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Curiosity eBook

How Science Became Interested In Everything

by Philip Ball
language: english
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, April of 2013 ‧
30,46€
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With the recent landing of the Mars rover Curiosity, it seems safe to assume that the idea of being curious is alive and well in modern science—that it’s not merely encouraged but is seen as an essential component of the scientific mission. Yet there was a time when curiosity was condemned. Neither Pandora nor Eve could resist the dangerous allure of unanswered questions, and all knowledge wasn’t equal—for millennia it was believed that there were some things we should not try to know. In the late sixteenth century this attitude began to change dramatically, and in Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything, Philip Ball investigates how curiosity first became sanctioned—when it changed from a vice to a virtue and how it became permissible to ask any and every question about the world.
 
Looking closely at the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Ball vividly brings to life the age when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton. In this entertaining and illuminating account of the rise of science as we know it, Ball tells of scientists both legendary and lesser known, from Copernicus and Kepler to Robert Boyle, as well as the inventions and technologies that were inspired by curiosity itself, such as the telescope and the microscope. The so-called Scientific Revolution is often told as a story of great geniuses illuminating the world with flashes of inspiration. But Curiosity reveals a more complex story, in which the liberation—and subsequent taming—of curiosity was linked to magic, religion, literature, travel, trade, and empire. Ball also asks what has become of curiosity today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged for consumption, how well it is being sustained, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may continue to ask.
 
Though proverbial wisdom tell us that it was through curiosity that our innocence was lost, that has not deterred us. Instead, it has been completely the contrary: today we spend vast sums trying to reconstruct the first instants of creation in particle accelerators, out of a pure desire to know. Ball refuses to let us take this desire for granted, and this book is a perfect homage to such an inquisitive attitude.

Curiosity

How Science Became Interested In Everything

by Philip Ball

Property Description
ISBN: 9780226045825
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Release Date: April of 2013
Language: English
Format: eBook
File Format and Compatibility: PDF para ADE
Categories: eBooks in English > History > General History
EAN: 9780226045825

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Philip Ball

Philip Ball is a writer and presenter. For over twenty years, he was an editor at the magazine. NatureHe regularly writes articles about science for the press and is the author of many books on the interactions between science, the arts, and culture in general, including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth: The Invention of Color, The Music Instinct and How Life WorksYour book Critical Mass won the Prize Aventis for Science Books (2005). In 2022, he was awarded the Medal Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar from the Royal Society which rewards contributions made to the history, philosophy, or social role of science. He graduated in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and in Physics from the University of Bristol.
The book Three Big Questions — (All) Science in just three questionsThis book, published by Planeta Tangerina, stemmed from his experience as an educator and father of two daughters, which compelled him to think about the most concise way possible to convey the essence of what science is. Much of science is not about getting the right answers, but about asking the right questions. Philip concludes that if children and young people can understand the three big questions in this book, they will have an idea of ​​what it means to think constructively about most of the science content they encounter in school curricula, and also in their lives.

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