Scrape wikipedia-science: 276 new, 4 updated, 296 total (kb-cron)

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)-0.md

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+title: "Consilience (book)"
+chunk: 1/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:38.789540+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is a 1998 book by the biologist E. O. Wilson, in which the author discusses methods that have been used to unite the sciences and might in the future unite them with the humanities.
+Wilson uses the term consilience to describe the synthesis of knowledge from different specialized fields of human endeavor.
+
+== Definition of consilience ==
+This book defines consilience as "Literally a 'jumping together' of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation." The word is borrowed from Whewell's phrase the consilience of inductions in his book Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. Whewell posited that this consilience of inductions occurs when an induction obtained from one class of facts coincides with an induction obtained from a different class. In this way a consilience is a test of the truth of a theory.
+
+== Examples of consilience discussed by Wilson ==
+
+=== Chapter 1 The Ionian enchantment ===
+The New Synthesis of Darwin's theory of evolution with genetics is an example of unification.
+The conviction that the world has a unified order and can be explained by natural laws, was dubbed by Gerald Holton the "Ionian Enchantment".
+Thales of Miletus proposed that water is the unifying basis for all material things. This theory that water is fundamental is often cited as the first materialistic theory of a unified view of nature.
+Unification of forces in the Grand Unified Theory of modern physics.
+Albert Einstein's work provides several examples of unification within the field of physics, for example, unification of Brownian motion with atomic theory.
+Science and religion have a unity of purpose: both want to explain the universe and understand our role in the universe.
+
+=== Chapter 2 The great branches of learning ===
+Environmental protection requires the combining of knowledge from government regulators such as the United States Environmental Protection Agency, ethics, social science, biology, and physical sciences like chemistry.
+There is a unity of purpose for philosophy and science. Philosophers and scientists can work together at the borders between biology, social science and the humanities.
+Liberal arts education can be revitalized by the recognition of the unity of knowledge in higher education.
+Government policy requires unified knowledge from across specialized disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.
+
+=== Chapter 3 The Enlightenment ===
+The Enlightenment is discussed in the context of scientific knowledge applied to human rights and social progress.
+Marquis de Condorcet's systematic application of mathematics in the social sciences.
+Francis Bacon was an early advocate of data collection and its analysis as the basis of sound knowledge (Baconian method) in fields that include social science and the humanities.
+René Descartes believed that the universe is rational and united and that interconnected truths run from physics to biology to moral reasoning. Descartes unified geometry and algebra (see: Cartesian coordinate system).
+Isaac Newton unified the Galilei's laws of falling bodies with the laws of Copernicus' planetary motion (see: law of universal gravitation).
+Social science was pioneered by Adolphe Quetelet and Auguste Comte who developed the idea of studying behavior with scientific methods.
+Unity of purpose for Postmodernism and Science. Wilson argues that humanity is driven forward by the tension between those who upon viewing order create disorder and those who upon viewing disorder create order.
+
+=== Chapter 4 The natural sciences ===
+The Greek Atomists such as Leucippus and Democritus are credited with the reductionistic idea that matter has fundamental components. Scientific investigation of this idea has resulted in unification across the natural sciences. An example is that the molecular structure of DNA accounts for genetic storage in living cells.
+Experimental Epistemology. Wilson provides a modern attempt to unify neuroscience and epistemology. He proposes it as a method for clarifying the Evolutionary basis of mismatches between physical reality and our mental models of reality.
+Positivism is a method for comparing and unifying knowledge from different disciplines. Priority is given to facts which are generated by experiment and objective observation rather than subjective speculations.
+Pragmatism is a method for comparing and unifying knowledge from different disciplines. Priority is given to methods and techniques that can be demonstrated to work and have pragmatic value.
+
+=== Chapter 5 Ariadne's thread ===
+Reduction versus synthesis. Many examples are given comparing consilience by reduction (dissection of a phenomenon into its components) and consilience by synthesis (predicting higher-order phenomena from more basic physical principles). One specific example is Wilson's own work on the chemical signals that regulate insect social behavior.
+An example of consilience by reduction is Wilson's attempt to account for the prevalence of serpent symbols in human cultures. He incorporates the activation-synthesis model of dreaming.
+Consilience between biology disciplines. Wilson discusses the successes (cells explained in terms of their chemical components, embryo development in terms of interactions between the cells of an embryo) but also points to the remaining problem of dealing with complex systems as in neuroscience and ecology.
+Statistical mechanics. A classical example in which the behavior of volumes of gas is explained in terms of the molecules of the gas (kinetic theory).
+Quantum chemistry, the reduction of chemical properties by quantum mechanical calculations.
+
+=== Chapter 6 The mind ===
+Explaining consciousness and emotion in terms of brain activity. Wilson describes the neurobiological approach to accounting for consciousness and emotion in terms of brain physiology and how this effort is guided by collaboration between biologists, psychologists and philosophers.
+Neurobiology of aesthetics. Wilson proposes that it will be possible to construct a neurobiological understanding of subjective experiences that are shared and explored by art. Common neural patterns of activity will be found to correspond to fundamental aesthetic experiences.
+Artificial emotion. Wilson proposes that human-like artificial intelligence will require the engineering of a computational apparatus for processing an array of rich sensory inputs and the capacity to learn from those inputs in the way that children can learn. Requires consilience between biology, psychology and computer science.

