Science: general issues

The Math Book. ..More

Dimensionless Physical Quantities in Science and Engineering. ..More

Megacatastrophes!. ..More

Self Comes to Mind explores two questions that have haunted philosophers, neurologists, cognitive scientists and psychologists for centuries: how do brains construct minds, and how do minds become conscious? Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years studying and writing about how the brain operates, and his work has garnered acclaim for its singular melding of the scientific and the humanistic. In this revelatory work, he debunks the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separat. ..More

The Construction of the Heavens. ..More

Beyond The Survival of the Fittest: Why Cooperation, not Competition, is the Key to Life If life is about survival of the fittest, then why would we risk our own life to jump into a river to save a stranger? Some people argue that issues such as charity, fairness, forgiveness and cooperation are evolutionary loose ends, side issues that are of little consequence. But as Harvard's celebrated evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak explains in this groundbreaking and controversial book, cooperation is. ..More

This is a book about universes. It tells a story that revolves around a single extraordinary fact: that Albert Einstein's famous theory of relativity describes a series of entire universes. Not many solutions to Einstein's tantalising universe equations have ever been found, but those that have are all remarkable. Some describe universes that expand in size, while others contract. Some rotate like a top, while others are chaotically unpredictable. Some are perfectly smooth, while others are lump. ..More

More than 31 million people in the UK are gamers. The average young person in the UK will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. The future will belong to those who can understand, design and play games. World-renowned game designer Jane McGonigal knows that videogames are fulfilling genuine human needs, and in "Reality is Broken" she shows how game designers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy, and utilized these discoveries to astonishing effect in virtual environmen. ..More

Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience. ..More

The History of Mathematics. ..More

Can we make a human being? The question has been asked for many centuries, and has produced recipes ranging from the clay golem of Jewish legend to the mass-produced test-tube babies in Brave New World. Unnatural delves beneath the surface of the cultural history of 'anthropoeia' - the artificial creation of people - to explore what it tells us about our views on life, humanity, creativity and technology, and the soul. Philip Ball traces the threads that link the legendary inventor Daedalus, Goe. ..More