She explores the backgrounds of the major figures—Rutherford, Bohr, Planck, Einstein—separately, but draws them together as they begin to consider each other's questions about the nature of matter.

    . . . The excellence of The Discovery of Time is unquestionable."—Martin Lebowitz, The Kenyon Review

    In the age of the human genome project, this truism is even more obvious than it was in 1965, when scientist and historian of ideas Jacob Bronowski first delivered the lectures upon which this book is based. Has science revealed that we are essentially just complex machines? Or is human identity more than the sum of its parts?With his gift for conveying the excitement of ideas, Bronowski discusses the impact of science on our sense of self and the need to re-evaluate ethics in light of the scientific perspective. As both a practicing scientist and an author of books on poetry, he makes interesting connections between the uses of the imagination in science and in literature. Whereas science creates experiments to test hypotheses about the outside world, literature provides "experiments" in poetry and prose, allowing readers to experience what it means to be fully human and relating the individualÆs inner life to that of every human being. In the quest for understanding, science discovers the facts about reality while art depicts the truth of human experience. Bronowski argues that a true humanistic philosophy must give equal place to the inner, subjective vision of the arts and the outer, objective perspective of science since they are both products of one self-conscious creative imagination. In the final analysis, he emphasizes that these perspectives converge in revealing a more enlightened, universal ethics, one that fosters tolerance, mutual understanding, an appreciation of differences, and a sense that we all share a common destiny as human participants in natureÆs cosmic drama.

    The first part of Volume 4, already published, deals with the physical sciences; the second with the diverse applications of physics in the many branches of mechanical engineering; and the third will deal with civil and hydraulic engineering and nautical technology. With this part of Volume 4, then, we come to the application by the Chinese of physical principles in the control of forces and in the use of power; we cross the frontier separating tools from the machine. We have already noticed that the ancient Chinese concept of chhi (somewhat similar to the pneuma of the Greeks) asserted itself prominently in acoustics; but we discover here that the Chinese tendency to think pneumatically was also responsible for a whole range of brilliant technological achievements, for example, the double-acting piston-bellows, the rotary winnowing-fan, and the water-powered metallurgical blowing-machine (ancestor of the steam-engine); as well as for some extraordinary insights and predictions in aeronautics.

    In addition, extracts from the works of Boyle, Newton, Mayer, Joule, Helmholtz, Kelvin and others show the historical context of ideas about gases, energy and irreversibility. In addition to five thematic essays connecting the classical kinetic theory with 20th century topics such as indeterminism and interatomic forces, there is an extensive international bibliography of historical commentaries on kinetic theory, thermodynamics, etc. published in the past four decades.The book will be useful to historians of science who need primary and secondary sources to be conveniently available for their own research and interpretation, along with the bibliography which makes it easier to learn what other historians have already done on this subject.