miles apart, and the effects of this overnight deluge of information is clear in reading. You have to remember that these were people used to feeling safe in their own homes, blissfully unaware of each other, and only vaguely informed of events going on in other countries.

Standage does a nice job of hitting on the hottest topics of our time, without hitting the reader over the head to make a point. Cybergeeks will love his stops at Cryptography, code, and the other programming-like solutions people came up with to solve their problems. Fans of history will be amused by the parallels between life then and now as "old media" learns to stop worrying and embrace "new media".

In a narrative style that resembles the British TV series "Connections", Standage shows us what each side of the Atlantic was up to, the race to connect the world, and the sheer determination and boundless optimism that made it all happen. There are also interesting tidbits along the way: we get facts about Samuel Morse and Thomas Edison that most history books ignore. There are anecdotes from 19th-century daily life that we can easily identify with today. All of it combines in a way that is easy to read, decently-paced, and fun to think about and discuss with others.

I give this book 5 stars for being clever with presentation and for keeping the various threads together without seeming fragmented. Tom Standage moves us through history without jumping around, and references earlier sections to remind us of where things are going. If you like history, technology, or even the geekier topics of machine logic, programming, and cryptography, this book makes an excellent read. ... Read more

Book Description

Best-selling author Barbara Goldsmith on the myth and reality behind the extraordinary "Madame Curie."

The myth of Marie Curie—the penniless Polish immigrant who, through genius and obsessive persistence, endured years of toil and deprivation to produce radium, a luminous panacea for all the world's ills including cancer—has obscured the remarkable truth behind her discoveries. Curie's shrewd though controversial insight was that radioactivity was an atomic property that could be used to discover new elements. While her work won her two Nobel Prizes and transformed our world, it did not liberate her from the prejudices of either the male-dominated scientific community or society. Here is an all-too-human woman trying to balance science, love, and the family values that constitute her legacy.

Using original research (diaries, letters, and family interviews) to peel away the layers of myth and reveal the woman behind the icon, the acclaimed author and historian Barbara Goldsmith offers a dazzling portrait of Curie, her amazing discoveries, and the price she paid for fame. 15 photographs. ... Read more

Book Description

Armed with extraordinary new discoveries about our genes, acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley turns his attention to the nature-versus-nurture debate in a thoughtful book about the roots of human behavior.

Ridley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. With the decoding of the human genome, we now know that genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will.

Reviews (1)

Great Book - But DON'T BUY IT!!!! (read this review first)
I have really enjoyed each and every Matt Ridley book and "The Agile Gene" is no exception - but for the fact that it is an identical 'word-for-word' copy of his book titled "Nature Via Nurture". I'm not sure why a publisher would release the same book under a different title (there is one very small notice on the left front of the cover stating "Previously published as Nature Via Nurture"), but I'm more upset that it's not a new Matt Ridley book than by being out the money for the price of the book and the special two day delivery.

So...great book, just don't shell out any money if you already read "Nature Via Nurture". ... Read more

Book Description

Is there a significant difference in attitude between immersion in a game and immersion in a movie or novel? What are the new possibilities for representation offered by the emerging technology of virtual reality? As Marie-Laure Ryan demonstrates in Narrative as Virtual Reality, the questions raised by new, interactive technologies have their precursors and echoes in pre-electronic literary and artistic traditions. Formerly a culture of immersive ideals--getting lost in a good book, for example--we are becoming, Ryan claims, a culture more concerned with interactivity. Approaching the idea of virtual reality as a metaphor for total art, Narrative as Virtual Reality applies the concepts of immersion and interactivity to develop a phenomenology of reading.

Ryan's analysis encompasses both traditional literary narratives and the new textual genres made possible by the electronic revolution of the past few years, such as hypertext, interactive movies and drama, digital installation art, and computer role-playing games. Interspersed among the book's chapters are several "interludes" that focus exclusively on either key literary texts that foreshadow what we now call "virtual reality," including those of Baudelaire, Huysmans, Ignatius de Loyola, Calvino, and science-fiction author Neal Stephenson, or recent efforts to produce interactive art forms, like the hypertext "novel" Twelve Blue, by Michael Joyce, and I'm Your Man, an interactive movie. As Ryan considers the fate of traditional narrative patterns in digital culture, she revisits one of the central issues in modern literary theory--the opposition between a presumably passive reading that is taken over by the world a text represents and an active, deconstructive reading that imaginatively participates in the text's creation. ... Read more

Book Description

J. D. Bernal's monumental work Science in History is the first full-scale attempt to analyze the relationship between science and society throughout history, from the perfection of the first flint hand ax to the construction of the hydrogen bomb. This remarkable study illustrates the impetus given to and the limitations placed upon discovery and invention by pastoral, agricultural, feudal, capitalist, and socialist systems, and conversely the ways in which science has altered economic, social, and political beliefs and practices.