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+title: "Consilience (book)"
+chunk: 2/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience_(book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:38.789540+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Chapter 7 From genes to culture ===
+The relationship between genes and culture. Wilson posits that the basic element of culture is the meme. When a meme exists in a brain it has the form of a neuronal network that allows the meme to function within semantic memory. The link from genes to culture is that our genes shape our brains (in cooperation with the environment) and our brains allow us to work with memes as the basic units of culture.
+
+=== Chapter 8 - 12 ===
+The remaining chapters are titled Chapter 8 The fitness of human nature, Chapter 9 The social sciences, Chapter 10 The arts and their interpretation, Chapter 11 Ethics and religion, Chapter 12 To what end?
+
+== See also ==
+Wendell Berry wrote a comprehensive critique of Consilience in his essay Life is a Miracle in his book with the same title.
+Philosophy of science
+The Two Cultures by C. P. Snow
+The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox by Stephen Jay Gould
+
+== External links ==
+Vogel Carey, Toni (2013). "Consilience. Toni Vogel Carey on discovering interconnections". philosophynow.org. Philosophy now. A magazine of ideas, issue 95. Retrieved 25 January 2022. Consilience' is an important term in philosophy of science, one with a distinguished history; yet you may never have heard of it. The late Stephen Jay Gould bemoaned the fact that this "lovely and deserving term… never caught on in the 'natural selection' of English vocabulary"...
+
+== References ==
+
+=== Reviews ===
+Eldredge, Niles and Stephen Jay Gould, "Biology Rules. Review of E.0. Wilson's Consilience, with a supplemented introduction by Richard Morris.". Archive.org 2007 for Stephen Jay Gould Archive.
+Fodor, Jerry (29 October 1998). "Look!". London Review of Books. 20 (21).
+Gillispie, Charles C. (1998). "E. O. Wilson's Consilience: A Noble, Unifying Vision, Grandly Expressed". American Scientist. 86 (3): 280–283. JSTOR 27857028.
+Henriques, Gregg R. (December 2008). "Special Section: The Problem of Psychology and the Integration of Human Knowledge: Contrasting Wilson's Consilience with the Tree of Knowledge System". Theory & Psychology. 18 (6): 731–755. doi:10.1177/0959354308097255. S2CID 144152672.
+Jamieson, Dale (22 September 1998). "Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge". Issues in Science and Technology. 15 (1): 90–92. Gale A53435955. Archived from the original on 17 December 2005.
+McGuire, Ron (15 April 1998). "Consilience". CNN - Books: Review.
+Orr, H. Allen (1998). "The Big Picture". Boston Review. Archived from the original on 1 October 2006.

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Jackpot-0.md

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+---
+title: "Cosmic Jackpot"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Jackpot"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:40.073532+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Cosmic Jackpot, also published under the title The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life?, is a 2007 non-fiction book by physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, describing the idea of a fine-tuned universe.
+
+
+== The Enigma ==
+
+In Cosmic Jackpot, Davies argues that certain universal fundamental physical constants are precisely adjusted to make life in the Universe possible: that we have, in a sense, won a "cosmic jackpot," and that conditions are "just right" for life, as in The Story of the Three Bears. As Davies writes elsewhere, "There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is in several respects 'fine-tuned' for life."
+After explaining this enigma, Davies discusses possible solutions, such as the anthropic principle, the idea of a multiverse which contains many different universes (including our "just right" one), and the idea of intelligent design.
+
+
+== The Multiverse ==
+
+Davies also discusses a number of other ideas connected with the "multiverse." Much like a pencil falling to the ground from its tip in a trade off of symmetry for stability, Davies writes that the Big Bang could have established a complex but stable universe (or multiverse) from symmetry breaking as the heat radiation in "space" lowered abruptly past the Curie Point.
+
+
+== See also ==
+The Mind of God
+God and the New Physics
+About Time
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Interview with Paul Davies about his book Cosmic Jackpot (starts at 40 min)
+Op-Ed Paul Davies New York Times Opinion-Editorial
+Paul Davies interview (Salon.com)
+"The Goldilocks Enigma: 3 extracts". Newsnight. BBC News. October 9, 2006. Retrieved August 20, 2019.

