Best of
Popular-Science

1984

Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of Central and South America


Adrian Forsyth - 1984
    A Simon & Schuster eBook

The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes


Rudy Rucker - 1984
    and now, The Fourth Dimension is this handy paperback. The result is a fantastic, enlightening, and mind-expanding reading experience. In text, pictures, and puzzles, master science and science fiction writer Rudy Rucker immerses his readers in an amazing exploration of a mysterious realm — a realm once seen only by mystics, physicists, and mathematicians. More accessible than Gödel, Escher, Bach and more playful than The Tao of Physics, Rucker's The Fourth Dimension is the most engaging tour of other dimensions since Flatland.David Povilaitis' 200 drawings illustrate Rucker's heady insights while dozens of puzzles and problems make the book a delight to the eye and mind. As Eileen Pollack has written in her rave review, The Fourth Dimension is "magical ... Its effects persist beyond its covers." That's because, like everything else in the fourth dimension, this is more than a book, it is a mental spaceship capable of grand tours of universes far beyond our own.

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality


John Gribbin - 1984
    It is so important that it provides the fundamental underpinning of all modern sciences. Without it, we'd have no nuclear power or nuclear bombs, no lasers, no TV, no computers, no science of molecular biology, no understanding of DNA, no genetic engineering—at all. John Gribbin tells the complete story of quantum mechanics, a truth far stranger than any fiction. He takes us step-by-step into an ever more bizarre and fascinating place—requiring only that we approach it with an open mind. He introduces the scientists who developed quantum theory. He investigates the atom, radiation, time travel, the birth of the universe, superconductors and life itself. And in a world full of its own delights, mysteries and surprises, he searches for Schrödinger's Cat—a search for quantum reality—as he brings every reader to a clear understanding of the most important area of scientific study today—quantum physics.

The Amazing Brain


Robert Ornstein - 1984
    Beginning with the simplest view of brain anatomy and operations and using the latest research available, Ornstein and Thomoson give the reader both an actual and a metaphorical picture of the human brain.

Stephen Hawking's Universe


John Boslough - 1984
    The story of Stephen Hawking's relentless quest for the secret of the origins of the universe will change forever the way you look at the stars . . . and your place among them.

The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times


Christopher Lasch - 1984
    In his latest book, Christopher Lasch, the renowned historian and social critic, powerfully argues that self-concern, so characteristic of our time, has become a search for psychic survival.