Commentary

Dirt: A Love Story

Community farms. Mud spas. Mineral paints. Nematodes. The world is waking up to the beauty and mystery of dirt. This anthology celebrates the Earth’s generous crust, bringing together essays by award-winning scientists, authors, artists, and dirt lovers to tell dirt’s exuberant tales.Geographically broad and topically diverse, these essays reveal life as lived by dirt fanatics–admiring the first worm …

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Zoom: How Everything Moves: From Atoms and Galaxies to Blizzards and Bees

From the speed of light to moving mountains–and everything in between–ZOOM explores how the universe and its objects move.If you sit as still as you can in a quiet room, you might be able to convince yourself that nothing is moving. But air currents are still wafting around you. Blood rushes through your veins. The atoms in your …

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Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican

Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in Florence in 1632, was the most proximate cause of his being brought to trial before the Inquisition. Using the dialogue form, a genre common in classical philosophical works, Galileo masterfully demonstrates the truth of the Copernican system over the Ptolemaic one, proving, for the first time, that the …

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Dreams of Earth and Sky

In this sequel to The Scientist as Rebel (2006), Freeman Dyson—whom The Times of London calls “one of the world’s most original minds”—celebrates openness to unconventional ideas and “the spirit of joyful dreaming” in which he believes that science should be pursued. Throughout these essays, which range from the creation of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century …

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What Are You Optimistic About?: Today’s Leading Thinkers on Why Things Are Good and Getting Better (Edge Question Series)

The nightly news and conventional wisdom tell us that things are bad and getting worse. Yet despite dire predictions, scientists see many good things on the horizon. John Brockman, publisher of Edge (www.edge.org), the influential online salon, recently asked more than 150 high-powered scientific thinkers to answer a vital question for our frequently pessimistic times: “What are you …

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Creative Tension: Essays On Science & Religion

The voice of a renowned professor of philosophy in Poland, who is also a Roman Catholic priest, is introduced to the United States in this collection of his provocative essays on the interplay of science and religion. Michael Heller progressively outlines systematic steps that might lead to a peaceful coexistence of these traditionally separate …

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Geography and Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World (International Library of Human Geography)

Geography and Vision is a series of personal reflections by leading cultural geographer, Denis Cosgrove, on the complex connections between seeing, imagining and representing the world geographically.  Ranging historically from the sixteenth century to the present day, the essays include reflections upon discovery and the role of imagination in giving it meaning; colonisation and sixteenth century gardening; the …

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