This second volume focuses on the period of development and the establishment of modern science. It begins with work of the Renaissance and continues with a discussion of the stimulus given to scientific develpment by emerging seventeenth-century capitalism. A final section takes up the industrial revolution and the manner in which science and technology transformed the whole nature of human society. ... Read more

Book Description

Throughout history, the mysterious dark skies have inspired our imaginations in countless ways, influencing our endeavors in science and philosophy, religion, literature, and art. Filled with 380 full-color illustrations, Celestial Treasury shows the influence of astronomical theories and the richness of illustrations in Western civilization through the ages. The authors explore the evolution of our understanding of astronomy and weave together ancient and modern theories in a fascinating narrative. They incorporate a wealth of detail from Greek verse, medieval manuscripts and Victorian poetry with contemporary spacecraft photographs and computer-generated star charts. Celestial Treasury is more than a beautiful book: it answers a variety of questions that have intrigued scientists and laymen for centuries.

Amazon.com

If you want to understand how something works, you can dismantle it and study its pieces. But what if the thing you're curious about is too small to see, even with the most powerful microscope? Brian Cathcart's The Fly in the Cathedral tells the intriguing story of how scientists were able to take atoms apart to reveal the secrets of their structures. To keep the story gripping, Cathcart focuses on a time (1932, the annus mirabilis of British physics), a place (Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory), and a few main characters (Ernest Rutherford, the "father of nuclear physics," and his protégés, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton).

Rutherford and his team knew that the long-accepted atomic model was held together by nothing more than trumped-up math and hope. They hoped to find out what held oppositely charged protons and electrons together, and what strange particles shared the nucleus with protons. In a series of remarkable experiments done on homemade apparatus, these Cambridge scientists moved atomic science to within an inch of its ultimate goal. Finally, Cockcroft and Walton--competing furiously with their American and German peers--put together the machine that would forever change history by splitting an atom. The Fly in the Cathedral combines all the right elements for a great science history: historical context, gritty detail, wrenching failure, and of course, glorious victory. Although the miracles that occurred at Cambridge in 1932 were to result in the fearful, looming threat of atomic warfare, Cathcart allows readers to find unfiltered joy in the accomplishments of a few brilliant, ingenious scientists. --Therese Littleton ... Read more

Reviews (4)

The soul of a new machine - 1927
The focus of this book is a machine, the first 300,000+ volt proton accelerator.We follow the 'soul of the machine' from conception in beer halls and bordellos to 'graduation' when Nobel prizes are awarded..We watch the first documented design get put down on paper (basically scribbled on the napkins of a German coffee shop).As always, the coincidences of birth are astounding.

Rather than dwell on theory, Cathcart frames 'building the machine' firmly within 1920s living conditions.We walk through Cambridge with new PhD students who end up doing the grunt work.We join them in the 'nursery,' where they learn the mind numbing use of scintillation screens. We learn that the lab didn't have a 24x7 electrical supply and everyone had to go home at 6 when the generators were turned off.When the atom is finally split, Cathcart contrasts the news accounts with reports that got bigger headlines (a peeress was robbed the same day).

Though the subtitle suggests something of a competition was being run, the race gets little attention (if it existed at all).The dramatic tension is generated by contrasting tea parties with 'lab time' and suggesting the 'lab time' couldn't happen without the parties.

This is a history of 'big physics'.Particle physics is not cheap, and I wished Cathcard explored the fund raising activities with more enthusiasm.He concludes his book by quoting Rutherford: "We were like children who need to know how it worked," but this doesn't explain how the monumental costs of the particle accelerator were raised in the depths of the depression.

If you liked Tracy Kidder's 'Soul of a New Machine,' you should like this a great deal.

