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title: "Altered Traits"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Traits"
category: "reference"
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Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, published in Great Britain as 'The Science of Meditation: How to Change Your Brain, Mind and Body', is a 2017 book by science journalist Daniel Goleman and neuroscientist Richard Davidson. The book discusses research on meditation. For the book, the authors conducted a literature review of over 6,000 scientific studies on meditation, and selected the 60 that they believed met the highest methodological standards.
== Summary ==
The authors write that meditation can be practised at two levels: the "deep path" of intensive meditative discipline aiming for total self-transformation, and the "wide path" of less intensive practice that can reach a larger number of people. The book discusses both these levels, with findings on the highest-level meditators toward the end of the book. After attending meditation retreats in Asia and while graduate students together at Harvard in the 1970s, Goleman and Davidson formulated the hypothesis that "the after is the before for the next during"—meaning the changes that endure after the end of a meditation session contribute to a more equanimous starting point for the next meditation session. Such lasting psychological changes, or altered traits, are the focus of the book, as opposed to altered states of consciousness during meditation that end along with the meditation session. The authors explain a range of methodological obstacles to studying meditation scientifically, which have resulted in many flawed studies; they write that based on an exhaustive literature review by Davidson's research group, they selected only studies they deemed to meet the highest standards to use in the book.
The authors write that meditation leads to reduced stress reactivity, for instance that 30 hours of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) practice leads to reduced amygdala activation and that long-term meditation practice increases connectivity between the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the amygdala. Regarding compassion, they distinguish between cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and empathic concern, the last of which results in action to help reduce suffering, and state that as little as eight hours of loving-kindness meditation can increase empathic concern. They write that meditation is at its core about retraining attention, and discuss studies showing that a small amount of meditation can improve attention in the short-term (as reflected, for instance, in a shorter attentional blink) while long-term practice brings lasting improvement. Next, the authors turn to the sense of self, reflected in the self-referential and often unpleasant mind-wandering of the brain's default mode network, writing that in early meditation practice brain circuits encourage its activity and that in later practice activity in the network itself decreases. While they state that meditation was not originally developed to treat illness, it does appear to have some beneficial effects in this regard, including reducing levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines—though they say these are not yet well understood. Meditation was likewise not designed to treat psychopathology, but they note (among other findings) that a meta-analysis of 47 studies found meditation and medicine equally effective in treating depression, anxiety, and pain, without medication's negative side effects.
The next chapter recounts how Davidson's lab, with the help of French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, recruited yogis including Mingyur Rinpoche in order to study the neurological effects of high-level meditation, and—in a much-cited study—found substantial surges in both electrical activity (using EEG) and activity in the brain's circuits for empathy (using fMRI) when Mingyur meditated on compassion. The authors write that experienced yogis have much higher levels of gamma waves, that they show little anticipation of pain and a very fast recovery from it, and that they can re-focus and hold their attention with little effort. The authors then summarize the benefits of meditation they have so far described for three levels of practice: beginner, long-term, and "Olympic-level." In the last chapter, the authors discuss possible new applications of meditation research, and remind their readers of the paucity of reliable data on meditation when they first became interested in the 1970s compared to the large and growing evidence base available now.
== Reception ==
A book review for Psych Central praises the book for avoiding the common sensationalism on the topic while exploring important research. It states: "In their new book, [...] recognized experts in their fields and lifelong meditators Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson reveal the data that demonstrate just what meditation can and cant do."
UC Berkeley's Greater Good Magazine gave a strongly positive review of the book. It describes Altered Traits as "a highly readable book that helps readers separate the wheat from the chaff of mindfulness science" and which makes "a cogent argument that meditation, in various forms, has the power to transform us not only in the moment, but in more profound, lasting ways." The review also states that "Davidson and Goleman dutifully report the counter evidence as well."
The book received a more critical review in the journal NeuroRegulation. The review gives a list of noteworthy research findings and methodological contributions for future research, and acknowledges the obstacles faced by scientists working in fields that are not fully accepted. However, in a concluding note it cautions: "From an academic point of view, even this book and the research shared adds up to a set of questionable empirical evidence that at times clearly lacks impartiality."
