Philip Ball
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English
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"Though at first glance the natural world may appear overwhelming in its diversity and complexity, there are regularities running through it, from the hexagons of a honeycomb to the spirals of a seashell and the branching veins of a leaf. Revealing the order at the foundation of the seemingly chaotic natural world, Patterns in Nature explores not only the math and science but also the beauty and artistry behind nature's awe-inspiring designs, "--Amazon.com....
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Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it. Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it's not really telling us that "weird" things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don't seem...
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Harper
Pub. Date
©2008
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English
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Universe of Stone shows that the Gothic cathedrals encode a far-reaching shift in the way medieval thinkers perceived their relationship with their world. For the first time, they began to believe in an orderly, rational world that could be investigated and understood. This change marked the beginning of Western science and also the start of a long and, indeed, unfinished struggle to reconcile faith and reason.
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Si hay algo que compartan todas las culturas humanas, en todas las épocas y lugares, es la música. En este libro se argumenta que casi todos, aunque afirmemos tener "mal oído", somos expertos en música porque nuestro cerebro está muy bien equipado para entenderla, descodificarla, darle significados e incluso crearla.
"El instinto musical" es un libro único en su género, un relato completo de todo lo que se sabe (y mucho de lo que no se sabe)...
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Si una cena o una reunión languidecen, hay un tema de conversación que nunca falla: la concepción "no natural" de seres humanos. ¿Qué opináis de la congelación de embriones? ¿Conocéis a alguien que haya recurrido a una madre de alquiler? ¿Será ya posible clonar a personas? ¿Y esto de las células madre?
El asunto despierta opiniones encendidas, no siempre bien informadas pero muy sentidas y viscerales. Opiniones que mezclan sentimientos,...
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After World War II, most scientists in Germany maintained that they had been apolitical or actively resisted the Nazi regime, but the true story is much more complicated. In Serving the Reich, Philip Ball takes a fresh look at that controversial history, contrasting the career of Peter Debye, director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin, with those of two other leading physicists in Germany during the Third Reich: Max Planck, the...
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If offered the chance-by cloak, spell, or superpower-to be invisible, who wouldn't want to give it a try? We are drawn to the idea of stealthy voyeurism and the ability to conceal our own acts, but as desirable as it may seem, invisibility is also dangerous. It is not just an optical phenomenon, but a condition full of ethical questions. As esteemed science writer Philip Ball reveals in this book, the story of invisibility is not so much a matter...
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Some of the most exciting scientific developments in recent years have come not from theoretical physicists, astronomers, or molecular biologists but instead from the chemistry lab. Chemists have created superconducting ceramics for brain scanners, designed liquid crystal flat screens for televisions and watch displays, and made fabrics that change color while you wear them. They have fashioned metals from plastics, drugs from crude oil, and have...
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Todos hemos oído hablar de la física cuántica, aunque realmente no sepamos ni qué es ni para qué sirve. Hasta hace poco, ni siquiera los físicos parecían tenerlo demasiado claro.
En las últimas décadas se ha aprendido algo más, y ahora sabemos que la física cuántica no va de partícula y ondas, ni de "cosas que hacen cosas raras", sino que es una teoría sobre la propia información, sobre el espacio y el tiempo, sobre las relaciones...
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Hubo un tiempo en que la curiosidad era algo condenable: a fin de cuentas, por su culpa cometió Eva ese pecado original que al parecer aún estamos pagando. Y sin embargo, no es fácil frenar la curiosidad humana. Llevados por ella, hoy nos gastamos fortunas en construir un acelerador de partículas que nos permita "ver" el instante de la creación, o en mandar robots a planetas lejanos, y todavía hay quien le da vueltas a la idea de la piedra filosofal.
Ese...
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In the summer of 2017, scientists removed a tiny piece of flesh from Philip Ball's arm and turned it into a rudimentary "mini-brain." The skin cells, removed from his body, did not die but were instead transformed into nerve cells that independently arranged themselves into a dense network and communicated with each other, exchanging the raw signals of thought. This was life-but whose? That disconcerting question is the focus of Philip Ball's How...
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¿De dónde viene el color? ¿Cómo encuentran los pintores nuevas tonalidades y de qué manera influyen éstas en su obra? Desde la austera paleta de los griegos y la costosa pasión por el púrpura de los romanos hasta la gloriosa profusión del arte renacentista y la sobriedad cromática de Velázquez y Rembrandt; desde las tempranas incursiones de los pintores románticos en el laboratorio del químico al matrimonio, en ocasiones fallido y en...
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¿Qué haría si pudiera volverse invisible? Seguramente, algo relacionado con el poder, con el dinero o con el sexo... o con las tres cosas. Un ensayo fascinante sobre la turbulenta relación del ser humano con lo invisible: desde los mitos griegos hasta las últimas tecnologías bélicas para no ser visto, pasando por los mundos microscópicos. Imprescindible para apasionados de la divulgación, la ciencia, la cultura popular y el futuro.
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With the Netherlands overrun by French Republican forces, the British and Russian governments sent an allied army of 48,000 men under the Duke of York to liberate the country and restore the House of Orange.The largest operation mounted by Pitt's ministry during the French Revolutionary Wars, the amphibious expedition involved the first ever direct cooperation between British and Russian forces, embroiled the armies in five full-scale battles, and...
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Made to Measure introduces a general audience to one of today's most exciting areas of scientific research: materials science. Philip Ball describes how scientists are currently inventing thousands of new materials, ranging from synthetic skin, blood, and bone to substances that repair themselves and adapt to their environment, that swell and flex like muscles, that repel any ink or paint, and that capture and store the energy of the Sun. He shows...
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Los primeros científicos que experimentaron con la física atómica tuvieron la "suerte" de vivir unos tiempos interesantes. En plena Segunda Guerra Mundial, la ciencia alemana se convirtió en un asunto político: Heisenberg, Planck, Einstein y Debye, entre muchos otros, tuvieron que definirse. Como científicos y como personas. Y, para algunos de ellos, la definición no fue la misma.
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Myths are usually seen as stories from the depths of time-fun and fantastical, but no longer believed by anyone. Yet, as Philip Ball shows, we are still writing them-and still living them-today. From Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein to Batman, many stories written in the past few centuries are commonly, perhaps glibly, called "modern myths." But Ball argues that we should take that idea seriously. Our stories of Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and...
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From the Yangtze to the Yellow River, China is traversed by great waterways, which have defined its politics and ways of life for centuries. Water has been so integral to China's culture, economy, and growth and development that it provides a window on the whole sweep of Chinese history. In The Water Kingdom, renowned writer Philip Ball opens that window to offer an epic and powerful new way of thinking about Chinese civilization. Water, Ball shows,...
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Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human?
Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them-including in plants, aliens, and God-Philip Ball pulls...