Science

Concise and unintimidating, the fifth edition of this bestselling book is the only pragmatic, quick-start guide to the main theories, issues, and approaches to insider action research.

An entertaining and all-encompassing guide to skeptical thinking for the age of misinformation.

Relax, unwind and soak up the wisdom of the sloth with the slowest page turner you'll ever read.

A comprehensive description and step-by-step explanation of the Nei Gong internal alchemical process also explaining its philosophical basis. Essential reading for practitioners of Nei Gong, Qi Gong, martial arts and Chinese medicine.

';New Dark Ageis among the most unsettling and illuminating books I've read about the Internet, which is to say that it is among the most unsettling and illuminating books I've read about contemporary life.'New YorkerAs the world around us increases in technological complexity, our understanding of it diminishes. Underlying this trend is a single idea: the belief that our existence is understandable through computation, and more data is enough to help us build a better world. In reality, we are lost in a sea of information, increasingly divided by fundamentalism, simplistic narratives, conspiracy theories, and post-factual politics. Meanwhile, those in power use our lack of understanding to further their own interests. Despite the apparent accessibility of information, we're living in a new Dark Age. From rogue financial systems to shopping algorithms, from artificial intelligence to state secrecy, we no longer understand how our world is governed or presented to us. The media is filled with unverifiable speculation, much of it generated by anonymous software, while companies dominate their employees through surveillance and the threat of automation. In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer James Bridle surveys the history of art, technology, and information systems, and reveals the dark clouds that gather over our dreams of the digital sublime.

A new, fully updated edition of David Attenborough's groundbreaking Life on Earth.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE 2017 Your body is teeming with tens of trillions of microbes.In a million tiny ways, I Contain Multitudes will radically change the way you think about the natural world, and the way you see yourself.

Challenges long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don't arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation, but that revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of normal science.

What are things made of? What is the sun? Why is there night and day, winter and summer? Why do bad things happen? Are we alone? Have you heard the tale of how the sun hatched out of an emu's egg? Has anyone ever told you that earthquakes are caused by a sneezing giant? This title answers all these questions.

Sir Anthony Kenny unfolds a magisterial new history of Western philosophy. Specially written for a broad popular readership, Kenny's lucid and stimulating history will become the definitive work for anyone interested in the people and ideas that shaped the course of Western thought.

This magical book is a totally original collection that features gorgeous, never-before-seen photographic representations of the 118 elements in the periodic table - plus facts, figures and fascinating stories about each one!

Cultural theorist Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use by analyzing what it means for bodies to be "oriented" in space and time.

Learn how to use R to turn raw data into insight, knowledge, and understanding. This book introduces you to R, RStudio, and the tidyverse, a collection of R packages designed to work together to make data science fast, fluent, and fun. Suitable for readers with no previous programming experience, R for Data Science is designed to get you doing data science as quickly as possible.Authors Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund guide you through the steps of importing, wrangling, exploring, and modeling your data and communicating the results. Youll get a complete, big-picture understanding of the data science cycle, along with basic tools you need to manage the details. Each section of the book is paired with exercises to help you practice what youve learned along the way.Youll learn how to:Wrangletransform your datasets into a form convenient for analysisProgramlearn powerful R tools for solving data problems with greater clarity and easeExploreexamine your data, generate hypotheses, and quickly test themModelprovide a low-dimensional summary that captures true "e;signals"e; in your datasetCommunicatelearn R Markdown for integrating prose, code, and results

WINNER OF THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARDWINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2016'A thrilling adventure story' Bill Bryson'Dazzling' Literary Review 'Brilliant' Sunday Express'Extraordinary and gripping' New Scientist'A superb biography' The Economist'An exhilarating armchair voyage' GILES MILTON, Mail on Sunday Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) is the great lost scientist - more things are named after him than anyone else. There are towns, rivers, mountain ranges, the ocean current that runs along the South American coast, there's a penguin, a giant squid - even the Mare Humboldtianum on the moon. His colourful adventures read like something out of a Boy's Own story: Humboldt explored deep into the rainforest, climbed the world's highest volcanoes and inspired princes and presidents, scientists and poets alike. Napoleon was jealous of him; Simon Bol var's revolution was fuelled by his ideas; Darwin set sail on the Beagle because of Humboldt; and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo owned all his many books. He simply was, as one contemporary put it, 'the greatest man since the Deluge'.Taking us on a fantastic voyage in his footsteps - racing across anthrax-infected Russia or mapping tropical rivers alive with crocodiles - Andrea Wulf shows why his life and ideas remain so important today. Humboldt predicted human-induced climate change as early as 1800, and The Invention of Nature traces his ideas as they go on to revolutionize and shape science, conservation, nature writing, politics, art and the theory of evolution. He wanted to know and understand everything and his way of thinking was so far ahead of his time that it's only coming into its own now. Alexander von Humboldt really did invent the way we see nature.

In this profound and playful book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb presents his ideas about life in the form of aphorisms, the world's earliest - and most memorable - literary form. Procrustes was a character from Greek mythology who abducted travellers and invited them to spend the night in a special bed, which they had to fit to perfection. They never did. Those who were too tall had their legs chopped off; those who were too short were stretched. Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts - we humans, facing the limits of our knowledge, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies and pre-packaged narratives. Only by embracing the unexpected - and accepting what we don't know - can we see the world as it really is.

