本书是麻省理工学院的 网络明星 、当年让比尔 盖茨着迷的物理教授沃尔特 卢因,给大学本科生上的物理导论课的节选,他讲授的课程非常受欢迎,这些讲课录像已成为YouTube和iTunes上最受欢迎的教学内容。 在这本半自传性的书中,卢因教授以前所未有的角度,揭示隐藏在周围世界中的美和力量。他的目标只有一个:让学生爱上物理,并且一生都能用不同的方式看世界!
Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who has himself already had the thoughts that are expressed in it--or at least similar thoughts.--So it is not a textbook.--Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.The book deals with the problems of philosophy, and shows, I believe, that the reason why these problems are posed is that the logic of our language is misunderstood.,
In his bestselling The Moral Animal, Robert Wright applied theprinciples of evolutionary biology to the study of the human mind.Now Wright attempts something even more ambitious: explaining thedirection of evolution and human history–and discerning wherehistory will lead us next. In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright asserts that, eversince the primordial ooze, life has followed a basic pattern.Organisms and human societies alike have grown more complex bymastering the challenges of internal cooperation. Wright'snarrative ranges from fossilized bacteria to vampire bats, fromstone-age villages to the World Trade Organization, uncovering suchsurprises as the benefits of barbarian hordes and the usefulstability of feudalism. Here is history endowed with moralsignificance–a way of looking at our biological and culturalevolution that suggests, refreshingly, that human morality hasimproved over time, and that our instinct to discover meaning mayitself serve a higher purpose. Insightful, wi
A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in searchof deep laws to unite them. -- The Wall Street Journal One of our greatest living scientists--and the winner of twoPulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and TheAnts --gives us a work of visionary importance that may be thecrowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a wordthat originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renewsthe Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge indisciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciencesand the humanities. Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramaticlinks between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and thegenetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principlesunderlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presentingthe latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratoricaleloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions ofNewton, Einstein, and R
How did the replication bomb we call life begin and where inthe world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing withcharacteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (theNew York Times described his style as the sort of science writingthat makes the reader feel like a genius), Richard Dawkinsconfronts this ancient mystery.