The Beginning of Nuclear Physics
People had always thought that solid matter was, well, solid.It was only when scientists had an understanding of what atoms were that they began to realize that there were huge spaces between atoms.Later they got to understand that an atom itself consisted mostly of empty space, a big outer shell where electrons whizzed around, containing only a tiny nucleus.The image of the big shell and the tiny nucleus was given by comparison, a comparison that gives the title to _The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom_ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Brian Cathcart.Actually, the atom had been split long before, if the atom, which had been considered indivisible, is split by chipping electrons off that outer cathedral-like shell.But "splitting the atom" has long had the real meaning of splitting the nucleus, and this is the intriguing story of the stolid, energetic and gentlemanly scientists at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge who in 1932 brought forth the birth of nuclear physics.

The commanding presence in the book, just as he was as he oversaw the lab, is Sir Earnest Rutherford, a "barreling, thundering, penetrating presence in the world of physics, a great rowdy boy full of ideas and energy."He was thrilled by the ardor of the chase in scientific exploration, and he was an ingenious experimenter, although he was often clumsy with apparatus.In 1927, Rutherford as its president addressed the Royal Society, proposing a new way forward for solving the problem of the composition of the nucleus.If it were possible to accelerate particles artificially, he said, by huge voltages of electricity, they could be slammed against the nucleus and the scattered wreckage analyzed.This sounds completely sensible now, but there was no equipment that could produce such accelerations.The two heroes of this book, John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, worked in Rutherford's lab, and were easily persuaded to join the chase.Cockcroft was so quiet that his children eventually made the rule that "Daddy could not leave the dinner table until he had uttered two whole sentences."He was superb at designing and making experimental equipment that no one else had thought of before, but was not the experimenter that Rutherford would have liked.Walton was.Another quiet man, he was the son of a minister and a devout Methodist who shunned any activity that might be called frivolous.He came up with the idea of accelerating particles electrically on his own, and when he proposed such work to his boss, Rutherford was of course delighted.In 1932, after almost four years of patient, frustrating, exhausting, and inspiring work, protons bombarded a strip of lithium, and the lithium nucleus cracked open into two helium nuclei.

Part of the charm of this book is that it describes work done in a scientific atmosphere that was like none found today.Rutherford, even though a hard taskmaster, insisted that at six at night, everyone had to go home.He would not have his researchers overextend themselves, and at that time, all circuits were switched off, no matter what experiment was in progress.He did, however, allow this strict curfew to be waived once Walton and Cockcroft had made their initial findings, so that they could confirm them and rush into print ahead of the other experimenters in other nations that were trying to break down the nucleus as well.The two experimenters did not exactly become household names, like, say, Watson and Crick, but there was some (often misdirected) praise from the press, and they got plenty of recognition from their peers.Albert Einstein visited the lab and was thrilled with what he saw; incidentally, the experiment was the first laboratory verification of his famous equation E = mc^2.It took almost twenty years, but Walton and Cockcroft were awarded Nobel prizes, which also failed to make them famous.Modest, quiet, gray scientists, they probably were happy to have it that way.

Splitting the atom was never so much fun
The Fly in the Cathedral takes the microscope to Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory in the late 1920s-early 1930s, a period of explosive growth in physics and, in particular, nuclear physics. The knowledge we so take for granted today - that the nucleus (the "fly") is comprised of neutrons and protons with electrons occupying certain energy levels far from the nucleus (the "cathedral") - was suspected but never proven conclusively by the mid 1920s.

The author, Brian Cathcart, does a credible job at introducing the main players - Ernest Walton, John Cockcroft, Ernest Rutherford, James Chadwick - and evinces their personalities by describing their manner of working and by examining their interactions with others. The overwhelming impression is of very modest men making extremely immodest progress in understanding the very fundamentals of nature. Indeed, they all went on to win Nobel prizes; the sheer brain power of these men is inspiring.

The subject matter of the book might be nuclear physics but the author does a terrific job of explaining things and provides some very neat analogies to help the reader, such as describing continuous functions like temperature as "milk" and discontinuous things like quanta of energy as "eggs". In context, this makes a lot of sense for readers without the benefit of a background in physics or chemistry. Those who do understand the essentials of nuclear physics will not feel condescended.

Rutherford was the head of the Cavendish Laboratory during this period and his group proved two important things: Chadwick of the existence of the neutron and Walton & Cockcroft the "splitting" of the atom, although technically they weren't splitting so much as cleaving. Rutherford's mind is described as "like the bow of a battleship. There was so much weight behind it, it had no need to be sharp as a razor." With a battleship driving their research, is it any wonder Rutherford's group succeeded?

This is a great book for the lover of science. It is easily digestable and leaves the reader with a real sense of wonderment at just how incredible nature is and how determined men can be in deciphering her. If you like this book you will almost certainly enjoy "Genius" by James Gleick too, it's one of my all-time favorite books.