A review in New Scientist compares the book with Thomas Joiner's book Mindlessness, which argues that mindfulness meditation has been oversold. The review calls Altered Traits "much needed" while dismissing Joiner's criticism of mindfulness as misplaced.
An article on Mindful.org comments that "when you weed out the studies that dont meet the highest scientific standards, as Goleman and Davidson have done in their book, a clear picture emerges of what we know about the science of meditation—and what we still need to learn."
== See also ==
Mind and Life Institute
Francisco Varela
Mindfulness
Brain activity and meditation
Neuroplasticity
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)
Buddhism and psychology
Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris
Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
== References ==
== External links ==
Talks at Google: Goleman and Davidson discuss Altered Traits
LinkedIn Speaker Series: Goleman and Davidson discuss Altered Traits
Goleman and Davidson discuss Altered Traits and related topics with Sam Harris
Goleman and Davidson discuss Altered Traits on ABC Radio's 10% Happier podcast

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title: "Antarctic Conquest"
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Antarctic Conquest: the Story of the Ronne Expedition 1946-1948 is a 1949 science book by Norwegian-American Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne and science fiction writer L. Sprague de Camp, published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam's Sons. The role of de Camp, who was commissioned as a ghost writer to recast Ronne's manuscript into publishable form, is uncredited. Ronne's working title was reportedly "Conquering the Antarctic".
== Summary ==
The book relates the story of the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition, which researched the area surrounding the head of the Weddell Sea in Antarctica from 19471948.
== Relationship to other works ==
De Camp's work with Ronne is reflected in two of his contemporary Viagens Interplanetarias science fiction stories set on the fictional planet Krishna. One, the short story "Calories," adopts an Antarctic setting not utilized in any of the series's other stories; in the other, the novel The Hand of Zei, the protagonist adopts the alias of an inhabitant of the planet's Antarctic and is, like de Camp, employed as a ghostwriter for his explorer boss.
== Notes ==
== External links ==
Book review in the Geographical Review, v. 40, no. 1 (Jan. 1950), pp. 154-155

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title: "Antiquarian science books"
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Antiquarian science books are original historical works (e.g., books or technical papers) concerning science, mathematics and sometimes engineering. These books are important primary references for the study of the history of science and technology, they can provide valuable insights into the historical development of the various fields of scientific inquiry (History of science, History of mathematics, etc.)
The landmark are significant first (or early) editions typically worth hundreds or thousands of dollars (prices may vary widely based on condition, etc.).
Reprints of these books are often available, for example from Great Books of the Western World, Dover Publications or Google Books.
Incunabula are extremely rare and valuable, but as the Scientific Revolution is only taken to have started around the 1540s, such works of Renaissance literature (including alchemy, Renaissance magic, etc.) are not usually included under the notion of "scientific" literature. Printed originals of the beginning Scientific Revolution thus date to the 1540s or later, notably beginning with the original publication of Copernican heliocentrism. Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium of 1543 sold for more than US$2 million at auctions.
== List of notable books ==
=== 16th century ===
Tartaglia, Niccolò. Nova Scientia (A New Science). Venice, 1537. Ballistics.
Biringuccio, Vannoccio. De la pirotechnia. Venice, 1540. Metallurgy.
Fuchs, Leonhart. De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes. Basel, 1542. Botany.
Copernicus, Nicolaus. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Wittenberg, 1543. Copernican heliocentrism.
Vesalius, Andreas. De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body). Basel, 1543. Anatomy.
Cardano, Gerolamo. Artis magnae sive de regulis algebraicis (The Art of Solving Algebraic Equations). Nuremberg, 1545. Algebra.
Brunfels, Otto. Kreuterbüch, 1546. Botany.
Gessner, Conrad. Historia Animalium 1551-58. Zoology
Bock, Hieronymus. Kreutterbuch. Strasbourg, 1552. Botany.
Paracelsus. Theil der grossen Wundartzney. Frankfurt, 1556. Medicine.
Agricola, Georgius. De re metallica. Basel, 1561. Mineralogy.
Regiomontanus. De triangulis planis et sphaericis libri quinque. Basel, 1561. Trigonometry.
Bombelli, Rafael. Algebra. 1569/1572. Imaginary numbers.
