We are constantly bombarded with breaking scientific news in the media, but we are almost never provided with enough information to assess the truth of these claims. Does drinking coffee really cause cancer? Does bisphenol-A in our tin can linings really cause reproductive damage? Good Science, Bad Science, Pseudoscience, and Just Plain Bunk teaches readers how to think like a scientist to question claims like these more critically.Peter A. Daempfle introduces readers to the basics...

“This Will Change Everything offers seemingly radical but actually feasible ideas with the potential to change the world.”—Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and SteelEditor John Brockman continues in the same vein as his popular compilations What Are You Optimistic About and What Have You Changed Your Mind About with This Will Change Everything. Brockman asks 150 intellectual superstars “what game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect t...

**'**Magisterial . . . you reach the end of this profound, revealing book rewarded. West shows how scientific method helps to peel back the hidden reality of our world' MATTHEW SYED, THE TIMESGeoffrey West's research centres on a quest to find unifying principles and patterns connecting everything, from cells and ecosystems to cities, social networks and businesses.Why do organisms and ecosystems scale with size in a remarkably...

An invitation and guide for leaders “to cast a courageous and imaginative vision, to lead resiliently, and to be present and steady in times of deep anxiety.”Ed Friedman’s genius was to see the individual in the family in the larger group, bringing the wisdom of his experience as a therapist and rabbi to the field of organizational leadership.A timeless bestseller, A Failure of Nerve still astonishes in this new edition with its relevance and conti...

The scientific evidence behind why maintaining a lifestyle more like that of our ancestors will restore our health and well-being.In Go Wild, Harvard Medical School Professor John Ratey, MD, and journalist Richard Manning reveal that although civilization has rapidly evolved, our bodies have not kept pace. This mismatch affects every area of our lives, from our general physical health to our emotional wellbeing. Investigating the power of living according ...

Recent advances in the study of complexity have given scientists profound new insights into how natural innovation occurs and how its power can be exploited. Now two pioneers in the field, Robert Axelrod and Michael D. Cohen, provide leaders in business and government with a guide to complexity that will help them make effective decisions in a world of rapid change.Building on evolutionary biology, computer science, and social design, Axelrod and Cohen have constructed a unique fram...

R. C. Lewontin is a prominent scientist—a geneticist who teaches at Harvard—yet he believes that we have placed science on a pedestal, treating it as an objective body of knowledge that transcends all other ways of knowing and all other endeavours.Lewontin writes in this collection of essays, which began their life as CBC Radio's Massey Lectures Series for 1990: "Scientists do not begin life as scientists, after all, but as social beings immersed in a family, a state, a productive ...

Ever wondered how vaccines work, why whales strand themselves or if luck exists? The Explainer: From Déjà Vu to Why the Sky Is Blue, and Other Conundrums is a collection of around 100 of the best articles published in ‘The Explainer’ and ‘Monday’s Medical Myths’ sections of The Conversation. The book answers questions on everyone's mind about a diverse range of topics, abstract concepts, and popular and hard core science. Sections include: animals and agriculture, body, climate and energy, me...

We have always struggled, as human beings. But our struggle today is exacerbated by a gap between the increasingly complicated world we have created and the default ways we think about it. Twenty-first-century challenges are qualitatively different from the ones that generations of our ancestors faced, yet our thinking has not evolved to keep pace.We need to catch up. To make smarter decisions -- as governments, organizations, families and individuals -- we need more sophisticated ...

Brilliant but overlooked ideas you must know, as revealed by today’s most innovative mindsWhat scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known? That is the question John Brockman, publisher of the acclaimed science salon Edge.org (“The world’s smartest website”—The Guardian), presented to 205 of the world’s most influential thinkers from across the intellectual spectrum—award-winning physicists, economists, psychologists, philosophers, novelists, artists, and more. From th...

The general public has a glorified view of the pursuit of scientific research. However, the idealized perception of science as a rule-based, methodical system for accumulating facts could not be further from the truth. Modern science involves the idiosyncratic, often bumbling search for understanding in uncharted territories, full of wrong turns, false findings, and the occasional remarkable success. In his sequel to Ignorance (Oxford University Press, 2012), Stuart Firestein show...

The first authoritative and comprehensive survey of the origins and current state of transhumanist thinkingThe rapid pace of emerging technologies is playing an increasingly important role in overcoming fundamental human limitations. Featuring core writings by seminal thinkers in the speculative possibilities of the posthuman condition, essays address key philosophical arguments for and against human enhancement, explore the inevitability of life extension, and con...