[PDF] Borderlands Of Science eBook

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher :
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 16,47 MB
Release : 2002
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 0195157982

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The editor-in-chief of "Skeptic" magazine and author of the bestselling "Why People Believe Weird Things" takes readers to the place where real science (such as the big bang theory), borderland science (superstring theory), and just plain nonsense (Big Foot) collide with one another. 20 halftones. 36 line illustrations.

Author : Kendrick Frazier
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 484 pages
File Size : 50,33 MB
Release : 2023-10-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 1633889637

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Headlines and television news reports feature accounts of reincarnation, the predictions of astrologers, and psychic "miracles." Citizens report UFO sightings. Police departments call on psychics to provide clues in baffling crimes. From every available information source, the public is bombarded with unsubstantiated claims of paranormal phenomena. How much of the evidence is reliable? What is the truth behind these claims? Paranormal Borderlands of Science is an exciting, well-informed examination of the most publicized and exotic claims of astrology, ESP, psychokinesis, precognition, UFOs, biorhythms, and other phenomena. Written by respected psychologists, astronomers and other scientists, philosophers, investigative journalists, and magicians, the 47 articles in this superb collection present a skeptical treatment of pseudoscientific claims - an aspect often sorely neglected in sensationalized media reports. This book is an effort to help readers sort fact from fiction and sense from nonsense among the astonishing variety of assertions labeled "paranormal." Never before published in book form, the essays in this anthology originally appeared in the Skeptical Inquirer, a leading magazine devoted to the critical investigation of pseudoscience from a scientific viewpoint. Among the contributors are: Isaac Asimov (distinguished science fiction author), Martin Gardner (Scientific American columnist), James Randi (The Amazing Randi), Philip Klass (noted UFO skeptic), Scot Morris (Omni), and James Oberg (NASA). An essential contribution to skeptical literature, this book will be of lasting value to all those wishing to balance the case for paranormal claims by reading the dissenting critics.

Author : Cameron B. Strang
Publisher : UNC Press Books
Page : 376 pages
File Size : 44,6 MB
Release : 2018-06-13
Category : History
ISBN : 1469640481

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Cameron Strang takes American scientific thought and discoveries away from the learned societies, museums, and teaching halls of the Northeast and puts the production of knowledge about the natural world in the context of competing empires and an expanding republic in the Gulf South. People often dismissed by starched northeasterners as nonintellectuals--Indian sages, African slaves, Spanish officials, Irishmen on the make, clearers of land and drivers of men--were also scientific observers, gatherers, organizers, and reporters. Skulls and stems, birds and bugs, rocks and maps, tall tales and fertile hypotheses came from them. They collected, described, and sent the objects that scientists gazed on and interpreted in polite Philadelphia. They made knowledge. Frontiers of Science offers a new framework for approaching American intellectual history, one that transcends political and cultural boundaries and reveals persistence across the colonial and national eras. The pursuit of knowledge in the United States did not cohere around democratic politics or the influence of liberty. It was, as in other empires, divided by multiple loyalties and identities, organized through contested hierarchies of ethnicity and place, and reliant on violence. By discovering the lost intellectual history of one region, Strang shows us how to recover a continent for science.

Author : Denise M. Glover
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 15,49 MB
Release : 2012-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 0295804513

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The scientists and explorers profiled in this engaging study of pioneering Euro-American exploration of late imperial and Republican China range from botanists to ethnographers to missionaries. Although a diverse lot, all believed in objective, progressive, and universally valid science; a close association between scientific and humanistic knowledge; a lack of conflict between science and faith; and the union of the natural world and the world of "nature people." Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands examines their cultural and personal assumptions while emphasizing their remarkable lives, and considers their contributions to a body of knowledge that has important contemporary significance. Essays are devoted to D. C. Graham, Joseph Rock, Reginald Farrer and George Forrest, Ernest Henry Wilson, Paul Vial, Johan Gunnar Andersson and Ding Wenjiang, and Friedrich Weiss and Hedwig Weiss-Sonnenburg. Richly illustrated with historic photographs, this collection reveals the extraordinary lives and times of these remarkable people.

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Holt Paperbacks
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 39,90 MB
Release : 2002-09-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 1429996765

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"This sparkling book romps over the range of science and anti-science." --Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Revised and Expanded Edition. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.

Author : Michelle Madsen Camacho
Publisher : Lexington Books
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 15,77 MB
Release : 2013-03-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0739175599

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This innovative work critically studies the contemporary problems of one segment of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. The lack of a diverse U.S.-based pool of talent entering the field of engineering education has been termed a crisis by academic and political leaders. Engineering remains one of the most sex segregated academic arenas; the intersection of gendered and racialized exclusion results in very few Latina engineers. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship in gender and Latino/a studies, the book provides an analytically incisive view of the experiences of Latina engineers. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation through a Gender in Science and Engineering grant, the authors bridge interdisciplinary perspectives to illuminate the nuanced and multiple exclusionary forces that shape the culture of engineering. A large, multi-institution, longitudinal dataset permits disaggregation by race and gender. The authors rely on primary and secondary sources and incorporate an integrated mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative data. Together, this analysis of the voices of Latina engineering majors breaks new ground in the literature on STEM education and provides an exemplar for future research on subpopulations in these fields. This book is aimed at researchers who study underrepresented groups in engineering and are interested in broadening participation and ameliorating problems of exclusion. It will be attractive to scholars in the fields of multicultural and higher education, sociology, cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and feminist technology studies, and all researchers interested in the intersections of STEM, race, and gender. This resource will be useful for policy-makers and educational leaders looking to revitalize and re-envision the culture within engineering.

Author : Michael Shermer
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 40,99 MB
Release : 2010-04-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 1429900881

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Bestselling author Michael Shermer delves into the unknown, from heretical ideas about the boundaries of the universe to Star Trek's lessons about chance and time A scientist pretends to be a psychic for a day-and fools everyone. An athlete discovers that good-luck rituals and getting into "the zone" may, or may not, improve his performance. A historian decides to analyze the data to see who was truly responsible for the Bounty mutiny. A son explores the possiblities of alternative and experimental medicine for his cancer-ravaged mother. And a skeptic realizes that it is time to turn the skeptical lens onto science itself. In each of the fourteen essays in Science Friction, psychologist and science historian Michael Shermer explores the very personal barriers and biases that plague and propel science, especially when scientists push against the unknown. What do we know and what do we not know? How does science respond to controversy, attack, and uncertainty? When does theory become accepted fact? As always, Shermer delivers a thought-provoking, fascinating, and entertaining view of life in the scientific age.