Exciting account of atomic sudies and early quantum theory
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Maybe it is just me, I relish Scientific American and I as an engineer and I have always been interested in technology and its history. This book made me feel like I was working with Walton and Cockcroft under Rutherford at the famous Cavendish labs in England as they toiled to build a proton accelerator to smash the nucleus before other labs could beat them with cyclotrons and Van de Graf generators. It was an exciting race. It explains how to build a rectifier for 700kv out of huge hand made vacuum tubes. All the big names in early quantummechanics make an appearance. The politics, the challenges, etc. I highly recommend it. ... Read more

Book Description

This introduction to the history of medicine begins with the evolution of infectious diseases at the end of the last ice age. It describes the origin of science and medicine in ancient civilizations, including China and India. The first third of the book covers the early period that is considered the "classical" history of medicine. The remainder describes the evolution of modern medicine and surgery up to the present. The final chapter is a history of medical economics and explains the origin of health insurance, HMOs and medical malpractice lawsuits, subjects explained nowhere else in the medical school curriculum.

There is a 40 page index and over 550 footnotes, most of them references to the original articles described in the text. A bibliography of essential sources is also included. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

The product of a three year research project
A Brief History Of Disease, Science & Medicine is the product of Dr. Michael Kennedy's three year research project to write a book that would fill the unfortunate gaps in most medical student's educational curriculums, and also be of considerable value for the non-specialist general reader seeking a clearer understanding of the long history behind what we commonly recognize as the history of medical development from superstition to science. The first eight chapters aptly cover the history of early medicine and science described in more detail than typical medical history. Then Dr. Kennedy goes on to cover the discovery of anesthesia and antisepsis, the development of modern medicine and surgery, and concludes with a history of medical economics (including the origin of medical malpractice litigation). A Brief History Of Disease, Science & Medicine is enthusiastically recommended any and all for personal, professional, academic, and community library History of Medicine reference collections.

Fascinating and highly informative
This fascinating book is an up-to-date history of medicine and medical science. The book begins with a fascinating look at medicine and diseases from prehistoric times to the early nineteenth century, when so little of such things were truly understood. Then, the pace of the book picks up, when the speed of breakthroughs in medical understanding and technology began to simply explode. And then, the final, more modern, chapters spread out, covering everything from DNA and anesthesia to the economics of medicine.

This book was originally designed with medical students and young physicians in mind, but it is no dry textbook. Instead, this book is a fascinating read, covering a whole lot of subjects, without becoming boring. What I especially liked was that the author obviously deeply understands non-Western medicine, and he made sure to include in it in the book. This book is a great read with lots of fascinating information (for example: did you know that King Henry VIII of England probably suffered from syphilis, and that the disease probably had a major role in history?). Overall, I found this to be a fascinating and highly informative book, and I highly recommend it to you!

Interesting look into the history of medicine - good and bad
Personally I always enjoy a historical book that actually discusses history and not some surgically altered history that only reports the things that went right. That is what you get with "A Brief History of Disease, Science & Medicine". Not only do you read about the great advances in medicine but also about the mistakes that were made along the way. Although the book was written with the first year medical student in mind it is easy enough to read and understand by those with only a passing knowledge of basic first aid. Perhaps one sentence from the Forward best describes the writing style - "...it has been written to be read, rather than studied."

Dr. Kennedy states that this book was not widely accepted by the academic presses and so was published independently. It is fairly obvious that one of the reasons this might be the case is his candid examination of the history of medicine. In an age when most practitioners of the medical profession seem to feel that they have perfect knowledge, Dr. Kennedy's book shows that they have often been wrong with tragic results. Take for instance the case of Ignaz Semmelweiss who worked in a hospital where there was a twenty-nine percent mortality rate for women giving birth. Through experimentation and deduction he came to believe that washing your hands between patients and after autopsies would cause this rate to drop. He ordered that hand washing would be done between patients and the rate of death dropped drastically. However, since he had not reason why it worked it was resisted, he eventually resigned (other historians have noted that he was forced to resign) and the doctors returned to their old habits and the old mortality rate. After all it made no sense to them that something they could not see could make any difference. Many people will immediately see the similarities between things like this and modern attitude of medical science as related to alternative therapies - if we don't yet understand how it works then it must not work. Most medical history texts are severely sanitized to keep such historical errors out. So, it is really no surprise that this book, which portrays history as it was, from many primary sources, is not the most popular one among the medical establishment.

