Daniel J. Kevles is een Amerikaanse wetenschapshistoricus die zich richt op de geschiedenis van de Amerikaanse wetenschap en de ingewikkelde verbanden ervan met ethiek en maatschappij. Hij staat bekend om zijn vermogen om grote hoeveelheden historische informatie te synthetiseren tot leesbare en samenhangende verhalen. Zijn werk duikt in thema's als de maatschappelijke impact van wetenschappelijke ontdekkingen, milieubewegingen en ethische dilemma's in de wetenschap, waaronder eugenetica en wetenschappelijke integriteit. De geschriften van Kevles worden geprezen om hun zorgvuldige wetenschappelijke studie en gedetailleerde verslaglegging.
In these essays, Jonathan Miller, Oliver Sacks and Daniel Kevles show how and why some discoveries and insights in science emerge with great promise, only to be discarded or forgotten, then re-emerge years later as important. Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould suggest deep and largely unacknowledged distortions in the way scientists and popularizers alike conceive the sturcture of the world and its natural history. Illustrations.
Dieses Buch gilt als eines der besten Werke über das Human-Genome-Projekt. Es behandelt verschiedene theoretische, wissenschaftliche, soziale, rechtliche und ethische Aspekte in einer ausgewogenen Darstellung von klaren Artikeln, die von mehreren führenden Wissenschaftlern verfasst wurden. Es ist eine enorme wissenschaftliche Kostprobe, die den aufgeklärten Leser zu einem Thema anspricht, das ohne Zweifel das Leben eines jeden von uns berührt. Es bietet einen gelungenen Einblick in die Zukunft der Lebenswissenschaften und der Medizin im 21. Jahrhundert.
Like an elegant picture album of the history of science, The Scientific from Cale to Computer charts the efforts of professionals and amateurs to represent their obsenations of natural phenomena through illustrations. It is a celebration of the insatiable curiosity and the desire to explain which are the t-,vin inspirations of scientific discovery. The images author Harry Robin has assembled here range from the skv charts of the ancient Siberian Chukchis to NASA's most sophisticated computer imagen,. Included are illustrative works from the bestknown names in science-Einstein, Newton, Gallileo, da Vinci, Ben Franklin, Darwin, Edison, Watson and Crick-as well as ingenius creations from obscure sources. Throughout, insightful commentary describes each image in its context.
In the 19th century, when the idea of eugenics (selective breeding to generate superior members of a species) was invited off the farm and into the parlor, it was a far-fetched notion with little possibility of success driven by clearly racist motivations. But at the end of the 20th century, biotechnological techniques and other agendas are making forms of human eugenics plausible. Rich in anecdote, narrative, and fact. An important book.