Newton's Darkness: Two Dramatic Views PDF Download
Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download Newton's Darkness: Two Dramatic Views PDF full book. Access full book title Newton's Darkness: Two Dramatic Views by Carl Djerassi. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.
Author: Carl Djerassi Publisher: World Scientific ISBN: 1848167148 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 191
Book Description
”What purpose is served by showing that England's greatest natural philosopher is flawed … like other mortals?” asks one of the characters in Newton's Darkness. “We need unsullied heroes!” But what if the hero is sullied? At stake is an issue that is as germane today as it was 300 years ago: a scientist's ethics must not be divorced from scientific accomplishments. There is probably no other scientist of whom so many biographies and other historical analyses have been published than Isaac Newton — all of them in the standard format of documentary prose because of their didactic purpose to transmit historical information. Newton's Darkness, however, illuminates the darker aspects of Newton's persona through two historically grounded plays dealing with two of the bitterest struggles in the history of science.The name of Isaac Newton appears in virtually every survey of the public's choice for the most important persons of the second millennium. Yet the term “darkness” can be applied to much of Newton's personality. Adjectives that have been used to describe facets of his personality include “remote”, “lonely”, “secretive”, “introverted”, “melancholic”, “humorless”, “puritanical”, “cruel”, “vindictive” and, perhaps worst of all, “unforgiving”. The trait most relevant to the present book is Newton's obsessively competitive nature, which was often out of proportion to the warranted facts, as demonstrated in three of Newton's best-known bitter conflicts: with the physicist Robert Hooke, the astronomer royal John Flamsteed, and a German contemporary of almost equal intellectual prowess, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — the last fight eventually turning into an England vs Continental Europe competition. It is two of these three relentless drawn-out battles that are illuminated in Newton's Darkness in the form of historically grounded drama.After a summary of the historical evidence, the book starts with the Newton-Hooke struggle (Chapter 2), which was conducted mano a mano, and is then followed by little-known aspects of the Newton-Leibniz confrontation (Chapter 3), which was fought largely through surrogates — notably the infamous, anonymous committee of 11 Fellows of the Royal Society./a
Author: Carl Djerassi Publisher: World Scientific ISBN: 1848167148 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 191
Book Description
”What purpose is served by showing that England's greatest natural philosopher is flawed … like other mortals?” asks one of the characters in Newton's Darkness. “We need unsullied heroes!” But what if the hero is sullied? At stake is an issue that is as germane today as it was 300 years ago: a scientist's ethics must not be divorced from scientific accomplishments. There is probably no other scientist of whom so many biographies and other historical analyses have been published than Isaac Newton — all of them in the standard format of documentary prose because of their didactic purpose to transmit historical information. Newton's Darkness, however, illuminates the darker aspects of Newton's persona through two historically grounded plays dealing with two of the bitterest struggles in the history of science.The name of Isaac Newton appears in virtually every survey of the public's choice for the most important persons of the second millennium. Yet the term “darkness” can be applied to much of Newton's personality. Adjectives that have been used to describe facets of his personality include “remote”, “lonely”, “secretive”, “introverted”, “melancholic”, “humorless”, “puritanical”, “cruel”, “vindictive” and, perhaps worst of all, “unforgiving”. The trait most relevant to the present book is Newton's obsessively competitive nature, which was often out of proportion to the warranted facts, as demonstrated in three of Newton's best-known bitter conflicts: with the physicist Robert Hooke, the astronomer royal John Flamsteed, and a German contemporary of almost equal intellectual prowess, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — the last fight eventually turning into an England vs Continental Europe competition. It is two of these three relentless drawn-out battles that are illuminated in Newton's Darkness in the form of historically grounded drama.After a summary of the historical evidence, the book starts with the Newton-Hooke struggle (Chapter 2), which was conducted mano a mano, and is then followed by little-known aspects of the Newton-Leibniz confrontation (Chapter 3), which was fought largely through surrogates — notably the infamous, anonymous committee of 11 Fellows of the Royal Society./a
Author: Brandy Schillace Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1681775824 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 390
Book Description