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_(Humboldt_book)-0.md

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+title: "Cosmos (Humboldt book)"
+chunk: 1/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_(Humboldt_book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:41.289497+00:00"
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+---
+
+Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe (in German Kosmos – Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung) is an influential treatise on science and nature written by the German scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt. It began as a lecture series delivered by Humboldt at the University of Berlin, and was published in five volumes between 1845 and 1862 (the fifth was posthumous and completed based on Humboldt's notes). In the first volume, Humboldt paints a general "portrait of nature", describing the physical nature of outer space and the Earth. In the second volume he describes the history of science. 
+Widely read by academics and laymen, Cosmos applies the ancient Greek view of the orderliness of the cosmos (the harmony of the universe) to the Earth, suggesting that universal laws apply as well to the apparent chaos of the terrestrial world and that contemplation of nature can yield an awareness of its wholeness and coherence. Humboldt embraced the subjectivity of the observer and "thus ran exactly counter to the developing ideology of science, the objectivity which sought to purify science by removing subjectivity altogether".
+Cosmos was influenced by Humboldt's travels and studies, but mainly by his journey throughout the Americas. As he wrote, “it was the discovery of America that planted the seed of the Cosmos.” Due to all of his experience in the field, Humboldt was preeminently qualified for the task to represent the universe in a single work. He had extensive knowledge of many fields of learning, varied experiences as a traveler, and the resources of the scientific and literary world at his disposal.
+Cosmos was highly popular when it was released, with the first volume selling out in two months, and the work translated into most European languages. Humboldt wrote in his journal further sketches of volumes of Cosmos titled as Cosmos 1 through 9. These volumes were left with only their draft titles and half-written till Humboldt's death in 1859. Although the natural sciences have diverged from the romantic perspective Humboldt presented in Cosmos, the work is still considered a substantial scientific and literary achievement, having influenced subsequent scientific progress and imparted a unifying perspective to the studies of science, nature and mankind.
+
+== Background and influences ==
+Since the early years of the nineteenth century, Humboldt had been a world-famous figure, second in renown only to Napoleon. As the son of an aristocratic family in Prussia, he received the best education available at the time in Europe, studying under famous thinkers at the universities of Frankfurt and Göttingen. By the time he wrote Cosmos, Humboldt was an esteemed explorer, cosmographer, biologist, diplomat, engineer, and citizen of the world. While considered a geographer, he is accredited with contributing to most of the sciences of the natural world environment found today.
+
+=== Humboldt in the Americas ===
+Probably more than any other factor, Humboldt's career was shaped by his travels in South and Central America in the five years from 1799 to 1804. Humboldt said that his Cosmos was born on the slopes of the Andes. Beginning in Venezuela, he explored the Orinoco and upper Amazon valleys, climbed the volcanic mountain Chimborazo in Ecuador — then believed to be the world's highest mountain — investigated changing vegetation from the tropical jungles to the top of the Andes, collected thousands of plant specimens, and accumulated a vast collection of animals, insects, and geological fragments. From the notes he gathered on this journey, Humboldt was able to produce at least thirty volumes based on his observations. His studies related to many scientific fields, including botany, zoology, geology, and geography, as well as narratives of popular travel and discussions of political, economic, and social conditions.
+
+=== Humboldt in Asia ===
+Twenty-five years after his exploration of the Americas, at the age of sixty, Humboldt undertook an extended tour, subsidized by the Tsar of Russia, into the interior of Asia. Between May and November 1829, Humboldt and his two subordinates, C. G. Ehrenberg and Gustav Rose, traveled across the vast expanse of the Russian Empire. Upon his return, Humboldt left the publication of the scientific results to Ehrenberg and Rose, while his own work — a three-volume descriptive geography entitled Asie Centrale — did not appear until many years later. This work was very modest in comparison to Humboldt's South American publications. Asie Centrale focused on the facts and figures of Central Asian geography, along with data to complete his isothermal world map. It was during his South American and Asian explorations that Humboldt made the observations crucial to forming his physical description of the universe in Cosmos.
+
+=== Berlin lectures ===
+In 1827, having spent himself into poverty publishing his scientific works, his king, Friedrich Wilhelm III, reminded Humboldt of his debt and recalled him to Berlin. When he arrived in Berlin, Humboldt announced that he would give a course of lectures on physical geography. From November 1827 to April 1828, he delivered a series of sixty-one lectures at the University of Berlin. The lectures were so well-attended that Humboldt soon announced a second series, which was held in a music hall before an audience of thousands, free to all comers. Beginning in 1828, Humboldt finally gave expression to his concept in his Berlin lectures, and from then on he labored to produce his physical description of the universe in book form. Collaborators pledged to his assistance included the greatest scientists of his generation, including leaders in chemistry, astronomy, anatomy, mathematics, mineralogy, botany, and other areas of study.

