Science and Nature > Science Writing

Every once in a while, an idea comes along that makes the entire world sit up and take notice. From the earliest understandings of our place in the solar system, via Darwinism, DNA, neutrons and quarks, right up to the theories that are pushing the boundaries of our knowledge today, we are forever propelled forward by our most gifted scientific minds. In this fascinating book, former "BBC Focus" magazine editor Jheni Osman explores 100 of the most forward thinking, far-reaching and downright inspired ideas and inventions in history... read more

We human beings have trouble with infinity - yet infinity is a surprisingly human subject. This title takes us on a tour of that borderland between the extremely large and the ultimate that takes us from Archimedes, counting the grains of sand that would fill the universe, to the theories on the physical reality of the infinite.

In the ten years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. That edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the intervening years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions in the fir... read more

After chemists crystallised a new chemical for the first time, it became easier and easier to crystallise in laboratories all over the world. After rats at Harvard first escaped from a new kind of water maze, successive generations learned quicker and quicker. Then rats in Melbourne, Australia learned yet faster. Rats with no trained ancestors shared in this improvement. Rupert Sheldrake sees these processes as examples of morphic resonance. Past forms and activities of organisms, he argues, influence organisms in the present throu... read more

The world of maths can seem mind-boggling, irrelevant and, let's face it, boring. This groundbreaking book reclaims maths from the geeks. Mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives: from the surprising geometry of the 50p piece to how probability can help you win in any casino. In search of weird and wonderful mathematical phenomena, Alex Bellos travels across the globe and meets the world's fastest mental calculators in Germany and a startlingly numerate chimpanzee in Japan. Packed with fascinating, eye-opening... read more

Most people know Greg Graffin as the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion, but few know that he also received a Ph.D. from Cornell University and teaches evolution at the University of California at Los Angeles. In "Anarchy Evolution", Graffin argues that art and science have a deep connection. As an adolescent growing up when drugs, sex, and trouble could be had on any given night, Graffin discovered that the study of evolution provided a framework through which he could make sense of the world. In this provocative and person... read more

In the summer of 1961, a group of men and women volunteered for a memory experiment to be conducted by young, dynamic psychologist Stanley Milgram. None could have imagined that, once seated in the lab, they would be placed in front of a box known as a shock machine and asked to administer a series of electric shocks to a man they'd just met. And no one could have foreseen how the repercussions of their actions, made under pressure and duress, would reverberate throughout their lives. For what the volunteers did not know was that t... read more

Big Ideas in Brief provides an accessible and easily understood tour of 200 key concepts that really matter. The ideas covered come from a wide range of subjects - Philosophy, Religion, Science, Politics, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and the Arts. A series of short and lively articles accompanied by 100 illustrations, introduce a host of diverse topics, from Existentialism to Expressionism, from Consciousness to Constitutionalism, from Feminism to Free Trade, from Class to Cognitive Theory, from Reincarnation to R... read more

'Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin' On topics ranging from intelligent design and climate change to the politics of gender and race, the evolutionary writings of Charles Darwin occupy a pivotal position in contemporary public debate. This volume brings together the key chapters of his most important and accessible books, including the Journal of Researches on the Beagle voyage (1845), the Origin of Species (1871), and the Descent of Man, along with the full text of his delightful autobiogr... read more

God Created The Integers is Stephen Hawking's personal choice of the greatest mathematical works in history. He allows the reader to peer into the mind of genius by providing us with excerpts from original mathematical proofs and results. He also helps us understand the progression of mathematical thought, and the very foundations of our present day technologies.The book includes landmark discoveries spanning 2500 years and representing the work of mathematicians such as Euclid, Georg Cantor, Kurt Godel, Augustin Cauchy, Bernard Ri... read more

DNA technology has already changed our health care, the food we eat, and our criminal justice system. This title reveals information about the experiment's participants and scientists; how the experiment was, is, and can be conducted; and, the profound implications of having an unfiltered view of our hardwired selves for us and for our children.

A lively and eclectic sequence of more than 150 concise and intellectually challenging essays in which the world's leading thinkers reflect on how the internet has changed their modes of thought.
In How is the Internet Changing the Way you Think?, 154 of the world's leading intellectuals - scientists, artists and creative thinkers - explore exactly what it means to think in the new age of the Internet: from Nicholas Carr's reflections on what the Internet is doing to our brains, to Richard Dawkins's sanguine assessment of it... read more

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A delightful and informative history of modern music. Harmony is created by bringing sounds together. In music lessons, we learn how to do this in a formal way: we learn about chords and keys, and we are given rules for using them. This is the textbook way; this is legal harmony. Everything else including the sounds that constantly surround us, those of ticking clocks, dogs, traffic, birdsong and aeroplanes is illegal harmony. Illegal Harmonies charts the course of music over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, linking it to ... read more

Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911) was an internationally renowned botanist, a close friend and early supporter of Charles Darwin, and one of the first - and most successful - British men of science to become a full-time professional. This title uses one individual's career to illustrate the changing world of science in the Victorian era.

Explores what emerging computer technologies and their radical applications mean for the future of human life and society. This title examines the philosophical questions of the self and reality that arise through the digital experience. It shows the many practical applications of virtual reality, from education and medicine to sex and warfare.

In the style of Nudge or The Spirit Level - a groundbreaking book that will change the way you look at the world.

In 2004, a group of men built the Philip K Dick Android. Then, en route to a presentation at Google, the android head was left on a plane. It has never been found. Meet the Philip K Dick Android. It wears the famous science-fiction author's clothes, thinks his thoughts and speaks his mind. All the while sitting in a simulacrum of the author's living room. In Lost in Transit, David F Dufty takes us into the world of artificial intelligence, robots, sci-fi addicts and kill switches to show us how the android was made, and how ... read more

Both simple and accessible, Maths in Minutes is a visually led introduction to 200 key mathematical ideas. Each concept is quick and easy to remember, described by means of an easy-to-understand picture and a maximum 200-word explanation. Concepts span all of the key areas of mathematics, including Fundamentals of Mathematics, Sets and Numbers, Geometry, Equations, Limits, Functions and Calculus, Vectors and Algebra, Complex Numbers, Combinatorics, Number Theory, Metrics and Measures and Topology. Incredibly quick - clear artworks ... read more

A gripping, triumphant memoir about the power of addiction and its effect on the brain. Marc Lewis knows addiction: that desperate ambition to get high accompanied him around the world for many years. In the 1960s, Lewis was a teenager in boarding school, experimenting with cough syrup and alcohol to assuage his depression. When he moved to Berkeley, California, the pulsing heart of the counter-cultural movement, he began using LSD and heroin. His spiralling journey of addiction eventually led him to Asia, where he sniffed nitr... read more