Cesalpino, Andrea. De plantis libri XVI. 1583. Taxonomy.
Bruno, Giordano. De l'infinito, universo e mondi. 1584 Cosmology.
Stevin, Simon. De Thiende. 1585. Decimal numeral system.
Stevin, Simon. De Beghinselen der Weeghconst. 1586. Statics.
Brahe, Tycho. Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata. 1588. Astronomy.
Viète, François. In artem analyticum isagoge (Introduction to the Analytical Art). Tours, 1591. Algebra.
Ruini, Carlo. Anatomia del Cavallo. Venice, 1598. Veterinary medicine.
=== 17th century ===
Gilbert, William. De Magnete. London, 1600 Magnetism
Galilei, Galileo. Sidereus Nuncius (The Starry Messenger). Frankfurt, 1610. Astronomy
Napier, John. Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio, 1614. Logarithms
Kepler, Johannes. Harmonices Mundi. Linz, 1619. Celestial mechanics
Bacon, Francis. Novum Organum. London, 1620. Experimentation
Galilei, Galileo. Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo Tolemaico, e Coperniciano. Florence, 1632. Heliocentrism
Descartes, René. Discours de la Methode / La Geometrie. Leiden, 1637 Analytical geometry
Fermat, Pierre de. Methodus ad disquirendam maximam et minimam, 1638. Calculus
Galilei, Galileo. Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno a due nuove scienze. Leiden, 1638. Classical dynamics
Desargues, Gérard. Brouillon-project d'une atteinte aux evenemens des rencontres du cone avec un plan, 1639. Projective geometry.
Harvey, William. Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (Anatomical Exercises, Concerning the Heart and Blood) London, 1653. Circulatory system
Wallis, John. Arithmetica infinitorum, 1655. Calculus
Boyle, Robert. The Sceptical Chymist. London, 1661. Chemistry
Pascal, Blaise. Traitez de l'Equilibre des Liqueurs, et de la Pesanteur de la Masse de l'Air. Paris, 1663. Fluid statics
Gregory, James. Optica Promota, 1663. Optics
Hooke, Robert. Micrographia. London, 1665. Microscopy
Steno, Nicolas. De Solido intra Solidum Naturaliter Contento Dissertationis Prodromus. Florence, 1669. Stratigraphy
Barrow, Isaac. Lectiones geometricae, 1670. Calculus
von Guericke, Otto. Experimenta Nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio. Magdeburger Halbkugeln, 1672. Experimental physics
Huygens, Christiaan. Horologium Oscillatorium. Paris, 1673. Pendulus.
Fermat, Pierre de. Ad locus planos et solidos isagoge, 1679. Analytic geometry
Leibniz, Gottfried. Nova Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis, 1684. Calculus
Newton, Isaac. Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. London, 3 Vol, 1687. Classical mechanics
Huygens, Christiaan. Traité de la Lumière. Leiden, 1690. Optics
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Specimen Dynamicum. Vienna, 1695. Classical mechanics
van Leeuwenhoek, Antonie. Arcana Naturae, Ope & Beneficio Exquisitissimorum Microscopiorum. Leiden, 1696. Microbiology
l'Hôpital, Guillaume de. Analyse des infiniment petits. Paris, 1696. Calculus
=== 18th century ===
Newton, Isaac (England). Opticks. London, 1704. Optics
Taylor, Brook (England). Methodus Incrementorum Directa et Inversa, 1715. Taylor series
Linnaeus, Carl (Sweden). Systema Naturae. Netherlands, 1735. Linnaean taxonomy
Bernoulli, Daniel (Netherlands). Hydrodynamica. Strasbourg, 1738, Fluid dynamics
d'Alembert, Jean le Rond (France). Réflexions sur la cause générale des vents, 1747. Complex numbers
Euler, Leonhard (Switzerland). Introductio in analysin infinitorum. Lausanne, 1748. Mathematical analysis
Franklin, Benjamin (America). Experiments and Observations on Electricity. London/Philadelphia, 1751. Electricity
Bayes, Thomas (England). An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances. London, 1763. Inverse probability
Volta, Alessandro (Italy). De vi attractiva ignis electrici, ac phaenomenis inde pendentibus, 1769. Electricity
Smith, Adam (Scotland). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London, 2 Vol, 1776. Capitalism
Monge, Gaspard (France). Sur la théorie des déblais et des remblais, 1781. Descriptive geometry.