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+title: "Cosmos (Humboldt book)"
+chunk: 2/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_(Humboldt_book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:41.289497+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Publication ==
+In 1828 after the Berlin lectures, Humboldt began formulating his vision in writing. His factual text, heavily loaded with footnotes and references, was sent in proof sheets to all the various specialists for comments and corrections before publication. In this way, he aimed to ensure that what he wrote was both accurate and up-to-date. He continually looked to his friend and literary advisor Varnhagen von Ense for advice in the matter of his style of writing. In total Cosmos took twenty-five years to write.
+
+ Humboldt felt as if publishing Cosmos was a race against death. The first volume was published in 1845 when he was seventy-six, the second when he was seventy-eight, the third when he was eighty-one, and the fourth when he was eighty-nine. The fifth volume, however, was only half-written when Humboldt died in 1859 and had to be completed from his notes and provided with an index over a thousand pages long.
+
+== Content ==
+Humboldt viewed the world as what the ancient Greeks called a kosmos – “a beautifully ordered and harmonious system” – and coined the modern word “cosmos” to use as the title of his final work. This title allowed him to encompass heaven and Earth together. He reintroduced Cosmos as “the assemblage of all things in heaven and earth, the universality of created things constituting the perceptible world.” His basic purpose is outlined in the introduction to the first volume:
+
+ "The most important aim of all physical science is this: to recognize unity in diversity, to comprehend all the single aspects as revealed by the discoveries of the last epochs, to judge single phenomena separately without surrendering their bulk, and to grasp Nature's essence under the cover of outer appearances." 
+Humboldt soon adds that Cosmos signifies both the “order of the world, and adornment of this universal order.” Thus, there are two aspects of the Cosmos, the “order” and the “adornment.” The first refers to the observed fact that the physical universe, independently of humans, demonstrates regularities and patterns that we can define as laws.  Adornment, however, is up to human interpretation. To Humboldt, Cosmos is both ordered and beautiful, through the human mind. He created a dynamic picture of the universe that would continually grow and change as human conceptions of nature and the depth of human feeling about nature enlarge and deepen.
+To represent this double-sided aspect of Cosmos, Humboldt divided his book into two parts, with the first painting a general “portrait of nature.” Humboldt first examines outer space – the Milky Way, cosmic nebulae, and planets – and then proceeds to the Earth and its physical geography; climate; volcanoes; relationships among plants, animals, and mankind; evolution; and the beauty of nature. In the second part, on the history of science, Humboldt aims to take the reader on an inner or “subjective” journey through the mind.  Humboldt is concerned with “the difference of feeling excited by the contemplation of nature at different epochs,” that is, the attitudes toward natural phenomena among poets, painters, and students of nature through the ages. The final three volumes are devoted to a more detailed account of scientific studies in astronomy, the Earth's physical properties, and geological formations. On the whole, the final work followed the scheme of the Berlin lectures reasonably faithfully.
+
+In the book Humboldt provided observations supporting the elevation crater theory of his friend Leopold von Buch. The theory in question intended to explain the origin of mountains and retained some popularity among geologists into the 1870s.
+
+== Response to Cosmos ==
+
+=== Reception ===
+Cosmos was considered to be both a scientific and literary achievement, immensely popular among nineteenth-century readers. Although the book bore the daunting subtitle of A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe, and had an index that ran to more than 1,000 pages, the first volume sold out in two months, the work was translated into all major languages and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Humboldt's publisher claimed: "The demand is epoch-making. Book parcels destined for London and St. Petersburg were torn out of our hands by agents who wanted their orders filled for the bookstores in Vienna and Hamburg."
+Cosmos largely enhanced Humboldt's reputation in his own lifetime, not only in his own country but throughout Europe and America. Its enthusiastic reception in England, where it came out in the Bohn Scientific Library in a translation by Elizabeth Leeves, particularly surprised him. The reviews were gushing in praise of both the author and his work.
+However, some felt he had not done justice to the contribution of modern British scientists and many were quick to point out that Humboldt, who had written so exhaustively about the creation of the universe, failed to ever mention God the Creator.
+
+=== Legacy ===

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+---
+title: "Cosmos (Humboldt book)"
+chunk: 3/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_(Humboldt_book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:41.289497+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Humboldt's Cosmos had a significant impact on scientific progress, as well as various scientists and authors throughout Europe and America. Humboldt's work gave a strong impetus to scientific exploration throughout the nineteenth century, inspiring many, including Charles Darwin, who brought some of Humboldt's earlier writings with him on his voyage as the naturalist aboard the Beagle in the 1830s. Darwin called Humboldt "the greatest scientific traveler who ever lived."
+Cosmos influenced several American writers and artists, including Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Edwin Church. Emerson read Humboldt's work throughout his life, and for him, Cosmos capped Humboldt's role as a scientific revolutionary. Edgar Allan Poe was also an admirer of Humboldt, even dedicating his last major work, Eureka: A Prose Poem, to Humboldt. Humboldt's attempt to unify the sciences was a major inspiration for Poe's work. Walt Whitman was said to have kept a copy of Cosmos on his desk for inspiration as he wrote Leaves of Grass, and Henry David Thoreau's Walden, like Eureka, was a response to Humboldt's ideas. Following the itinerary of Humboldt's expeditions to Colombia and Ecuador, Church found subject matter for some of his most monumental landscape paintings, including The Falls of the Tequendama near Bogota, New Granada.
+Although Cosmos and Humboldt's work in general had such a lasting impact on scientific thought, interest in Humboldt's life, work, and ideas over the past two centuries has dwindled in comparison to what it once was. However, starting in the 1990s and continuing to date, an upswing in scholarly interest in Humboldt has occurred. A new edition of Cosmos released in Germany in 2004 received avid reviews, renewing Humboldt's prominence in German society. German media outlets hailed the largely forgotten Humboldt as a new avatar figure for German national renewal and a model cosmopolitan ambassador of German culture and civilization for the twenty-first century.
+Humboldt is also credited with laying the foundations of physical geography, meteorology, and especially biogeography. His account in Cosmos of the propagation of seismic waves also became the basis of modern seismology. His most enduring contribution to scientific progress, however, is in his conception of the unity of science, nature, and mankind. Cosmos showed nature as a whole, not as unconnected parts.
+
+== Editions ==
+Kosmos (in German). Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Johann Georg Cotta. 1845.
+Kosmos (in German). Vol. 2. Stuttgart: Johann Georg Cotta. 1847.
+Kosmos (in German). Vol. 3 Stuttgart: Johann Georg Cotta. 1850.
+Kosmos (in German). Vol. 4. Stuttgart: Johann Georg Cotta. 1858.
+Kosmos (in German). Vol. 5. Stuttgart: Johann Georg Cotta. 1862.
+Kosmos: Entwurf einer physischen Weltbeschreibung, editiert und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Ottmar Ette und Oliver Lubrich, Berlin: Die Andere Bibliothek 2014, ISBN 978-3-8477-0014-2.
+
+== See also ==
+Cosmos – 1980 book by Carl SaganPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
+Geographia Generalis – Geography textbook by Bernhardus Varenius
+
+== References ==
+
+== External links ==
+COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1, Translated by E. C. Otté on Project Gutenberg
+ Cosmos A Sketch of a Physical Description of The Universe public domain audiobook at LibriVox (Introduction only)

