Record ID | marc_columbia/Columbia-extract-20221130-005.mrc:149843120:4223 |
Source | marc_columbia |
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LEADER: 04223mam a2200373 a 4500
001 2113927
005 20220615205233.0
008 970422s1998 nyua b 001 0 eng
010 $a 97015430
020 $a0195116992 (cloth : alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm36877343
035 $9ANF0133CU
035 $a2113927
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dC#P$dOrLoB-B
050 00 $aQ125$b.S5425 1998
082 00 $a303.48/3$221
100 1 $aSilver, Brian L.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n84125804
245 14 $aThe ascent of science /$cBrian L. Silver.
260 $aNew York :$bOxford University Press,$c1998.
300 $axviii, 534 pages :$billustrations ;$c27 cm
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
500 $a"A Solomon Press book."
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (p. [513]-518) and index.
505 00 $g1.$tNewton Gets It Completely Wrong --$g2.$tI Believe --$g3.$tThomas Aquinas versus Neil Armstrong --$g4.$tThe Second Law --$g5.$tPredicting Catastrophe --$g6.$tFrom Newton to De Sade: The Partial Triumph of Reason --$g7.$tFrom Rousseau to Blake: The Revolt against Reason --$g8.$tLodestone, Amber, and Lightning --$g9.$tBelief and Action --$g10.$tThe Demise of Alchemy --$g11.$tThe Nineteenth Century --$g12.$tThe Material Trinity: The Atom --$g13.$tThe Stuff of Existence --$g14.$tScipio's Dream --$g15.$tMaking Waves --$g16.$tThe Ubiquity of Motion --$g17.$tEnergy --$g18.$tEntropy: Intimations of Mortality --$g19.$tChaos --$g20.$tThe Slow Birth of Biology --$g21.$tIn a Monastery Garden --$g22.$tEvolution --$g23.$tThe Descent of Man --$g24.$tThe Gene Machine --$g25.$tThe Lords of Nature? --$g26.$tLife: The Molecular Battle --$g27.$tThe Origin of Life? Take Your Choice --$g28.$tThe Inexplicable Quantum --$g29.$tNew Ways of Thinking --$g30.$tThe Land of Paradox --$g31.$tThe Elementary Particles --
505 80 $g32.$tRelativity --$g33.$tCosmology --$g34.$tThe Cosmos and Peeping Tom --$g35.$tThe Impossibility of Creation --$g36.$tThe Tree of Death --$g37.$t"What the Devil Does It All Mean?" --$g38.$tThe Future.
520 $aIn The Ascent of Science, Silver provides a sweeping and dynamic overview of the whole of Western science, from the Renaissance to the present. In it, he translates the most profoundly important, and often impenetrably obscure, scientific developments into a vernacular that is not only accessible and illuminating but highly enjoyable as well.
520 8 $aFrom the revolutionary discoveries of Galileo and Newton to the mind-bending theories of Einstein and Heisenberg; from plate tectonics to particle physics; from the origin of life to universal entropy; from biology to cosmology, Silver takes the reader on a guided tour not only of the history of science but of the very nature of scientific inquiry and its role in our society.
520 8 $aThus, while explaining with great clarity the scientific breakthroughs that have shaped and often shaken our world, Silver places each in a broad historical context and supplies a keen awareness of parallel developments in art, literature, music, politics and philosophy. Silver does realize that science can have disastrous consequences - that breakthroughs in nuclear physics can lead to Hiroshimas - and he insists on a more fruitful dialogue between science and ethical philosophy, an insistence that takes on greater urgency given the current advances in genetics.
520 8 $aBut he ably defends the scientific method from recent arguments that characterize science as merely one more socially constructed and fatally flawed way of knowing, or that suggest that the Age of Science is nearing its end. Throughout the book, it is science as the height of human reason, and reason as the surest guide to knowledge, that enlivens the story of our emergence from ignorance and superstition to the ability to fathom the deepest mysteries of nature.
650 0 $aScience$xHistory.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85118570
650 0 $aScience$xPhilosophy.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85118582
650 0 $aThought and thinking$xHistory.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2010116507
852 00 $bmat$hQ125$i.S5425 1998