Contributor
Bolles, Edmund Blair, 1942-
Imprint:New York : W.H. Freeman, c1997.
Descriptionxxiii, 485 p. : ill., map ; 24 cm.
Note:Includes index.
Note:Contents are also listed by date and by science.
Note:PART ONE: THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION EXAMINED: Ch. one: "EVERY REAL PROBLEM CAN AND WILL BE SOLVED" : Death in the laboratory / Isaac Asimov -- The story of Algol / Arthur S. Eddington -- A new sense / Ernst Mach -- The new science of animal behavior / John B. Watson -- Ch. two: "LANGUAGE OF THE SORT THAT WOULD HAVE ATTRACTED GILBERT AND SULLIVAN": Heroic science / Karl Popper -- Naming the rocks / John McPhee -- Chemistry transformed / Herbert Butterfield -- Learning to see through another's eyes / Jean Piaget -- Ch. three: "THE ACTUAL LIMITS OF WHAT IS KNOWN": The misuse of Darwin / Stephen Jay Gould -- The case against B.F. Skinner / Noam Chomsky -- Idols of the tribe / Francis Bacon -- PART TWO: THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION IN ACTION: Ch. four: "BROUGHT NEAR TO THAT GREAT FACT, THAT MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES": First look through a telescope / Galileo Galilei -- Seashells in the mountains / Leonardo da Vinci -- Birds of the Galapagos / Charles Darwin -- Mating seasons / George B. Schaller -- Ch. five: "BUT WHAT ARE THEY?": The creation of Egypt / Herodotus -- The movement of glaciers / Horace Bénédict de Saussure -- Molecules / James Clerk Maxwell -- Radio-activity: a new property of matter / Robert Kennedy Duncan -- The atoms of activity / I.P. Pavlov -- Classifying the stars / Annie J. Cannon -- Ch. 6. "THE DEMONSTRATION THAT COST SO MUCH EFFORT": Where is the center of the universe? / Galileo Galilei -- Doubting the four elements / Robert Boyle -- Dispute on the nature of light / Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke -- Obtaining radium / Marie Curie -- Jigsaw continents / Alfred Wegener -- The transmutation of the atom / Ernest Rutherford -- The double bases / James Watson -- Has the earth already been visited? / Carl Sagan -- Looking for the drift / Walter Sullivan -- Looking for the Big Bang / George Smoot -- Ch. 7. "THOSE WHO WOULD JUDGE THE BOOK MUST READ IT": I admit the moon has seas / Johannes Kepler -- The importance of Isaac Newton / Voltaire -- The Darwinian hypothesis / Thomas H. Huxley -- Galton's genetics / William Bateson -- Gestalt psychology / Edmund Blair Bolles -- What Einstein did / Bertrand Russell -- A science in change / J. Robert Oppenheimer -- Ch. 8. "SOMEHOW THE WAVE HAD TO EXIST": The end of the universe / Sir James Jeans -- Imagery in thought / Frederic C. Bartlett -- The mature personality / Gordon W. Allport -- The expanding universe / Fred Hoyle -- Little men and flying saucers / Loren C. Eiseley -- Atomic physics and causal law / Werner Heisenberg -- The distinction of past and future / Richard Feynman -- The golden walls of Edgar Allan Poe / Edward Harrison -- Waves without a breeze / Fred Alan Wolf -- Making the observer count / Heinz R. Pagels -- Schrödinger's cats and Wigner's friends / Paul Davies -- Ch. 9. "EVERY INTELLECT WHICH STRIVES AFTER GENERALIZATION MUST FEEL THE TEMPTATION": Preface to The Elements of chemistry / Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier -- On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type / Alfred Wallace -- The conservation of energy / Hermann von Helmholtz -- Two theories of relativity / Albert Einstein -- PART THREE: STYLE IN THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGINATION: Ch. 10: "IT IS IN SOME FASHION A HISTORY": The speed of falling bodies / Galileo Galilei -- The persistence of atoms / Lucretius -- Food control in insect societies / J.B.S. Haldane -- Animals courting / Julian Huxley -- The long snowfall / Rachel Carson -- How ice changed the world / Louise B. Young -- Dark time / Richard Preston -- Carbon / Primo Levi.
Note:"The aim behind this collection is to show readers that science writing can be great writing in precisely the same sense as other genres are great: it has something important to say; it says it by presenting readers with unique imaginations; and readers in turn are inspired to think in ways that, by themselves, they never could.... To make my case, I have focused on straight science writing, not philosophical writing about science.... This book presents writing that makes a contribution to science. [The title comes from] Bertolt Brecht's play, The Life of Galileo, [in which] Galileo (the character) says, 'Science knows only one commandment: contribute to science.'" -- Author's introduction