Airships and electric submarines, automatons and mesmerists—welcome to the wild world of steampunk. It is all speculative—or is it? Meet the intrepid souls who pushed Victorian technology to its limits and paved the way for our present age. The gear turns, the whistle blows, and the billows expand with electro-mechanical whirring. The shimmering halo of Victorian technology lures us with the stuff of dreams, of nostalgia, of alternate pasts and futures that entice with the suave of James Bond and the savvy of Sherlock Holmes. Fiction, surely. But what if the unusual gadgetry so often depicted as “steampunk” actually made an appearance in history? Zeppelins and steam-trains; arc-lights and magnetic rays: these fascinating (and sometimes doomed) inventions bounded from the tireless minds of unlikely heroes. Such men and women served no secret societies and fought no super-villains, but they did build engines, craft automatons, and engineer a future they hoped would run like clockwork. Along the way, however, these same inventors ushered in a contest between desire and dread. From Newton to Tesla, from candle and clockwork to the age of electricity and manufactured power, technology teetered between the bright dials of fantastic futures and the dark alleyways of industrial catastrophe. In the mesmerizing Clockwork Futures, Brandy Schillace reveals the science behind steampunk, which is every bit as extraordinary as what we might find in the work of Jules Verne, and sometimes, just as fearful. These stories spring from the scientific framework we have inherited. They shed light on how we pursue science, and how we grapple with our destiny—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Author: N. J. Fox Publisher: Scarecrow Press ISBN: 0810864991 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 395
Book Description
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was one of the first Modern philosophers, and as such, one of the most significant. His contributions were often pathbreaking and his imprint still remains on fields such as logic, mathematics, science, international law, and ethics. While publishing relatively little during his life, he was in regular correspondence with important philosophers and even political leaders. The Historical Dictionary of Leibniz's Philosophy sheds light not only on his philosophical thought but also the impact it had on the thinking of his contemporaries. They, and he, are described in numerous cross-referenced dictionary entries. Also included are other entries that present his writings, explain his concepts, and trace his action in specific fields. The introduction sums much of this up and_along with the bibliography_provides a strong foundation for further study.
Author: Gregory Chaitin Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 1400077974 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Gregory Chaitin, one of the world’s foremost mathematicians, leads us on a spellbinding journey, illuminating the process by which he arrived at his groundbreaking theory. Chaitin’s revolutionary discovery, the Omega number, is an exquisitely complex representation of unknowability in mathematics. His investigations shed light on what we can ultimately know about the universe and the very nature of life. In an infectious and enthusiastic narrative, Chaitin delineates the specific intellectual and intuitive steps he took toward the discovery. He takes us to the very frontiers of scientific thinking, and helps us to appreciate the art—and the sheer beauty—in the science of math.
Author: Walter Grünzweig Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster ISBN: 364390231X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
This title presents criticism, commentaries, and creative responses to Carl Djerassi's literary texts, taking the author's achievements far beyond 'the Pill'
Author: Márcia Diana Fernandes Lemos Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443876054 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
This collection of essays responds to the intense interest that the relations between the discourses of literature (and other cultural practices) and those of science have obtained throughout various fields of study. Spanning a period between the mid-nineteenth century and the twenty-first century, the work collected here is firmly focused on the cultural significance of scientific discoveries and practices, and especially on the manifold representations of science and scientists in literature and the arts. Its four sections develop from an initial moment of dwindling indefiniteness of borders between literature and the sciences to the historical perception of an increasing divide between “the two cultures,” to use C.P. Snow’s influential expression, as well as calls for a form of convergence or “consilience” in Edward Wilson’s words. The final section turns to the medical sciences, a porous scientific discipline in relation to the humanities, which suggests that consilience can already be found partially in specific areas. As such, this collection contributes towards critically extending that integration through the discussion of key literary representations of science, its promises, and its problems.