Personally, I enjoyed the book but I am one of those who enjoys history from a viewpoint of accuracy - warts and all. Still you should be prepared to have some of your history that you learned in high school discredited. I remember learning that Louis Pasteur invented innoculations to prevent disease in the later 1800's, but the fact is that Charles Maitland and others were doing it in the 1700's. "A Brief History of Disease, Science and Medicine" is a recommended read for anyone interested in the history and progression of medicine.

master storyteller tells, with love, how medicine grew up
I couldn't put it down, because it hit so many of my buttons: history, medical sciences, and just plain storytelling. While I'm most known in network engineering, clinical medicine has always been an intellectual love. While I often tell people "I'm not a doctor but I simulate them on computers," I learned a great deal from this book -- above all, the connections and less-than-obvious relationships between concepts. Kennedy chronicles both the major insights and the terribly wrong blind alleys that characterize what many call the "youngest science".
It's too easy to forget, looking at modern medicine, how recent most developments are -- and yet how many ancient insights were correct. Kennedy literally goes back to the dawn of history, explaining original ideas, how they were expanded upon, how they were confused, and how they finally converged into a scientific discipline -- that remains an art.
While the author occasionally does drop to the molecular level, it isn't necessary to have a detailed background to understand the map he reveals. There are enough very specific insights to give a medical expert a few pleasant doubletakes, as well as to introduce the layman to how we reached our current views.
There were times that I wanted more detail on a technical topic, but isn't it traditional for the great storytellers to leave you hanging, wanting more?
The author doesn't ignore that medicine always exists in a social and technical context. Religion has both suppressed and enhanced medical knowledge, and he presents both ends of the spectrum. Anyone who gets into the real world of hospitals, to say nothing of academic research, learns very quickly of the profusion of enormous egos -- and the politics resulting from them. While people may be pictured smiling as they receive Nobel Prizes, quite a number were suppressing rage at their co-awardees, or feeling terrible because their collaborator wasn't up there as well.
In modern times, more general financial and political interests have a great deal to do with the practice of medicine. Kennedy has definite opinions on where managed care and outcomes research improved care, and also where they've gone horribly wrong.

Splendid piece of work, authoritative and readable
Brief this is not, but compared to some dry academic tomes it seems brief. University of Southern California professor Dr. Michael T. Kennedy has the all too rare gift of writing well which he combines with a passion for detail so that this history is packed with the bizarre, the fascinating, the arcane, and the all too often revolting facts of medical delusion, malpractice, and triumph that have characterized the long and tortured history of the healing arts.

Note well that this is a history not only of medicine and disease, but of science as well. The emphasis is on twentieth century developments, which is as it should be since so much has happened in recent times. This is not to say that the more distant past is neglected. Kennedy starts with the pre-history and follows the quest for health through Greek and Roman times to "The Rise of Islam and Arabic Medicine" (Chapter 5) with excursions into ayurvedic medicine (from India) and the traditional Chinese practices from antiquity. He even looks at European health, or the lack thereof, during the Dark and Middle Ages before the rise of science. When he gets to the modern or nearly modern era, Kennedy organizes less by chronology and more by subject matter. Some of the later chapters are about "Cardiac Surgery," "Transplantation," "Psychiatry," etc. I particularly liked the crisp way he dealt with psychoanalytic theory and the inefficacy of psychoanalysis.

Frankly, I don't know if there is anything else quite like this available. The recognized authority on the subject of the history of medicine in English, University College London's late Roy Porter wrote both a popular account, Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine (2002), and a full blown treatment, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (1997) which Kennedy cites. I have read the former and it is to Kennedy's book as Mary Poppins is to Hamlet. There are other histories, but most are either not current or too voluminous or too restricted in content.

Dr. Kennedy shows how various ideas and methods were developed, how they stemmed from, or were in contrast to, earlier methods; and he highlights the personalities of the practitioners as he describes what they did or discovered. He also focuses on patients and their stories. His style is sharp and uncluttered. Sometimes he employs a dry, cynical wit. At other times his report takes on extra-medical aspects that lend depth and familiarity to his portraits, as when, for example, he reports on the tragic death of transplant pioneer, Dr. David Hume. (p. 388)

Here are some examples of the kind of detail that I found fascinating:

"The early Middle Ages saw little consumption of animal protein by the peasants, but legume production, which increased with the agricultural revolution, reduced the dependence on carbohydrates and led to rapid population growth again." (p. 69)

And on the following page: "Women lived shorter lives than men in the Middle Ages...This is attributed to the hazards of childbirth, but also to an iron deficient diet...[because] animal protein was not available."