Lagrange, Joseph (Italy). Mécanique analytique. Paris, 1788. Dynamics
Hutton, James (Scotland). Theory of the Earth. Edinburgh, 1788. Geology
Lavoisier, Antoine (France). Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry). Paris, 2 Vol, 1789. Chemistry
Galvani, Luigi (Italy). De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius Bologna, 1791. Electricity
Legendre, Adrien-Marie (France). Essai sur la théorie des nombres. Paris, 1798. Number theory
Jenner, Edward (England). An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolæ Vaccinæ. 1798. Immunology
Wessel, Caspar (Norway). Om directionens analytiske betegning. Copenhagen, 1799. Imaginary numbers
Ruffini, Paolo (Italy). Teoria generale dele equazioni, in cui si dimostra impossibile. La soluzione algebraica delle equazioni generali di grado superiore al quatro. Bologna, 1799. Algebra

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=== 19th century ===
Gauss, Carl Friedrich (Germany). Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. Leipzig, 1801. Number theory
Young, Thomas (England). Experiments and Calculations Relative to Physical Optics, 1803. Light
Argand, Jean-Robert (Switzerland). Essai sur une maniere de representer les quantities imaginaries dans les constructions geometriques, 1806. Imaginary numbers.
Dalton, John (England). A New System of Chemical Philosophy. London, 1808. Atomic theory
Berzelius, Jöns Jacob (Sweden). Läroboken i kemien, 1808. Chemistry
Cayley, George (England). On Aerial Navigation. Brompton, 3 Vol, 1809. Aeronautics.
Ørsted, Hans Christian (Denmark). Experimenta circa effectum conflictus electrici in acum magneticam. Copenhagen, 1820. Electromagnetism.
Fourier, Joseph (France). Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur. Paris, 1822. Fourier series.
Fresnel, Augustin-Jean (France). Mémoire Sur Un Nouveau Système D'Éclairage Des Phares Lu À L'Académie Des Sciences. Paris, 1822. Wave optics
Babbage, Charles (England). Mr. Babbage's invention: Application of machinery to the purpose of calculating and printing mathematical tables. London, 1823. Computing
Lobachevsky, Nikolai (Russia). Geometriya. 1823. Non-Euclidean geometry
Cauchy, Augustin-Louis (France). Le calcul infinitesimal. Paris, 1823. Mathematical analysis
Carnot, Sadi (France). Réflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu et sur les machines propres à déveloper cette puissance. Paris, 1824. Thermodynamics
Ampère, André-Marie (France). Mémoire sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques, 1827. Electromagnetism
Laplace, Pierre-Simon (France). Traité de Mécanique Céleste. Paris, 1827. Classical mechanics
Ohm, Georg (Germany). Die Galvanische Kette mathematisch bearbeitet. Berlin, 1827. Electricity
Lyell, Charles (Scotland). Principles of Geology. London, 1830. Geology
Poisson, Siméon Denis (France). Théorie Mathématique de la Chaleur. Paris, 1835. Heat transfer
Faraday, Michael (England). Experimental Researches in Electricity. London, 1839-55. Electricity.
Babbage, Charles & Lovelace, Ada (England). Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage (with additional notes by Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace), 1843. Computing
Joule, James P. (England). On the Calorific Effects of Magneto-Electricity, and on the Mechanical Value of Heat. London, 1843. Conservation of energy
Hamilton, William Rowan (Ireland). On Quaternions. London/Edinburgh/Dublin, 1844. Quaternions.
von Helmholtz, Hermann (Germany). Über die Erhaltung der Kraft (On the Conservation of Force). 1847. Conservation of energy
Clausius, Rudolf (Germany). Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Wärme (On the Moving Force of Heat and the Laws of Heat which may be Deduced Therefrom). Leipzig, 1850. Laws of thermodynamics
Thomson, William (1st Baron Kelvin) (Scotland/Ireland). On the dynamical theory of heat, with numerical results deduced from Mr Joule's equivalent of a thermal unit and M. Regnault's observations on steam. Edinburgh, 1851. Thermodynamics
Boole, George (England). An Investigation of the Laws of Thought. London, 1854. Boolean algebra
Maury, Matthew Fontaine (America). The Physical Geography of the Sea. New York, 1855. Oceanography
Virchow, Rudolf (Germany). Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre. 1858. Cellular pathology
Darwin, Charles (England). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. London, 1859. Evolutionary biology
Pasteur, Louis (France). Memoire sur les corpuscules organises qui existent dans l'atmosphere. Paris, 1861. Microbiology.
