Ascolta e leggi

Entra in un mondo di storie

  • Ascolta e leggi quanto vuoi
  • Oltre 400.000 titoli
  • Prova gratis per 14 giorni, poi 9.99€/mese
  • Disdici quando vuoi
  • Ascolta titoli esclusivi e Storytel Original
Prova gratis
Device Banner Block 894x1036
Cover for Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything

Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything

Corsi di lingua
Inglese
Formato
Categoria

Non-fiction

With the recent landing of the Mars rover Curiosity, it seems safe to assume that the idea of being curious is alive and well in modern science—that it's not merely encouraged but is seen as an essential component of the scientific mission. Yet there was a time when curiosity was condemned. Neither Pandora nor Eve could resist the dangerous allure of unanswered questions, and all knowledge wasn't equal—for millennia it was believed that there were some things we should not try to know. In the late sixteenth century this attitude began to change dramatically, and in Curiosity:How Science Became Interested in Everything, Philip Ball investigates how curiosity first became sanctioned—when it changed from a vice to a virtue and how it became permissible to ask any and every question about the world.

Looking closely at the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, Ball vividly brings to life the age when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton. In this entertaining and illuminating account of the rise of science as we know it, Ball tells of scientists both legendary and lesser known, from Copernicus and Kepler to Robert Boyle, as well as the inventions and technologies that were inspired by curiosity itself, such as the telescope and the microscope. The so-called Scientific Revolution is often told as a story of great geniuses illuminating the world with flashes of inspiration. But Curiosity reveals a more complex story, in which the liberation—and subsequent taming—of curiosity was linked to magic, religion, literature, travel, trade, and empire. Ball also asks what has become of curiosity today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged for consumption, how well it is being sustained, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may continue to ask.

Though proverbial wisdom tell us that it was through curiosity that our innocence was lost, that has not deterred us. Instead, it has been completely the contrary: today we spend vast sums trying to reconstruct the first instants of creation in particle accelerators, out of a pure desire to know. Ball refuses to let us take this desire for granted, and this book is a perfect homage to such an inquisitive attitude.

© 2024 The University of Chicago Press (Ebook): 9780226045825

Data di uscita

Ebook: 31 maggio 2024

Potrebbero piacerti

Scegli il tuo piano

  • Più di 400.000 titoli

  • Kids Mode (accesso sicuro per bambini)

  • Scarica e ascolta offline

  • Disdici quando vuoi

Basic

Le tue prime storie, al prezzo più basso.

6.49 € /mese
  • 1 account

  • 10 ore/mese

  • Disdici quando vuoi

Prova gratis
Il più popolare

Unlimited

Ascolto illimitato. Dove vuoi, quando vuoi.

9.99 € /mese
  • 1 account

  • Ascolto illimitato

  • Disdici quando vuoi

Prova gratis

Unlimited Annuale

12 mesi al prezzo di 9. Ascolto illimitato a un prezzo imbattibile.

89.99 € /anno
Risparmia il 25%
  • 1 account

  • Ascolto illimitato

  • Disdici quando vuoi

Prova gratis

Unlimited Family

Risparmia con più account. Ognuno con le proprie storie.

14.99 € /mese
  • 2 account

  • Ascolto illimitato

  • Disdici quando vuoi

Prova gratis