A wonderful work, addressed to scientists but deserving of a wider audience. A personal, purposeful, and passionate exposition about the subjective process that accompanies discovery--and how to choose a discovery-laden topic for research, how to find opportunities in science overlooked by others, and how to break out of the rut of mundane thinking. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Through this magnificent collection of historical maps, travel writer Francisca Mattéoli takes us on a geographical adventure, telling the stories of twenty places and voyages that inspired her and the creation of these fascinating charts. Discover some of the world's most magical places and how they revealed themselves, from the lost trails of the first colonies of the American West to Amundsen's exploration of the South Pole, and the rediscoveries of Petra and Angkor Wat. This unexpected volume will let the curious mind roam the contours of the planet, and discover how the world we know today was made, and un-made.
Filmmaker Attenborough provides an introductory survey of the artistic representation of plants and animals through human history, beginning with Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and continuing on through the mid-1700s.
The sketchbook has been the one constant in explorers' kits for centuries of adventure. Often private, they are records of immediate experiences and discoveries, and in their pages we can see what the explorers themselves encountered. This remarkable book showcases 70 such sketchbooks, kept by intrepid men and women as they journeyed perilous and unknown environments—frozen wastelands, high mountains, barren deserts, and dense rainforests—with their senses wide open. Figures such as Charles Darwin and Sir Edmund Hillary are joined here by lesser-known explorers such as Adela Breton, who braved the jungles of Mexico to make a record of Mayan monuments. Here are profiles, expedition details, and the artwork of pioneering explorers and mapmakers, botanists and artists, ecologists and anthropologists, eccentrics and visionaries. Here is the art of discovery.
Through extensive use of sentence-completion exercises, and examples from the author's counseling, the reader comes to understand herself, and unlock hidden potential.
Chinese edition of The art of invention:The Creative Process of Discovery and Design by Steven J. Paley. In Traditional Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.
In The Discovery of Slowness, German novelist Sten Nadolny recounts the life of the nineteenth-century British explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847). The reader follows Franklin's development from awkward schoolboy and ridiculed teenager to expedition leader, governor of Tasmania, and icon of adventure. Everyone with whom he came into contact sensed that he was a rare man, one who was “out of his time” and who moved to a different, grander beat. That beat eventually led Franklin to sail once more—on his final, fateful voyage—into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. The Discovery of Slowness is both a riveting account of a remarkable and varied life, and a profound and thought-provoking meditation on time.
Simple, rhyming text introduces individual woodland birds and animals as seen in Charley Harper's illustration, "Penitentiary Glen," which is shown as a whole on a fold-out page at the end.
Learning may well be the most profound poweron earth. Its force shapes entire civilizations and transforms the world, one individual at a time.Yet, all too often we allow this remarkableforce to become diluted.The moment learning becomes a mundanesuccession of texts, tests, and tedium, is the moment we lose that vital connection to the wonders of human creativity and discovery which infuse our work, our learning and our very lives with purpose.For those seeking to link learning to their life's aspirations, this book off ers the invitation to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.Through a body of stunning historicalphotographs, Eva Koleva Timothy breathes newlife into an age when learning was life's grandadventure and where genius was less a matterof genetics than of passion and perspective.Turning her lens upon the lives of history's heroes, she has revealed the key to a great secret:That we too, like the celebrated luminaries of old, are born: Creators, Discoverers and Dreamers.So come set sail with Columbus, soar amongthe heavens with Galileo, dive into drawings ofDaVinci and discover the passion which movedthe masters of an age as they lost themselvesin the rapture that is great learning.
In Empire of Light, Sidney Perkowitz combines the expertise of a physicist with the vision of an art connoisseur and the skill of an accomplished writer to offer a unique view of the most fundamental feature of the universe: light. Empire of Light discusses the nature of light, how the eye sees, and how our understanding of these phenomena have emerged over the ages, including the role of light in the development of quantum physics. The author examines the making of electrical light and its integration into commerce, telecommunications, entertainment, medicine, warfare, and every other aspect of our daily lives. And he presents the role of light in the search for the beginning and the end of the universe, as astronomers with their instruments penetrate ever deeper into the sky. Visible light spans the spectrum between infrared and ultraviolet, but this book reaches across many other spectra as well--from the cave paintings at Lascaux to Mark Rothko's stark blocks of color in today's art museums, from Plato's speculation that the eye sends out rays to Ramon y Cajal's discovery that vision actually works in the opposite way, from Tycho Brahe's elegant antetelescope measurements of planet positions to the Hubble telescope's exquisite sensitivity to light from billions of light years away. What are the biological and neurological processes of perceiving visible light? How does a person typically scan a scene? Do you see red or blue the same way I do? What are our physiological reactions and emotional responses to light? Perkowitz explores these and many other fascinating questions, drawing together the experiences, achievements, and perspectives of a diverse cast of characters, including Galileo, Einstein, Newton, Van Gogh, and Edison. Empire of Light is written so that lay readers will readily grasp the scientific principles and science professionals will readily appreciate the human experience. It will impart new wonder to the daily experience of light in our world. Sidney Perkowitz is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory University. His work has appeared in national publications such as The Sciences, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The American Prospect, and Technology Review.