Lejeune Dirichlet, P. G. (Germany). Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie. Braunschweig, 1863, Number theory.
Bernard, Claude (France). Introduction à l'étude de la médecine expérimentale. Paris, 1865. Physiology
Mendel, Gregor (Czech Republic/Austria). Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden (Experiments on Plant Hybridization). Brno, 1866. Genetics
Riemann, Bernhard (Germany). Ueber die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen. Göttingen, 1868. Riemannian geometry
Beltrami, Eugenio (Italy). Saggio di interpretazione della geometria non-euclidea (Essay on an interpretation of non-Euclidean geometry), 1868. Hyperbolic geometry
Galton, Francis (England). Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences. London, 1869, Statistics
Cohn, Ferdinand (Poland). Untersuchungen ueber Bacterien. Breslau, 3 Vol, 1870. Bacteriology.
Darwin, Charles (England). The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. London, 1871. Evolutionary biology.
Marx, Karl (Germany). Das Kapital. St. Petersburg, 1872. Economics.
Maxwell, James Clerk (Scotland). A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Oxford, 2 Vol, 1873. Classical electromagnetism.
Koch, Robert (Germany). Untersuchungen uber die aetiologie der wundinfectionskrankheiter. Leipzig, 1878. Bacteriology.
Gibbs, Willard (America). On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances. New Haven, 1878. Physical chemistry
Michelson, Albert A. (America). Experimental Determination of the Velocity of Light. Annapolis, 1880. Speed of light.
Abel, Niels Henrik (Norway). Oeuvres complètes, 1881. Mathematical analysis.
Zhukovsky, Nikolai (Russia). O protchnosti dvizheniya (The Durability of Motion). Moscow, 1882. Aeronautics.
Cantor, Georg (Russia/Germany). Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre. Leipzig, 1883. Set theory.
James, William (America). The Principles of Psychology. New York, 1890. Psychology
Mendeleev, Dmitri (Russia). Principles of Chemistry. London, 1891. Chemistry
Newcomb, Simon (America). Astronomical Papers Prepared for the Use of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. Washington, D.C., 1891. Astronomy
Poincare, Henri (France). Les méthodes nouvelles de la mécanique céleste. Paris, 1892. Celestial mechanics
Tesla, Nikola (Croatia/America). Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency. New York, 1892. Electricity
Hertz, Heinrich (Germany). Untersuchungen über die Ausbreitung der elektrischen Kraft (Electric Waves). 1893. Electromagnetic radiation
Röntgen, Wilhelm (Germany). Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen (On A New Kind Of Rays). 1895. X-rays
Bolyai, János (Hungary). The Science of Absolute Space. 1896. Non-Euclidean geometry
Galois, Évariste (France). Oeuvres Mathematiques d'Évariste Galois. Paris, 1897. Group theory
Curie, Marie (Poland/France) & Curie, Pierre (France). Sur une nouvelle substance fortement radio-active, contenue dans la pechblende (Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Séances de l'Académie des Sciences). Paris, 1898. Radioactivity
Hilbert, David (Germany). Grundlagen der Geometrie (The Foundations of Geometry). 1899. Mathematics
Ramón y Cajal, Santiago (Spain). Textura del sistema nervioso del hombre y los vertebrados 1899-1904. Neuroscience

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=== 20th century (pre-Cold War) ===
Planck, Max (Germany). Zur Theorie des Gesetzes der Energieverteilung im Normalspectrum. Leipzig, 1900. Quantum mechanics
Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich (Russia). The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices. Kaluga, 1903. Rockets
Rutherford, Ernest (New Zealand). Radio-activity. Cambridge, 1904. Nuclear physics
Lorentz, Hendrik (Netherlands). Electromagnetic phenomena in a system moving with any velocity smaller than that of light. Amsterdam, 1904. Special relativity
Einstein, Albert (Germany). Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper ("On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies") Leipzig, 1905. Special relativity
Einstein, Albert (Germany). Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content? Leipzig, 1905. Physics
Richardson, Lewis (England). The Approximate Arithmetical Solution by Finite Differences of Physical Problems Involving Differential Equations, with an Application to the Stresses in a Masonry Dam. London, 1910. Computational mechanics
Boas, Franz (Germany/America). The Mind of Primitive Man. New York, 1911. Anthropology
Bohr, Niels (Denmark). On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules. London, 1913. Quantum mechanics
Einstein, Albert (Germany). Die Grundlage Der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie (Foundations of the General Theory of Relativity). Leipzig, 1916. Physics.