"...[A]lthough opium offered some relief of pain...until the anesthesia era, speed was the sign of the good surgeon." (p. 85)

"Infectious diseases were uncommon in primitive societies because the available pool of susceptible individuals was too small and the contact with other groups was not common." (p. 87) Indeed, infectious disease is part of the price we pay for agriculture and civilization.

Quoting Freud: "I often console myself with the idea that, even though we achieve so little therapeutically, at least we understand why more cannot be achieved." (p. 401) This is doubly ironic since Freud was even deceived in what he thought he understood. A few pages later Kennedy drily remarks that psychotherapy "is useful in helping adults to deal with life stress. It has little or no role in treating psychosis. The serious mental illnesses are increasingly seen as biological disorders." (p. 424)

The only weakness of this book is that it could have used a more meticulous editor. (The proofreading is excellent.) Kennedy's writing style is fast-forward, actually suggesting to me how medical history might be written had somebody like, say, novelist James M. Cain taken his hand to it. The words just rush down the page. Kennedy has so much to say and he wants to get it all said. Sometimes one has to read a sentence twice since sometimes his tenses are a little eccentric, and parallel construction is not always strictly observed.

There are two indices, one for names, but I notice that the aforementioned Roy Porter, for example, does not appear in either of them. Probably the names in the footnotes were left out. Also the references (545 of them) are collected at the end of each chapter, which is fine, but there is no overall alphabetized bibliography. This is a pet peeve of mine since one has to chase through chapter after chapter to see if a particular work is cited.

However Kennedy more than makes up for this deficiency with what he calls a "Postscript" which is a lightly annotated bibliography organized into the categories, "Recommended Reading," "General Sources," and sources by individual chapters.

Bottom line: the best history of medicine that I have found and a delight to read. ... Read more

Book Description

The history of the sciences and the history of the book are complementary, and there has been much recent innovative research in the intersection of these lively fields. This accessibly-written, well-illustrated volume is the first systematic general work to do justice to the fruits of recent scholarship. The twenty specially-commissioned chapters cover the period from the Carolingian renaissance of learning to the mid-nineteenth-century consolidation of science, and examine all aspects of the authorship, production, distribution, and reception of manuscripts, books and journals in the various sciences. ... Read more

Book Description

This latest book by Elof Carlson (The Unfit)is a first history of classical genetics, the era in which the chromosome theory of heredity was proposed and developed. Highly illustrated and based heavily on early 20th century original sources, the book traces the roots of genetics in breeding analysis and studies of cytology, evolution, and reproductive biology that began in Europe but were synthesized in the United States through new Ph.D. programs and expanded academic funding. Carlson argues that, influenced largely by new technologies and instrumentation, the life sciences progressed though incremental change rather than paradigm shifts, and he describes how molecular biology emerged from the key ideas and model systems of classical genetics. Readable and original, this narrative will interest historians and science educators as well as today's practitioners of genetics. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An Admirable Way to do History of Science
This book is a labor of love by a professional geneticist with a sharp intellect and a mature understanding of society as well as science. The book is beautifully produced, with many diagrams and portraits of the scientists, as well as photographed excerpts from famous papers (although there are no color plates).

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of Carlson's approach is the care with which he presents the evidence for specific genetic principles, and the arguments used by opponents of what are now elementary textbook principles. Appreciating basic genetic principles is much enhanced by realizing the intellectual struggle involved in each piece of the puzzle. For instance, I have read a dozen times that quantitative geneticists rejected Mendelism because they believed in evolution by continuous, incremental change, whereas Mendel's laws appear to support discontinuous, saltationist, change. I always thought this to be a quite silly objection, and that R. A. Fisher's demonstration of the compatibility of the two views was stating the obvious. Carlson suggests a far deeper objection. Following Galton, quantitative geneticists believed in regression to the mean and blending inheritance, both seeming incompatible with Mendelism. Overcoming these objections is quite a sophisticated task.

In another passage, Carlson presents Sewall Wright's reasons for developing his position on gene interaction and environmental effects on natural selection, based on his study of coat color in guinea pigs. Again, he shows that opposition to Mendelian segregation was not just conservative stubbornness, but rather a reaction to the fact that a considerable fraction of inheritance studies did not conform to Mendelian segregation. We now know why, with our understanding of transpositions, gene jumping, and the like.