Author: Gregory J Chaitin Publisher: World Scientific ISBN: 9814474703 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Dr Gregory Chaitin, one of the world's leading mathematicians, is best known for his discovery of the remarkable Ω number, a concrete example of irreducible complexity in pure mathematics which shows that mathematics is infinitely complex. In this volume, Chaitin discusses the evolution of these ideas, tracing them back to Leibniz and Borel as well as Gödel and Turing.This book contains 23 non-technical papers by Chaitin, his favorite tutorial and survey papers, including Chaitin's three Scientific American articles. These essays summarize a lifetime effort to use the notion of program-size complexity or algorithmic information content in order to shed further light on the fundamental work of Gödel and Turing on the limits of mathematical methods, both in logic and in computation. Chaitin argues here that his information-theoretic approach to metamathematics suggests a quasi-empirical view of mathematics that emphasizes the similarities rather than the differences between mathematics and physics. He also develops his own brand of digital philosophy, which views the entire universe as a giant computation, and speculates that perhaps everything is discrete software, everything is 0's and 1's.Chaitin's fundamental mathematical work will be of interest to philosophers concerned with the limits of knowledge and to physicists interested in the nature of complexity.
Author: Gregory J. Chaitin Publisher: World Scientific ISBN: 9812708952 Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 368
Book Description
Dr Gregory Chaitin, one of the world's leading mathematicians, is best known for his discovery of the remarkable ê number, a concrete example of irreducible complexity in pure mathematics which shows that mathematics is infinitely complex. In this volume, Chaitin discusses the evolution of these ideas, tracing them back to Leibniz and Borel as well as Gdel and Turing.This book contains 23 non-technical papers by Chaitin, his favorite tutorial and survey papers, including Chaitin's three Scientific American articles. These essays summarize a lifetime effort to use the notion of program-size complexity or algorithmic information content in order to shed further light on the fundamental work of Gdel and Turing on the limits of mathematical methods, both in logic and in computation. Chaitin argues here that his information-theoretic approach to metamathematics suggests a quasi-empirical view of mathematics that emphasizes the similarities rather than the differences between mathematics and physics. He also develops his own brand of digital philosophy, which views the entire universe as a giant computation, and speculates that perhaps everything is discrete software, everything is 0's and 1's.Chaitin's fundamental mathematical work will be of interest to philosophers concerned with the limits of knowledge and to physicists interested in the nature of complexity.
Author: Thomas Sonar Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 303058223X Category : Mathematics Languages : en Pages : 706
Book Description
What exactly is analysis? What are infinitely small or infinitely large quantities? What are indivisibles and infinitesimals? What are real numbers, continuity, the continuum, differentials, and integrals? You’ll find the answers to these and other questions in this unique book! It explains in detail the origins and evolution of this important branch of mathematics, which Euler dubbed the “analysis of the infinite.” A wealth of diagrams, tables, color images and figures serve to illustrate the fascinating history of analysis from Antiquity to the present. Further, the content is presented in connection with the historical and cultural events of the respective epochs, the lives of the scholars seeking knowledge, and insights into the subfields of analysis they created and shaped, as well as the applications in virtually every aspect of modern life that were made possible by analysis.
Author: Igor Novak Publisher: World Scientific ISBN: 9814304743 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 337
Book Description
This book provides the first integrated account of all factors which play a role in making Science what it is today. The book discusses historical, sociological and philosophical aspects of Science emphasizing their interconnectedness. It describes many of the latest developments in scientific practice as well old unsolved problems. The book aims to be explanatory and stimulating rather than comprehensive. The book is an overview of important issues and aims to present these issues in the context of not only Society but of Science itself. One of the important aims of the book is to clarify misconceptions about Science held by general public or by scientists themselves. Science and scientists in this book are presented in their true light, not as stereotyped by the media.
Author: Carl Djerassi
Author: Carl Djerassi
Author: Brandy Schillace
Author: N. J. Fox
Author: Gregory Chaitin
Author: Walter Grünzweig
Author: Márcia Diana Fernandes Lemos
Author: Gregory J Chaitin
Author: Gregory J. Chaitin
Author: Thomas Sonar
Author: Igor Novak