Marsilio Ficino, a leading scholar of the Italian Renaissance who translated all the works of Plato into Latin, examines Plato’s Timaeus, the most widely influential and hotly debated of the Platonic writings. Offering a probable account of the creation and nature of the cosmos, the discussion incorporates such questions as What is the function of arithmetic and geometry in the design of creation? What is the nature of mind, soul, matter, and time? and What is our place in the universe? To his main commentary Ficino adds an appendix, which amplifies and elucidates Plato’s meanings and reveals fascinating details about Ficino himself.
As a child, Aldo Leopold was always looking for adventures in nature. This led Leopold to become a forester, wildlife scientist, author, and ultimately one of the most well-known conservationists in American history. Award-winning author Marybeth Lorbiecki brings Leopold to life in this biography enhanced with historic photographs and a school resource section. Marybeth Lorbiecki is the author of more than twenty-five books for children and adults, and she teaches upper-level college writing and children's literature as an adjunct university professor. Her adult biography Aldo Leopold: A Fierce Green Fire earned a Minnesota Book Award.
Since the early 1990s, advances in toxicology have allowed scientists to detect traces of adulterant substances in everyday products – even down to parts per billion concentrations. We can now detect the presence of harmful ingredients at levels so low that they actually cause no harm. Nonetheless, we get scared. We are now able to overreact to harmless, negligible sources of contamination and flock to ‘natural’, ‘organic’ and ‘chemical-free’ alternative products at elevated prices instead. This urge is driven in part by a set of interesting psychological quirks called the naturalness preference or biophilia. While exposure to many aspects of nature improves our physical and mental wellbeing, marketers are taking advantage of our naturalness preference by selling us ‘organic’ and ‘natural’ products with no functional advantage, sometimes to the detriment of the environment, and that have the unfortunate added effect of peddling a fear of conventional products that do not make such natural connotations. This fear of chemicals, exaggerated by marketers, has led some of us to seek nature in the form of expensive consumer product, which offer almost none of the benefits of spending time outdoors in real nature (which is free of charge). We thus chase nature in the wrong form. We feel guilt, anxiety and mental stress from being coaxed into paying a hefty premium price for "natural" products that are neither safer nor more effective than conventional ones, and forget to appreciate real nature in the process. This book explores the history of chemical fears and the recent events that amplified it. It describes how consumers, teachers, doctors, lawmakers and journalists can help make better connections with the public by telling stories that are more engaging about chemistry and materials science. Written in a sympathetic way, this book explains both sides of the argument for anyone with an interest in science.
This is a graduate-level textbook for students in the natural sciences. After reviewing the necessary math, it describes the logical path from Newton's laws of motion to our modern understanding of fluid mechanics. It does not describe engineering applications but instead focuses on phenomena found in nature. Once developed, the theory is applied to three familiar examples of flows that can be observed easily in Earth's atmosphere, oceans, rivers and lakes: vortices, interfacial waves, and hydraulic transitions. The student will then have both (1) the tools to analyze a wide range of naturally-occurring flows and (2) a solid foundation for more advanced studies in atmospheric dynamics and physical oceanography. Appendices give more detailed explanations and optional topics.
Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Winner of the Acoustical Society of America's 2023 Science Communication Award “[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life’s sound.” —The New York Times Book Review A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animal groups and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets, and shows that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, just, and beautiful. The appreciation of the beauty and brokenness of sound is therefore an important guide in today’s convulsions and crises of change and inequity. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong, and act.
"He [the author] draws us into a labyrinth of disparate lives whose connections become clear only gradually ... a diabetic teenage girl in Lisbon, her father, an officer in the pre-revolutionary armey and a secret policeman."--Jacket.
Medical expert Paul A. Offit, M.D., offers a scathing exposé of the alternative medicine industry, revealing how even though some popular therapies are remarkably helpful due to the placebo response, many of them are ineffective, expensive, and even deadly. Dr. Offit reveals how alternative medicine—an unregulated industry under no legal obligation to prove its claims or admit its risks—can actually be harmful to our health. Using dramatic real-life stories, Offit separates the sense from the nonsense, showing why any therapy—alternative or traditional—should be scrutinized. He also shows how some nontraditional methods can do a great deal of good, in some cases exceeding therapies offered by conventional practitioners. An outspoken advocate for science-based health advocacy who is not afraid to take on media celebrities who promote alternative practices, Dr. Offit advises, “There’s no such thing as alternative medicine. There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”
Illuminates the far-reaching harms of believing that natural means “good,” from misinformation about health choices to justifications for sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies. People love what’s natural: it’s the best way to eat, the best way to parent, even the best way to act—naturally, just as nature intended. Appeals to the wisdom of nature are among the most powerful arguments in the history of human thought. Yet Nature (with a capital N) and natural goodness are not objective or scientific. In this groundbreaking book, scholar of religion Alan Levinovitz demonstrates that these beliefs are actually religious and highlights the many dangers of substituting simple myths for complicated realities. It may not seem like a problem when it comes to paying a premium for organic food. But what about condemnations of “unnatural” sexual activity? The guilt that attends not having a “natural” birth? Economic deregulation justified by the inherent goodness of “natural” markets? In Natural, readers embark on an epic journey, from Peruvian rainforests to the backcountry in Yellowstone Park, from a “natural” bodybuilding competition to a “natural” cancer-curing clinic. The result is an essential new perspective that shatters faith in Nature’s goodness and points to a better alternative. We can love nature without worshipping it, and we can work toward a better world with humility and dialogue rather than taboos and zealotry.