The glory of this book is simply reading the detailed history of marvelous discoveries in an almost blow-by-blow fashion. But, almost as welcome is Carlson's historical method, which he presents briefly at the end of the book. Science, he says, is the "winning of the facts." I interpret this to mean that truth needs no explanation---it is its own justification. "I have read accounts" Carlson says (p. 208) "...that attempted to explain science in sociological (in-groups versus outsiders), political (Marxism versus capitalism), or historical (depression, war, and ideology) contexts, and I found these either false or extraneous." This viewpoint is such a breath of fresh air after plowing through so many insufferable post-modern treatments of science.

Carlson does have strong and interesting arguments concerning the time and place of scientific discoveries. He notes that genetics was a European stronghold in the Nineteenth century and became an American-led endeavor in the classical period from 1900 to 1930. He attributes this to the scientific freedom offered by the American graduate school, among other things. Hitler and Stalin account for the continued prominence of the American school after 1930, since they induced extremely talented scientists to emigrate to the United States, where they had the freedom to do their research. It is not unreasonable to think that if freedom triumphs in the world, it will be in no small part because good science requires it. ... Read more

Book Description

Giuliano Pancaldi sets us within the cosmopolitan cultures of Enlightenment Europe to tell the story of Alessandro Volta--the brilliant man whose name is forever attached to electromotive force. Providing fascinating details, many previously unknown, Pancaldi depicts Volta as an inventor who used his international network of acquaintances to further his quest to harness the power of electricity. This is the story of a man who sought recognition as a natural philosopher and ended up with an invention that would make an everyday marvel of electric lighting.

Examining the social and scientific contexts in which Volta operated--as well as Europe's reception of his most famous invention--Volta also offers a sustained inquiry into long-term features of science and technology as they developed in the early age of electricity. Pancaldi considers the voltaic cell, or battery, as a case study of Enlightenment notions and their consequences, consequences that would include the emergence of the "scientist" at the expense of the "natural philosopher."

Throughout, Pancaldi highlights the complex intellectual, technological, and social ferment that ultimately led to our industrial societies. In so doing, he suggests that today's supporters and critics of Enlightenment values underestimate the diversity and contingency inherent in science and technology--and may be at odds needlessly.

Both an absorbing biography and a study of scientific and technological creativity, this book offers new insights into the legacies of the Enlightenment while telling the remarkable story of the now-ubiquitous battery.

Book Description

Inventing Our Selves proposes a radical new approach to the analysis of our current regime of the self, and the values of autonomy, identity, individuality, liberty and choice that animate it.It argues that psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and other "psy" disciplines have played a key role in "inventing our selves," changing the ways in which human beings understand and act upon themselves, and how they are acted upon by politicians, managers, doctors, therapists and a multitude of other authorities.These mutations are intrinsically linked to recent changes in ways of understanding and exercising political power, which have stressed the values of autonomy, personal responsibility and choice.The aim of this critical history is to diagnose and destabilize our contemporary "condition" of the self, to help us think differently about the kind of persons we are, or might become. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Simply superb
Nikolas Rose writes a powerful and thought provoking work that radically alters how the work of the "mental health" professional can be understood, detailing its critical relevance for each of us. ... Read more

Book Description

The University of Cambridge's 1702 chair of chemistry is the oldest continuously occupied chair of chemistry in Britain. This book's descriptions of the lives and work of the 1702 chairholders over the past three hundred years paint a vivid picture of chemistry being slowly transformed from alchemy into a major academic discipline. Containing personal memoirs and historical essays by acknowledged experts, this book will engage all readers interested in the pivotal role chemistry has played in the making of the modern world. ... Read more

Book Description

"This captivating book chronicles the life of a man who brought showmanship to science, and touched the grey matter of a generation of mentally ill patients. . . . . No history of modern psychiatry is complete without his story."
–Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

Dr. Walter J. Freeman ranks as one of the most scorned physicians of the twentieth century. Many people still believe a number of myths about his lobotomies: that they turned people into human vegetables, that he did them all secretly, and that he performed one on Frances Farmer. This intriguing biography gives us a profound look into the life of a complex scientific genius who defies easy description.