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Protocols-0.md

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+---
+title: "Current Protocols"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_Protocols"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:42.483677+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Current Protocols is a series of laboratory manuals for life scientists. The first title, Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, was established in 1987 by the founding editors Frederick M. Ausubel, Roger Brent, Robert Kingston, David Moore, Jon Seidman, Kevin Struhl, and John A. Smith of the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Molecular Biology and the Harvard Medical School Departments of Genetics and Biological Chemistry, and Sarah Greene of Greene Publishing Associates The Current Protocols series entered into a partnership with Wiley-Interscience, John Wiley and Sons, was acquired by Wiley in 1995, and continued to introduce additional titles. Scientists contribute methods that are peer-reviewed by one of 18 editorial boards. The core content of each title is updated quarterly, and new material is added. In 2009, the Current Protocols website was launched, with online versions of all of the texts, research tools, video protocols, and a blog. Several Current Protocols titles are indexed in MEDLINE and searchable by PubMed: CP Molecular Biology, CP Immunology, CP Cell Biology, CP Protein Science, CP Microbiology.
+
+
+== Titles ==
+As of April 2023 the series comprised:
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_and_His_Great_Discovery-0.md

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+---
+title: "Darwin and His Great Discovery"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_and_His_Great_Discovery"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:43.700836+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Darwin and His Great Discovery is a science book for young adults by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, first published by Macmillan in 1972.
+
+
+== Content ==
+The work is an examination of naturalist Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution he proposed and marshaled evidence for in The Origin of Species. A brief account of his visit to the Galápagos Islands brings up the issue of human origins, leading into a discussion of early theories on the formation and age of the Earth and evolution. A biographical sketch of Darwin follows, covering his youth, his naturalistic studies on the voyage of the Beagle and subsequent life, focusing on his scientific researches and writings. The history of the theory of human evolution as currently understood is then presented, with sections on the work of Mendel, the development of the science of genetics, and the Scopes Trial. It includes a selected bibliography and index.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+Isadora Kunitz, writing in the Library Journal, found the work a "well-written account of Charles Darwin's life and work," with "[d]etails about his personal life add[ing] to the interest of the book." She judged it "an excellent supplementary title for collections."
+The Booklist called it "[w]ell written, readable, and informative" and suitable for readers of junior high and high school age.
+
+
+== Relation to other works ==
+The Scopes Trial was the subject of a comprehensive study previously written by L. Sprague de Camp, published as The Great Monkey Trial in 1968.
+
+
+== Notes ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butchering_Art-0.md