Goddard, Robert Hutchings (America). A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. Washington, D.C, 1919. Rockets
de Broglie, Louis (France). Recherches sur la théorie des quanta (Research on Quantum Theory), 1924. Waveparticle duality
Whitehead, Alfred North (England) and Russell, Bertrand (England). Principia Mathematica. Cambridge, 1925. Mathematics
Heisenberg, Werner (Germany). Über quantentheorestische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen. Berlin, 1925. Quantum mechanics
Schrödinger, Erwin (Austria). Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem. Leipzig, 1926. Quantum mechanics
Heisenberg, Werner (Germany). Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik Berlin, 1927. Quantum mechanics
Pavlov, Ivan (Russia). Conditioned Reflexes. New York, 1928. Classical conditioning
Oberth, Hermann (Romania). Wege zur Raumschiffahrt (Ways to Spaceflight). Munich/Berlin, 1929. Rockets
Hubble, Edwin (America). A Relation between Distance and Radial Velocity among Extra-Galactic Nebulae. Washington, D.C., 1929. Astrophysics
Dirac, Paul (England). The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford, 1930. Quantum mechanics.
Gödel, Kurt (Czech Republic/America). On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems. Leipzig, 1931. Mathematical logic.
von Neumann, John (Hungary/America). Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik. 1932. Quantum mechanics
Goddard, Robert Hutchings (America). Liquid Propellant Rocket Development. Washington, D.C., 1936. Rockets
Keynes, John Maynard (England). The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London, 1936. Economics
Church, Alonzo (America). A Note on the Entscheidungsproblem. Ann Arbor, 1936. Computer science.
Turing, Alan (England). On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Cambridge, 1937. Computing
Dobzhansky, Theodosius (Ukraine/America). Genetics and the Origin of Species. 1937. Evolutionary biology
Shannon, Claude E. (America). A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits (Master's thesis, MIT). 1937. Computing
Pauling, Linus (America). The Nature of the Chemical Bond. Ithaca, 1939. Chemistry.
von Neumann, John (Hungary/America) & Morgenstern, Oskar (Germany/America). Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, 1944. Game theory
== References ==
== External links ==
Heralds of Science - Smithsonian Libraries
Milestones of Science Books - Antiquarian booksellers

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title: "Apollo's Arrow"
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source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo's_Arrow"
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Apollos Arrow: The Science of Prediction and the Future of Everything is a non-fiction book about prediction written by Canadian author and mathematician David Orrell. The book was initially published in Canada by HarperCollins in 2007, and was a national bestseller. It was published in the United States as The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction, and translated versions were also published in Japan, South Korea and China.
The book was taught as part of a university course in “Forecasting via Mathematical Modeling” at Gustavus Adolphus College in 2009.
== Summary ==
In this book, Orrell explains the science of prediction to a general audience. The book begins with a general history of prediction from the Delphic oracle to the present day. The next part considers three different areas of prediction in detail: weather, health and economics. It argues that these are all examples of complex systems that cannot be reduced to equations. As mathematical models become more refined, the number of unknown parameters tends to explode. At the same time, networks of interlocking feedback loops make the models unstable. According to Orrell, the resulting model error (rather than e.g. the butterfly effect) is the main reason why forecasts go wrong.
