Science Firsts: From the Creation of Science to the Science of Creation - Hardcover

Robert E. Adler

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471401749 ISBN 13: 9780471401742

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 2002

Synopsis

Be on hand to witness some of the most monumental scientific discoveries of the past three millennia
This engaging collection offers readers the unique experience of being on hand to witness some of the most epic breakthrough in the history of science. From ancient Greeks Thales and Pythagoras to Enrico Fermi, Francis Watson and James Crick, and even Dolly the Sheep, Science Firsts provides an unparalleled opportunity to peer over the shoulders of great scientists as they become the first to set eyes on new worlds. Over the course of thirty-five concise, superbly written accounts, science writer Robert Adler takes readers on an lively journey through nearly three millennia of epic scientific discovery, offering accessible explanations of the science involved along with vivid historical and biographical details that help place the discoveries and their discoverers in context for contemporary readers.

About this title

About the Author

ROBERT E. ADLER, Ph.D., is a freelance science writer who contributes frequently to Nature and other leading scientific publications. He lives in northern California, where he is currently working on his second book for Wiley, highlighting advances in medicine.

From the Back Cover

A fascinating collection of stories about key Firsts in science

Pythagoras intuited that the earth was round.

Charles Darwin discovered the source of nature's intricate diversity.

Marie Curie traced radioactivity to the atom.

Edwin Hubble discovered the expanding universe.

Albert Einstein reshaped our views of matter and energy, space and time.

Lynn Margulis showed that nature is far more promiscuous and creative than Darwin dreamed.

These brilliant men and women are part of a very special group-scientists who made truly original, groundbreaking discoveries. Science Firsts tells the stories of thirty-five of the most important firsts in the history of science. You'll encounter such extraordinary figures as Enrico Fermi, the first to unleash the power of the atom; Joseph Priestley, the first to produce oxygen and glimpse photosynthesis in action; and Guglielmo Marconi, the first to make wireless communication a reality. Science Firsts reveals how these incredible minds ventured into previously unseen territory to satisfy their hunger for knowledge and, in doing so, changed the course of history.

From the Inside Flap

Throughout the history of science, there have always been men and women whose curiosity and intellect led them to explore uncharted territories and seek new explanations for the way the universe works. Among those are the privileged few who were the first to glimpse new ideas, break new ground, and make unprecedented discoveries-many of which changed the course of history.

Science Firsts tells the engaging and inspiring stories of thirty-five landmark scientific discoveries. From the first accurate prediction of an eclipse in 585 b.c. to the cloning of Dolly the sheep, science writer Robert Adler clearly explains the context and importance of these discoveries, allowing the reader to peer over the shoulders of the great scientists as they first set eyes on new worlds.

The journey begins in ancient Greece, where philosophers such as Thales and Leucippus became the first to demand explanations about nature that did not depend on the whims of gods. Focusing on key scientists-many well-known, others often overlooked-in a wide range of disciplines, Adler profiles such pathfinders as:
* Anaximander of Miletus-showman, politician, and philosopher, the first to map the world
* Johannes Kepler-a brilliant mystic, the first to place the planets into their true orbits
* Sir Isaac Newton-whose luminous mind made him the first to grasp the basic laws of the universe
* Humphry Davy-a poet and self-made scientist, the first to precisely define chemical elements
* Alfred Wegener-an Arctic explorer, the first to understand the origin of continents and oceans
* Raymond Dart-a maverick anatomist, the first to discover our ancient African roots
* Barbara McClintock-a true visionary, the first to see the inner dynamics of the genetic system
* Claude Shannon-the unicycle-riding mathematician who brought us the Information Age
Science Firsts captures the essence of these gifted explorers and their hard-won discoveries. Without their sense of mystery, diverse talent, and stubborn dedication, the world as we know it would not exist.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the Mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
--Albert Einstein

A sense of mystery. Einstein had it, and so did Aristotle and Aristarchus, Curie and Dart, Margulis and McClintock. They never lost their childlike wonder about the universe, or as Noam Chomsky described it, "the ability to be puzzled by simple things." Through history, a few people have combined that insistent tickle of curiosity with other qualities of mind and character that goad them into uncharted territories, stir them to ask probing questions, and attune them to new answers. Among those explorers, a very few are privileged to break new ground, discover new worlds, glimpse shining new vistas no one has seen before.

The greatest of those, creators like Thales, Newton, Darwin and Einstein gave us radically new ways to understand the universe and our place in it. Like the great impact that ended the era of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, their discoveries punctuated history, brought epochs to an end, and cleared the way for new systems to emerge. This book tells the stories of some of those gifted, driven, and complex explorers and the new worlds they were the first to enter.

Science Firsts starts in Greece, 2600 years ago. The sweeping curiosity of Ionian philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander and Leucippus led them to ask basic questions about nature. How did the world come about? What is it made of? How does it work? Equally importantly, they were the first to insist on answers from within nature itself, to demand explanations that did not depend on the whims of the gods. By the time of Archimedes, four centuries later, the Greeks had built the foundations of science. But the ancient world soon crumbled. Along with its theaters and temples, Greek science lay buried and forgotten--at least in the West--for a thousand years. Luckily it was preserved, and in a few cases improved upon, by scholars in the Islamic world. Rediscovered, it helped ignite the Renaissance. That brings us to figures like Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, the heroic forbears of modern science. We have to peer across a thousand-year gap, but we can trace today's science straight back to Thales.

That's not to say that science only developed in the West. The precursors to science--the keen observation of nature, classifying, counting, remembering, discovering regularities--date back at least to the Neolithic. The people who reached and colonized Australia 60,000 years ago, who left us vivid paintings of cave-bears and shamans in France and Spain 30,000 years ago, also left us cryptic signs that they counted the months, tracked the phases of the moon and the changing seasons, and studied the skies. Ethnobotanists working today praise the sophisticated biological knowledge of indigenous groups, and exploit it to identify medicinal plants and substances. The very survival of our ancient ancestors suggests that they studied their environments just as avidly. Led by Joseph Needham, scholars have discovered that technology, mathematics and science all have deep roots in China. Many significant inventions and innovations appeared in China centuries or even millennia before they made it to the West. India, too, can claim its own early and important contributions, especially in mathematics and medicine. And the Greeks admired and benefited from centuries of work in astronomy, mathematics and medicine by anonymous Egyptian and Babylonian scholars.

Science Firsts, however, will follow the stream of Western science. The story starts in the world of Homer and Hesiod, where the stormy skies and the wine-dark sea were ruled by the gods, and where the origins of things were revealed--or obscured--by myths. Each bit of understanding that we've gained has been won by someone pushing into the darkness, breaking free from preconceptions, and glimpsing something clearly for the first time. Most of those steps must have been small and anonymous, and many must have led nowhere. But a few were brilliant and beautiful. As Gustave Flaubert wrote, "Amongst those who go to sea there are the navigators who discover new worlds, adding continents to the earth and stars to the heavens: they are the masters, the great, the eternally splendid." It's those navigators we'll follow, using their hard-won flashes of insight to light our way.

Edition details

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0471401749
• ISBN 13: 9780471401742
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288