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+---
+title: "The Butchering Art"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butchering_Art"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:34.228901+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine is a 2017 historical nonfiction book by Lindsey Fitzharris that discusses the evolution of Victorian-era medicine between the 1840s and 1870s, along with how surgeon Joseph Lister revolutionized the practice of surgery to reduce the extremely high death rates of the time period. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 17, 2017, the book includes graphic descriptions of operating theaters and the unclean conditions of hospitals and other facilities at the time. The book was given the 2018 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award and was shortlisted for both the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize and the 2018 Wolfson History Prize.
+
+
+== Content ==
+The book is split into a prologue, eleven chapters, and an epilogue. The prologue discusses a general overview of the time period as an "age of agony" that was nearing its end thanks to the emergence of Joseph Lister. Each subsequent chapter covers an ongoing history of Lister's life from childhood onward, with vignettes interspersed with other events and accounts of the medical profession during the time period. The coverage of Lister's life is largely based on Fitzharris' use of his personal letters and the account they give of his activities and thought processes.
+The historical account's prologue starts in 1846 and the first surgical operation with any form of anesthetic by Robert Liston and how an unconscious patient significantly increased the ability for surgeons to complete their operations and have their patients survive. It then moves to Lister's childhood and his fascination with his father, Joseph Jackson Lister's, work in optics and the development of the microscope. Bringing his father's microscope to university and using it for microscopic examination of tissue, he created new ways to treat surgical wounds in the hopes of reducing post-surgical infections. Other scientists, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and Ignaz Semmelweis, also made breakthroughs in understanding how microorganisms led to disease. Lister's discovery in 1864 of Louis Pasteur's work on the cause of putrefaction led to his eventual introduction of antiseptics through the use of carbolic acid sprays. His methodology was criticized by several others in the scientific community, but his 1871 successful treatment of Queen Victoria resulted in the widespread adoption of his antiseptic techniques, which he formally presented at the 1876 International Medical Congress.
+
+
+== Critical reception ==
+Reviewing for NPR, author Genevieve Valentine described the book as "equal parts a queasy outline of Victorian medicine and a quiet story of a life spent pushing for scientific progress" and, despite being a niche subject matter, suggested that there is "something that feels vital in a book about horrors everyone accepted as the costs of doing business, and the importance of persistence in seeing results". Jennifer Senior in the New York Times critiqued the book as being an "imperfect first effort, stronger at the beginning than at the end, and a bit workaday when it isn’t freaky". But she also noted that the story told within is "one of abiding fascination" because it involves a concept, doctors cutting open bodies with unclean tools and hands was harming their patients, that is so simple and straightforward that the idea it even had to be thought up is hard to conceive. Conducting a review for The Guardian, Wendy Moore wrote that despite the subject matter being a "reluctant hero" that might otherwise lend to a boring history, Fitzharris "skillfully negotiates this hazard by illuminating the characters and ideas of the time" alongside an "eye for morbid detail, visceral imagery and comic potential" that gives a deeper personality to Lister.
+Reviews in History's Agnes Arnold-Forster saw the book in two lights. On one hand she considered the book a "compelling read" that "skillfully deploys narrative tension" from chapter to chapter, forming a work that would interest the general public and inform them about this period of history. But on a scholarly front, the book is often overblown in its descriptions of Lister and tends to "stray towards the sycophantic", with several of its claims about the medical community at the time and the adoption of germ-based ideas, which were already coming into vogue through the 1850s, being at odds with other modern research by Christopher Lawrence, Michael Brown, and Richard Dixey. Martin Edwards in the British Journal of General Practice wished that some pictures had been included for the grisly descriptions and pointed out that the uncritical history of Lister's life alongside implications of him pre-empting germ theory would be disagreeable to some historians. He nonetheless considered the book "fun, fascinating, easy to read, and assumes no prior historical knowledge" for readers that overall "deserves a place by the bedside of any clinician interested in a glorious pus-and- blood-filled romp".
+Publishers Weekly selected The Butchering Art as one of its special picks and top 10 science books of the year, pointing out that Fitzharris' book "infuses her thoughtful and finely crafted examination of this revolution with the same sense of wonder and compassion Lister himself brought to his patients". For the Wall Street Journal, John J. Ross referred to the book as a "formidable achievement--a rousing tale told with brio" that successfully manages to restore "this neglected champion of evidence-based medicine to a central place in the history of medicine". Though he also notes that Fitzharris is "occasionally fuzzy on clinical matters", such as describing Hodgkin's lymphoma as rare, and that the book avoids mentioning any of the negative aspects about Lister, such as his sexism toward female medical students. Tilli Tansey in the journal Nature considered the book as "well researched and written with verve", along with being a "fine read full of vivid detail", though also explained how Fitzharris "takes some licence with speculative conversations, thoughts and emotions, and a few anachronisms irk". In Social History of Medicine, Anne Crowther was highly critical of the book, saying that it "follows Lister’s career well but is weaker on historical context, succumbing to
+popular history’s search for ‘colour’ at all costs", including generalizations of history that lead to inaccuracies and misinformation, including false quote attribution and statistical math. This, she added, along with how specialized hospitals and other medical workers are presented from the period as compared to Lister would leave readers with a "very old-fashioned view of the subject" that does not match up with modern scholarship.
+
+
+== References ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canon_(book)-0.md

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+---
+title: "The Canon (book)"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Canon_(book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:35.370771+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science is a book written by American science author Natalie Angier.
+
+
+== Overview ==
+The Canon presents a summary of some of the different areas of science, as well as extensive descriptions of, and interviews with, contemporary scientists who work in these fields.  Angier's tenet is that an understanding of the basics of major areas of science can assist with providing a means by which to understand current scientific issues, and that this process should be fun.  In her Introduction, Angier writes:
+
+Of course you should know about science, for the same reason Dr. Seuss counsels his readers to sing with a Ying or play Ring the Gack: These things are fun, and fun is good.
+Angier included quotes from the scientists she interviewed throughout her descriptions of different scientific topics in an attempt to show how scientists experience and think about their work, and why they do it.
+
+
+== Scientists interviewed ==
+To obtain material for The Canon, Angier interviewed a number of scientists, professors, and other science professionals, and incorporated their stories and quotes into her work.  She asked them questions such as, "What does it mean to think scientifically?" and "What should nonspecialist nonchildren know about science, and how should they know it, and what is this thing called fun?"  Most of these scientists are presently active in their field of research.  In addition, many of these scientists have extensive bodies of work listed in detail elsewhere.  The below list links the science professionals who Angier interviewed for The Canon with additional details relating to their work:
+
+Peter Atkins, a professor of chemistry at Oxford University
+John Bahcall (now deceased), an astrophysicist at Princeton University
+Neta Bahcall, an astrophysicist at Princeton University
+David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate and former president of Caltech
+Jacqueline Barton, a chemistry professor at the California Institute of Technology
+Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University
+David Bercovici, a professor of geophysics at Yale University
+William Blair, a professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins
+Gunter Blobel, a Nobel laureate and cell biologist at Rockefeller University
+David Botstein, a geneticist at Princeton University
+Michael E. Brown, a planetary scientist at Caltech
+Susan Carey, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Harvard
+Rick L. Danheiser, a chemistry professor at MIT
+Frank DiSalvo, s professor of chemistry at Cornell University
+Michael Duff, a theoretical physicist formerly at the University of Michigan
+Tom Eisner, a professor of chemical ecology at Cornell
+Andy Feinberg, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University
+Alvan Feinstein (now deceased), a professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Yale University School of Medicine
+Alex Filippenko, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley
+Gerald Fink, a biologist at MIT
+Scott E. Fraser, a bioengineer at Caltech
+Bob Full, a materials scientist at the University of California, Berkeley
+Peter Galison, a professor of history of physics at Harvard University
+Brian Greene, theoretical physicist at Columbia University
+Alan Guth, a physicist at MIT
+Susan Hockfield, a neuroscientist and president of MIT
+Kip Hodges, director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University
+Roald Hoffmann, a chemist and poet-playwright at Cornell University
+Robert Jaffe, a physicist at MIT
+Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology
+Darcy Kelley, a neuroscientist at Columbia University
+Mary B. Kennedy, a neurobiologist at Caltech
+Andrew Knoll, a professor of natural history at Harvard's Earth and Planetary Sciences Department
+Jonathan Koehler, a professor of economics at the University of Texas
+Walter Lewin, a professor of physics at MIT
+Susan Lindquist, a cell biologist and former director of the Whitehead Institute
+Stephen Lippard, a professor of chemistry at MIT
+Cindy Lustig, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan
+Tom Maniatis, a biologist at Harvard University
+Mario Mateo, a professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan
+Robert Mathieu, a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin
+Stephen Mayo, a biology professor at Caltech
+Elliot Meyerowitz, a biologist at Caltech
+Kenneth R. Miller a biology professor at Brown University
+James L. Mills, chief of the pediatric epidemiology section of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
+Daniel Nocera, a chemist at MIT
+Deborah Nolan, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley
+Michael Novacek, a paleontologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History
+John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University
+Sir Richard Peto, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford
+Steven Pollock, a physics professor at the University of Colorado
+Kent Redford, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society
+Gene Robinson, a neuroethologist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
+Michael Rubner, a materials scientist at MIT
+Donald Sadoway, a materials chemistry professor at MIT
+Maarten Schmidt, an astrophysicist
+John Henry Schwarz, a theoretical physicist at Caltech
+Ramamurti Shankar, a physics professor at Princeton University
+Neil Shubin, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago
+Cody Maverick, a oceanographer at the University of Hawaii
+Chuck Steidel, an astronomy professor at Caltech
+Paul Sternberg, a developmental biologist at Caltech
+David J. Stevenson, a planetary scientist at Caltech
+Scott Strobel, a biochemist at Yale University
+Raman Sundrum, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins
+David Wake, a biologist at the University of California's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
+Bess Ward, a geosciences professor at Princeton University
+Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate and physics professor at the University of Texas
+Tim D. White, a paleoanthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley
+Michael Wigler, a biomedical researcher at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
+Cynthia Wolberger, a biophysics professor at Johns Hopkins University
+
+
+== External links ==
+Natalie Angier web site
+Interview on Point of Inquiry podcast, June 29, 2007
+New York Times Book Review by Steven Pinker, May 27, 2007
+Presentation by Angier on The Canon, May 24, 2007, C-SPAN

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collapse_of_Chaos-0.md

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+---
+title: "The Collapse of Chaos"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collapse_of_Chaos"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:36.474612+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World (1994) is a book about complexity theory and the nature of scientific explanation written by biologist Jack Cohen and mathematician Ian Stewart.
+In this book Cohen and Stewart give their ideas on chaos theory, particularly on how the simple leads to the complex, and conversely, how the complex leads to the simple, and argue for a need for contextual explanation in science as a complement to reduction.  This book dovetails with other books written by the Cohen-Stewart team, particularly Figments of Reality.
+As with other Cohen-Stewart books, topics are illustrated with humorous science fiction snippets dealing with a fictional alien intelligence, the Zarathustrians, whom Cohen and Stewart use as metaphors of the human mind itself.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+Next Generation commented, "Although the book assumes you have zero knowledge of science (and thus is a little patronizing in the early chapters), it presents the concepts of Complexity Theory as well as anything we've seen."
+
+
+=== Additional reviews ===
+Casti, John L. (21 July 1994). "Why is anything ever simple?" (PDF). Nature. 370 (6486): 189. Bibcode:1994Natur.370..189C. doi:10.1038/370189a0. S2CID 4317485.
+Regis, Ed (12 June 1994). "The World Made Easy". The New York Times.
+THE COLLAPSE OF CHAOS by Jack Cohen, Ian Stewart | Kirkus Reviews.
+"Nonfiction Book Review: The Collapse of Chaos: 2discovering Simplicity in a Complex World by Jack Cohen, Author, Ian Stewart, With Viking Books $23.95 (512p) ISBN 978-0-670-84983-3". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved 6 November 2019.
+Tait, Stephanie (2010). "A review of "The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World," by Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, 1995". Complicity. 7 (2). doi:10.29173/cmplct8955.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart: The Collapse of Chaos: discovering simplicity in a complex world, Penguin Books, 1994, ISBN 978-0-14-029125-4

