He untangles the pattern of interconnecting events, the accidents of time, circumstance, and place that gave rise to major inventions of the world. Says Burke, "My purpose is to acquaint the reader with some of the forces that have caused change in the past, looking in particular at eight innovations - the computer, the production line, telecommunications, the airplane, the atomic bomb, plastics, the guided rocket, and television - which may be most influential in structuring our own futures.... Each one of these is part of a family of similar devices, and is the result of a sequence of closely connected events extending from the ancient world until the present day. Each has enormous potential for humankind's benefit - or destruction."

    Volume I brings together his very influential but scattered papers on the philosophy of the physical sciences, and includes one important unpublished essay on the effect of Newton's scientific achievement. Volume II presents his work on the philosophy of mathematics (much of it unpublished), together with some critical essays on contemporary philosophers of science and some famous polemical writings on political and educational issues. Imre Lakatos had an influence out of all proportion to the length of his philosophical career. This collection exhibits and confirms the originality, range and the essential unity of his work. It demonstrates too the force and spirit he brought to every issue with which he engaged, from his most abstract mathematical work to his passionate 'Letter to the director of the LSE'. Lakatos' ideas are now the focus of widespread and increasing interest, and these volumes should make possible for the first time their study as a whole and their proper assessment.

    These figures influenced all the later centuries of Islamic history and in fact created the cosmological framework within which all later scientific activity in the Islamic world was carried out--the enduring image of the cosmos within which Muslims have lived during the past millennium.Nasr writes from within the Islamic tradition and demonstrates how, based on the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet, the figures treated in this work integrated elements drawn from various ancient schools of philosophy and the sciences. This book is unique in its treatment of classical Islamic cosmology as seen from within the Islamic world-view and provides a key for understanding of traditional Islamic thought.

    Jonathan Miller considers the functioning of the body as a subject of private experience. He explores our attitudes towards our bodies, our astonishing ignorance of them, and our inability to read our body's signals. Taking as his starting point the experience of pain, Dr. Miller analyzes the elaborate social process of "falling ill", considers the physical foundations of "dis-ease" and looks at the types of individuals man has historically attributed with the power of healing. His explanations are lucid, wide-ranging and whole-heartedly entertaining.

    . . . The book not only deals with a topic of importance and interest to all scientists, but is also a polished literary work, described (accurately) by one of its original reviewers as a scientific detective story."—John Gribbin, New Scientist"Every scientist should have this book."—Paul Davies, New Scientist

    Orginally a TV tie-in expanded from the BBC televison series, the book covers the behind-the-scenes aspects of the fight by the 'back room' scientists and technicians of WW2, including the battles against the Luftwaffe navigational beams, the V-1 and V-2 flying bombs, the development of radar, the battle against the u-boats, countering the magnetic mine, and the breaking of the codes produced by the Enigma machines.

    This illustrated volume is meant to fill that gap. In it sixteen leading scholars address themselves to topics central to their research, providing as full an account of medieval science as current knowledge permits. Although the book is definitive, it is also introductory, for the authors have directed their chapters to a beginning audience of diverse readers, including undergraduates, scholars specializing in other fields, and the interested lay reader. The book is not encylopedic, for it does not attempt to provide all relevant factual data; rather, it attempts to interpret major developments in each of the disciplines that made up the medieval scientific world. Data are not absent, but their function is to support and illustrate generalizations about the changing shape of medieval science. The editor, David C. Lindberg, has written a Preface in which he discusses the growth of scholarship in this field in the twentieth century.

    It is a vast work, necessarily more suited to the scholar and research worker than the general reader. This paperback version, abridged and re-written by Colin Ronan, makes this extremely important study accessible to a wider public. The present book covers the material treated in volumes I and II of Dr Needham's original work. The reader is introduced to the country of China, its history, geography and language, and an account is given of how scientific knowledge travelled between China and Europe. The major part of the book is then devoted to the history of scientific thought in China itself. Beginning with ancient times, it describes the milieu in which arose the schools of the Confucians, Taoists, Mohists, Logicians and Legalists. We are thus brought on to the fundamental ideas which dominated scientific thinking in the Chinese Middle Ages, to the doctrines of the Two Forces (Yin and Yang) and the Five Elements (wu hsing), to the impact of the sceptical tradition and Buddhist and Neo-Confucian thought.

    In this work, Feyerabend reviews that controversy, and extends his critique beyond the problem of scientific rules and methods, to the social function and direction of science today.In the first part of the book, he launches a sustained and irreverent attack on the prestige of science in the West. The lofty authority of the “expert” claimed by scientists is, he argues, incompatible with any genuine democracy, and often merely serves to conceal entrenched prejudices and divided opinions with the scientific community itself. Feyerabend insists that these can and should be subjected to the arbitration of the lay population, whose closes interests they constantly affect—as struggles over atomic energy programs so powerfully attest.Calling for far greater diversity in the content of education to facilitate democratic decisions over such issues, Feyerabend recounts the origin and development of his own ideas—successively engaged by Brecht, Ehrenhaft, Popper, Mill and Lakatos—in a spirited intellectual self-portrait.Science in a Free Society is a striking intervention into one of the most topical debates in contemporary culture and politics.

    Detailed accounts, including many excerpts from Galileo's own writings, offer insights into his work on motion, mechanics, hydraulics, strength of materials, and projectiles. 36 black-and-white illustrations.