'A magnificent challenge to conventional ideas' Financial Times'I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It manages to be both challenging and entertaining: it is highly recommended' the Independent '(Greene) send(s) the reader's imagination hurtling through the universe on an astonishing ride. As a popularizer of exquisitely abstract science, he is both a skilled and kindly explicator' the New York Times'Greene is as elegant as ever, cutting through the fog of complexity with insight and clarity; space and time become putty in his hands' Los Angeles Times Book Review

In Either/Or, using the voices of two characters - the aesthetic young man of part one, called simply 'A', and the ethical Judge Vilhelm of the second section - Kierkegaard reflects upon the search for a meaningful existence, contemplating subjects as diverse as Mozart, drama, boredom, and, in the famous Seducer's Diary, the cynical seduction and ultimate rejection of a young, beautiful woman. A masterpiece of duality, Either/Or is a brilliant exploration of the conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical - both meditating ironically and seductively upon Epicurean pleasures, and eloquently expounding the noble virtues of a morally upstanding life.

A clarion call to save humanity's most essential fellow creatures and our health Far beneath our skin exists an unfathomable, ancient universe an internal ecosystem that is critical to our health. Dr Martin Blaser invites us into the wilds of the human ';microbiome', unfurling its inner workings and evolution. For thousands of years, bacteria and human cells have co-existed in a relationship that has ensured the health and equilibrium of our body. But now, much like the natural world outside of us, our internal environment is being irrevocably destroyed. The culprit: some of our most revered medical advances antibiotics which appear to be linked to the epidemics of asthma, eczema, obesity, certain forms of cancer, and other diseases plaguing modern society. In a book that stands as the Silent Spring of its day, Blaser sounds a provocative alarm that we ignore at our peril.

With one famous equation, E=mc2, Einstein proved all matter can be described as energy. It is everywhere and it is everything. In this newly updated and engaging introduction, renowned scientist Vaclav Smil explores energy in all its facets from the inner workings of the human body to what we eat, the car we drive and the race for more efficient and eco-friendly fuels. Energy: A Beginner's Guide highlights the importance of energy in both past and present societies, by shedding light on the science behind global warming and efforts to prevent it, and by revealing how our daily decisions affect energy consumption. Whether you're looking for dinner table conversation or to further your own understanding, this book will amaze and inform, uncovering the truths and exposing the myths behind one of the most important concepts in our universe.

The dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest: the search for the solution of how to calculate longitude and the unlikely triumph of an English genius. With a Foreword by Neil Armstrong.'Sobel has done the impossible and made horology sexy - no mean feat' New ScientistAnyone alive in the 18th century would have known that 'the longitude problem' was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day - and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resolution.The quest for a solution had occupied scientists and their patrons for the better part of two centuries when, in 1714, Parliament upped the ante by offering a king's ransom (GBP20,000) to anyone whose method or device proved successful. Countless quacks weighed in with preposterous suggestions. The scientific establishment throughout Europe - from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton - had mapped the heavens in both hemispheres in its certain pursuit of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution.Full of heroism and chicanery, brilliance and the absurd, LONGITUDE is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation and clockmaking.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

Title: National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, Author: Andrew Fazekas, Publication Year: 2019-03-19, Publisher: National Geographic Society, Language: eng

Prepare to embark on a journey through space and time with The NASA Archives, a visual celebration of humankind's unstoppable urge to travel away from Earth to worlds beyond. Featuring more than 400 historic photographs and rare concept renderings, this collection guides us through NASA's 60-year history, from its earliest days to its current...

A comprehensive guide to the understanding and practicing Buddhist meditationThe very idea that the teachings can be mastered will arouse controversy within Buddhist circles. Even so, Ingram insists that enlightenment is an attainable goal, once our fanciful notions of it are stripped away, and we have learned to use meditation as a method for examining reality rather than an opportunity to wallow in self-absorbed mind-noise.Ingram sets out concisely the difference between concentration-based and insight (vipassana) meditation; he provides example practices; and most importantly he presents detailed maps of the states of mind we are likely to encounter, and the stages we must negotiate as we move through clearly-defined cycles of insight.Its easy to feel overawed, at first, by Ingram's assurance and ease in the higher levels of consciousness, but consistently he writes as a down-to-earth and compassionate guide, and to the practitioner willing to commit themselves this is a glittering gift of a book.In this new edition of the bestselling book, the author rearranges, revises and expands upon the original material, as well as adding new sections that bring further clarity to his ideas.

A succinct, startling and lavishly illustrated guide to discoveries that are altering our understanding and threatening some of our most cherished belief systems, The Grand Design is a book that will inform - and provoke - like no other.

The 'extended phenotype' is Dawkins' key contribution to the gene's eye view of evolution given in The Selfish Gene. He shows that the influence of genes can extend far beyond the bodies in which they reside, manipulating the environment and the behaviour of other individuals. A worldwide bestseller and a classic work of scientific exposition.

Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works. Also included are concise introductions by Cooper and Hutchinson to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index. This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition.