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Author: Clive Gamble
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 327
ISBN-13: 0198870698
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe discovery of ancient stone implements alongside the bones of mammoths by John Evans and Joseph Prestwich in 1859 kicked open the door for a time revolution in human history. Clive Gamble explores the personalities of these revolutionaries and the significant impact their work had on the scientific advances of the next 160 years.
Author: Clive Gamble
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2021-03-25
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 0192643681
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOne afternoon in late April 1859 two geologically minded businessmen, John Evans and Joseph Prestwich, found and photographed the proof for great human antiquity. Their evidence — small, hand-held stone tools found in the gravel quarries of the Somme among the bones of ancient animals — shattered the timescale of Genesis and kicked open the door for a time revolution in human history. In the space of a calendar year, and at a furious pace, the relationship between humans and time was forever changed. This interpretation of deep human history was shaped by the optimistic decade of the 1850s, the Victorian Heyday in the age of equipoise. Proving great human antiquity depended on matching the principles of geology with the personal values of scientific zeal and perseverance; qualities which time-revolutionaries such as Evans and Prestwich had in abundance. Their revolution was driven by a small group of weekend scientists rather than some great purpose, and it proved effective because of its bonds of friendship stiffened by scientific curiosity and business acumen. Clive Gamble explores the personalities of these time revolutionaries and their scientific co-collaborators and adjudicators — Darwin, Falconer, Lyell, Huxley, and the French antiquary Boucher de Perthes — as well as their sisters, wives, and nieces Grace McCall, Civil Prestwich, and Fanny Evans. As with all scientific discoveries getting there was often circuitous and messy; the revolutionaries changed their minds and disagreed with those who should have been allies. Gamble's chronological narrative reveals each step from discovery to presentation, reception, consolidation, and widespread acceptance, and considers the impact of their work on the scientific advances of the next 160 years and on our fascination with the shaping power of time.
Author: Andrew Shryock
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2011-11-07
Total Pages: 360
ISBN-13: 0520270282
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis breakthrough book brings science into history to offer a dazzling new vision of humanity across time. Team-written by leading experts in a variety of fields, it maps events, cultures, and eras across millions of years to present a new scale for understanding the human body, energy and ecosystems, language, food, kinship, migration, and more.
Author: Daniel Lord Smail
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 287
ISBN-13: 0520252896
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhen does history begin? What characterizes it? This book dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a model for a history that escapes the continuing grip of the Judeo-Christian time frame. It lays out a new case for bringing neuroscience and neurobiology into the realm of history.
Author: Siegfried Zielinski
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2008-02-15
Total Pages: 391
ISBN-13: 026274032X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA quest to find something new by excavating the "deep time" of media's development—not by simply looking at new media's historic forerunners, but by connecting models, machines, technologies, and accidents that have until now remained separated. Deep Time of the Media takes us on an archaeological quest into the hidden layers of media development—dynamic moments of intense activity in media design and construction that have been largely ignored in the historical-media archaeological record. Siegfried Zielinski argues that the history of the media does not proceed predictably from primitive tools to complex machinery; in Deep Time of the Media, he illuminates turning points of media history—fractures in the predictable—that help us see the new in the old. Drawing on original source materials, Zielinski explores the technology of devices for hearing and seeing through two thousand years of cultural and technological history. He discovers the contributions of "dreamers and modelers" of media worlds, from the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles and natural philosophers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods to Russian avant-gardists of the early twentieth century. "Media are spaces of action for constructed attempts to connect what is separated," Zielinski writes. He describes models and machines that make this connection: including a theater of mirrors in sixteenth-century Naples, an automaton for musical composition created by the seventeenth-century Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, and the eighteenth-century electrical tele-writing machine of Joseph Mazzolari, among others. Uncovering these moments in the media-archaeological record, Zielinski says, brings us into a new relationship with present-day moments; these discoveries in the "deep time" media history shed light on today's media landscape and may help us map our expedition to the media future.
Author: Fred Spier
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2015-05-06
Total Pages: 371
ISBN-13: 1118881729
DOWNLOAD EBOOKbig history and the future of humanity “This remains the best single attempt to theorize big history as a discipline that can link core concepts and paradigms across all historical disciplines, from cosmology to geology, from biology to human history. With additional and updated material, the Second Edition also offers a fine introduction to the history of big history and a superb introductory survey to the big history story. Essential reading for anyone interested in a rapidly evolving new field of scholarship that links the sciences and the humanities into a modern, science-based origin story.” David Christian, Macquarie University “Notable for its theoretic approach, this new Second Edition is both an indispensable contribution to the emerging big history narrative and a powerful university textbook. Spier defines words carefully and recognizes the limits of current knowledge, aspects of his own clear thinking.” Cynthia Brown, Emerita, Dominican University of California Reflecting the latest theories in the sciences and humanities, this new edition of Big History and the Future of Humanity presents an accessible and original overview of the entire sweep of history from the origins of the universe and life on Earth up to the present day. Placing the relatively brief period of human history within a much broader framework – one that considers everything from vast galaxy clusters to the tiniest sub-atomic particles – big history is an innovative theoretical approach that opens up entirely new multidisciplinary research agendas. Noted historian Fred Spier reveals how a thorough examination of patterns of complexity can offer richer insights into what the future may have in store for humanity. The second edition includes new learning features, such as highlighted scientific concepts, an illustrative timeline and comprehensive glossary. By exploring the cumulative history from the Big Bang to the modern day, Big History and the Future of Humanity, Second Edition, sheds important historical light on where we have been – and offers a tantalizing glimpse of what lies ahead.
Author: Martin J. S. Rudwick
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2014-10-15
Total Pages: 371
ISBN-13: 022620409X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK“Tells the story . . . of how ‘natural philosophers’ developed the ideas of geology accepted today . . . Fascinating.” —San Francisco Book Review Earth has been witness to dinosaurs, global ice ages, continents colliding or splitting apart, and comets and asteroids crashing, as well as the birth of humans who are curious to understand it. But how was all this discovered? How was the evidence for it collected and interpreted? In this sweeping and accessible book, Martin J. S. Rudwick, the premier historian of the Earth sciences, tells the gripping human story of the gradual realization that the Earth’s history has not only been long but also astonishingly eventful. Rudwick begins in the seventeenth century with Archbishop James Ussher, who famously dated the creation of the cosmos to 4004 BC. His narrative later turns to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when geological evidence was used—and is still being used—to reconstruct a history of the Earth that is as varied and unpredictable as human history. itself. Along the way, Rudwick rejects the popular view of this story as a conflict between science and religion and shows how the modern scientific account of the Earth’s deep history retains strong roots in Judeo-Christian ideas. Extensively illustrated, Earth’s Deep History is an engaging and impressive capstone to Rudwick’s distinguished career. “Deftly explains how ideas of natural history were embedded in cultural history.” —Nature “An engaging read for nonscientists and specialists alike.” —Library Journal “Wonderfully erudite and absorbing.” —Times Literary Supplement “Fascinating, well written, and novel . . . Essential.” —Choice “Thrilling.” —London Review of Books
Author: Richard Cohen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2022-04-19
Total Pages: 636
ISBN-13: 1982195800
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA “supremely entertaining” (The New Yorker) exploration of who gets to record the world’s history—from Julius Caesar to William Shakespeare to Ken Burns—and how their biases influence our understanding about the past. There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as “objective” history? In this “witty, wise, and elegant” (The Spectator), book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of “Bad History” and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country. “Scholarly, lively, quotable, up-to-date, and fun” (Hilary Mantel, author of the bestselling Thomas Cromwell trilogy), Making History investigates the published works and private utterances of our greatest chroniclers to discover the agendas that informed their—and our—views of the world. From the origins of history writing, when such an activity itself seemed revolutionary, through to television and the digital age, Cohen brings captivating figures to vivid light, from Thucydides and Tacitus to Voltaire and Gibbon, Winston Churchill and Henry Louis Gates. Rich in complex truths and surprising anecdotes, the result is a revealing exploration of both the aims and art of history-making, one that will lead us to rethink how we learn about our past and about ourselves.
Author: Clive Gamble
Publisher:
Published: 2021
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780192643674
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe discovery of ancient stone implements alongside the bones of mammoths by John Evans and Joseph Prestwich in 1859 kicked open the door for a time revolution in human history. Clive Gamble explores the personalities of these revolutionaries and the significant impact their work had on the scientific advances of the next 160 years.
Author: Joseph LeDoux
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2020-08-25
Total Pages: 434
ISBN-13: 0735223858
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLonglisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us and our ancestors in deep time. This page-turning survey of the whole of terrestrial evolution sheds new light on how nervous systems evolved in animals, how the brain developed, and what it means to be human. In The Deep History of Ourselves, LeDoux argues that the key to understanding human behavior lies in viewing evolution through the prism of the first living organisms. By tracking the chain of the evolutionary timeline he shows how even the earliest single-cell organisms had to solve the same problems we and our cells have to solve each day. Along the way, LeDoux explores our place in nature, how the evolution of nervous systems enhanced the ability of organisms to survive and thrive, and how the emergence of what we humans understand as consciousness made our greatest and most horrendous achievements as a species possible.