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computational_Brain-0.md

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+---
+title: "The Computational Brain"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computational_Brain"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:37.610450+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Computational Brain is a book by Patricia Churchland and Terrence J. Sejnowski and published in 1992 by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, ISBN 0-262-03188-4.  It has cover blurbs by Karl Pribram, Francis Crick, and Carver Mead.
+
+
+== References ==

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dinosaur-0.md

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+---
+title: "The Day of the Dinosaur"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Dinosaur"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:03:44.863573+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Day of the Dinosaur is a science book by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, illustrated with plates. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1968, and in paperback by Curtis Books in 1970 or 1971. A second hardcover edition was issued by Bonanza Books in 1985. The first chapter was reprinted as "One Day in the Cretaceous" in the de Camps's collection Footprints on Sand (Advent, 1981).
+
+
+== Summary ==
+As stated on the dust cover of the Doubleday edition, the work is a survey of "the exciting story of the lost world of the great reptiles and of the fossil hunters who discovered them millions of years later." It argues, among other things, that the theory of evolution took hold after Darwin because of interest spurred by recently popularized dinosaur remains, corresponding to legends of dragons.
+
+
+== Contents ==
+The Day of the Dinosaur
+The Finding of the Dragons
+Out of the Sea
+Life Invades the Land
+The Rise of the Dinosaurs
+The Reptilian Middle Age
+Reptiles of Sea and Air
+The Doom of the Dragons
+The Great Fossil Feud
+Diggers and Dinosaurs
+The Heritage of the Dragons
+Dinosaurs in the World of Today
+Notes
+Bibliography
+Index
+
+
+== Reception ==
+
+Publishers' Weekly called the book "clear, comprehensive, [and] well-researched," noting that it "begins as a vivid and scientifically sound depiction of the age of the giant dinosaurs [and] develops into an impressive tribute to the science of paleontology. Awesome and sometimes spine-chilling as some of the de Camps' descriptions are ... the human story of the first discovery of fossils and the realization of their implications communicates a drama of its own." Summing up, he noted that "[r]eaders who are for the first time being introduced to the wonders of paleontology will be engrossed."
+Mary L. Blackwell, writing in Library Journal called it "an accurate and vivid description of the great creatures who roamed the earth more than 100 million years ago and also a fascinating account of the earth itself that makes the reality of its antiquity comprehensible." She felt the authors' "carefully organized, practical approach" resulted in "a book that will appeal not only to students of paleontology but to everyone interested in this remote world." She rated it "[r]ecommended for any public or school library."
+In Natural History Isaac Asimov, noting that "few people ... can speak more charmingly and enlightenedly about scientific subjects than L. Sprague de Camp," felt "[t]he book reads ... like a pleasant and informal lecture, given at their ease, by a pair of enormously rational and urbane individuals" with which he found it "virtually impossible to find fault." He singled out the way the de Camps "make the dinosaurs come alive by picturing them in action" and the "most remarkable first chapter ... which ... is an evocation (the best I know) of a typical day in the Mesozoic." He felt that "[t]he book deals, satisfactorily, with the paleontologists and their discoveries, too, especially with the Cope-Marsh feud [and] with the effects on contemporary man of the great discoveries of paleontology; the impetus given to the search for giant living creatures--and to romancing about them--and the ferocious object lesson given on the subject of mass extinctions." He also notes that the de Camps point out "[w]e are in the midst of [another] great dying now, ... brought on by man himself."
+The Booklist characterized the book as "[a]n informative, comprehensible, often lively survey of the Age of Reptiles and the careers of some of the scientists who found and studied dinosaur fossils." Science Books rated it "[a] very comprehensive book about Mesozoic reptiles, [with] [t]the text ... quite free of inaccuracies and... accompanied by many good illustrations," and "[t]he writing style [as] fluctuat[ing] between ... humorous whimsy and scientific exposition, which may limit its popularity." It called "[t]he section [on] the history of the early fossil hunters and development of the great natural history museums ... a real contribution, since this information is collected from many disparate sources."
+Philip and Phylis Morrison, writing for Scientific American, found it "excellent and fresh, ... lively and intelligent," "a savory mixture of biology and history, ... cover[ing] a wide range of lore and logic, from genetics and the problem of extinction to the scaling of beasts." "Skeptical and yet imaginative," they wrote, "the text lives up to the De Camp reputation." They found the book's "final imaginary safari in the Jurassic ... logically planned: for the big flesh-eaters one had best carry a real elephant gun, the Continental .600 or perhaps the Holland & Holland double express .500."
+Bruce Fleury, in a retrospective more than twenty years after the book's initial publication, noted that it "precede[d] the 'dinosaur renaissance' but remain[ed a] valuable and readable introduction to the subject" and "[l]ike De Camp's many other popular works on scientific topics, ... well written and ... highly recommended."
+
+
+== Notes ==