Jack El-Hai (Minneapolis, MN) has contributed to many publications, including the Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post Magazine, and American Heritage. ... Read more

Book Description

Few events in history have been more monumental than the emergence of the Space Age, which began with the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957. The History of Space Vehicles uses a combination of high-quality photos, illustrations, fact tables, and authoritative text to describe all the vehicles and equipment used in space, past and present.It covers all types of rockets, satellites, and probes, as well as their equipment and cargo, includingradio transmitters, measuring instruments, and cameras. ... Read more

Book Description

The Grand Contraption tells the story of humanity's attempts through 4,000 years of written history to make sense of the world in its cosmic totality, to understand its physical nature, and to know its real and imagined inhabitants. No other book has provided as coherent, compelling, and learned a narrative on this subject of subjects. David Park takes us on an incredible journey that illuminates the multitude of elaborate "contraptions" by which humans in the Western world have imagined the earth they inhabit--and what lies beyond. Intertwining history, religion, philosophy, literature, and the physical sciences, this eminently readable book is, ultimately, about the "grand contraption" we've constructed through the ages in an effort to understand and identify with the universe.

According to Park, people long ago conceived of our world as a great rock slab inhabited by gods, devils, and people and crowned by stars. Thinkers imagined ether to fill the empty space, and in the comforting certainty of celestial movement they discerned numbers, and in numbers, order. Separate sections of the book tell the fascinating stories of measuring and mapping the Earth and Heavens, and later, the scientific exploration of the universe.

The journey reveals many common threads stretching from ancient Mesopotamians and Greeks to peoples of today. For example, humans have tended to imagine Earth and Sky as living creatures. Not true, say science-savvy moderns. But truth isn't always the point. The point, says Park, is that Earth is indeed the fragile bubble we surmise, and we must treat it with the reverence it deserves.

Amazon.com

Every step you take in A Walk Through Time moves you millions of years forward in Earth's history. Inspired by the idea of a one-mile stroll through the evolution of life, Sidney Liebes recruited some terrific writers and artists to create a traveling museum exhibit; A Walk Through Time summarizes the experience in book form, with the help of fascinating photos and intelligent, enjoyable text. The most profound realization along this temporal journey is just how small a part human history plays in the big time line. In the museum exhibit, where one foot equals one million years, human presence takes up all of one-thousandth of an inch; in the book's time line, we merit barely a speck. Our tiniest living fellows--the bacteria and blue-green algae, the amazing arthropods, the merging microbes--are the real stars of the show. Readers are treated to intriguing views of bizarre organisms like tardigrades, velvet worms, and lichens ("Taking everything we know about algae and fungi, we still never would have predicted the outcome of their synergy"), along with the microbes that once ruled the earth. Only at the very end of the line, long after the development of sexual reproduction, after the great Cretaceous extinction, after the development of flight and fur, will you find humans.Taking this walk is a great lesson in perspective, a cautionary tale about hubris and longevity that every human should read. --Therese Littleton ... Read more

Reviews (8)

An exciting dance through time.
I never had the opportunity to see the "Walk Through Time" exhibition, initiated by Sidney Liebes and supported by Hewlett-Packard, but it must have been a marvelous experience. What rivets my attention in this book, however, even more than the beautiful pictures of the exhibit, is the text written by Elisabet Sahtouris, who expresses her own "cosmovision" with an incomparable eloquence and vitality. While her words are grounded solidly in the most advanced theoretical and empirical evolutionary science, she takes the reader not on a walk but an exciting dance through time. If I were asked to recommend just one book that best told the story of how the universe conspired to bring us into being this would be it. It's a real "roots" story but the roots are not merely those of a particular individual or family or species but of all life, reaching back to the point where time itself loses meaning.

Keith Chandler, author of Beyond Civilization

most interesting book i've read in years!
this is the most interesting book i've read in years; prof. liebes presents the history of evolution from stardust to us, at the end of the book one relizes that all of us humans are actually single cells of a larger life form, the planet earth. In an informative and easy to read way, "a walk through time" presents a holistic theory of evolution that emphasises symbiotic co-evolution of geo-bio-matter admidst the theme that while life starts out in a state of competition, all life forms even on a cellular level learn to cooperate, develop symbiotic relationships that enable life to first develop and then evolve billions of years to present day. the glory of the sheer will of all life,(particularly at the cellular level) reminds me very much of shoupenhauer,nieztche,spinoza, henri bergson and hegal. i would recomend this book to all people,especially those who enjoy philosophy and those theologians seeking a more meaning cosmology.

A global view which necessary means a lack of details
I've just terminated to read this book and it was very interesting in many respects: - The text is well written and a pleasure to read; - Sometimes you have a fact per line, which