In the final part, the book turns to predictions for the future, including the long-term effects of climate change. It concludes with some thoughts for the future, as well as a reminder that all such forecasts are unreliable.
The title of the book is a reference to a mythical arrow that once belonged to the god Apollo. According to legend, the arrow was gifted by a priest to Pythagoras, allowing him to dart through space and time.
== References ==

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title: "Bad Pharma"
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Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is a book by the British physician and academic Ben Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research into its own products. It was published in the UK in September 2012 by the Fourth Estate imprint of HarperCollins, and in the United States in February 2013 by Faber and Faber.
Goldacre argues in the book that "the whole edifice of medicine is broken", because the evidence on which it is based is systematically distorted by the pharmaceutical industry. He writes that the industry finances most of the clinical trials into its own products and much of doctors' continuing education, that clinical trials are often conducted on small groups of unrepresentative subjects and negative data is routinely withheld, and that apparently independent academic papers may be planned and even ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies or their contractors, without disclosure. Describing the situation as a "murderous disaster", he makes suggestions for action by patients' groups, physicians, academics and the industry itself.
Responding to the book's publication, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry issued a statement in 2012 arguing that the examples the book offers were historical, that the concerns had been addressed, that the industry is among the most regulated in the world, and that it discloses all data in accordance with international standards.
In January 2013 Goldacre joined the Cochrane Collaboration, British Medical Journal and others in setting up AllTrials, a campaign calling for the results of all past and current clinical trials to be reported. The British House of Commons Public Accounts Committee expressed concern in January 2014 that drug companies were still only publishing around 50 percent of clinical-trial results.
== Synopsis ==
=== Introduction ===
Goldacre writes in the introduction of Bad Pharma that he aims to defend the following:
Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials throw up results that companies don't like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug's true effects. Regulators see most of the trial data, but only from early on in a drug's life, and even then they don't give this data to doctors or patients, or even to other parts of government. This distorted evidence is then communicated and applied in a distorted fashion.
In their forty years of practice after leaving medical school, doctors hear about what works through ad hoc oral traditions, from sales reps, colleagues or journals. But those colleagues can be in the pay of drug companies often undisclosed and the journals are too. And so are the patient groups. And finally, academic papers, which everyone thinks of as objective, are often covertly planned and written by people who work directly for the companies, without disclosure. Sometimes whole academic journals are even owned outright by one drug company. Aside from all this, for several of the most important and enduring problems in medicine, we have no idea what the best treatment is, because it's not in anyone's financial interest to conduct any trials at all.
=== Chapter 1: "Missing Data" ===
In "Missing Data," Goldacre argues that the clinical trials undertaken by drug companies routinely reach conclusions favourable to the company. For example, in a 2007 journal article published in PLOS Medicine, researchers studied every published trial on statins, drugs prescribed to reduce cholesterol levels. In the 192 trials they looked at, industry-funded trials were 20 times more likely to produce results that favoured the drug.
He writes that these positive results are achieved in a number of ways. Sometimes the industry-sponsored studies are flawed by design (for example by comparing the new drug to an existing drug at an inadequate dose), and sometimes patients are selected to make a positive result more likely. In addition, the data are analysed as the trial progresses. If the trial seems to be producing negative data it is stopped prematurely and the results are not published, or if it is producing positive data it may be stopped early so that longer-term effects are not examined. He writes that this publication bias, where negative results remain unpublished, is endemic within medicine and academia. As a consequence, he argues, doctors may have no idea what the effects are of the drugs they prescribe.
An example he gives of the difficulty of obtaining missing data from drug companies is that of oseltamivir (Tamiflu), manufactured by Roche to reduce the complications of bird flu. Governments spent billions of pounds stockpiling this, based in large part on a meta-analysis that was funded by the industry. Bad Pharma charts the efforts of independent researchers, particularly Tom Jefferson of the Cochrane Collaboration Respiratory Group, to gain access to information about the drug.

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=== Chapter 2: "Where Do New Drugs Come From?" ===
In the second chapter, the book describes the process as new drugs move from animal testing through phase 1 (first-in-man study), phase 2, and phase 3 clinical trials. Phase 1 participants are referred to as volunteers, but in the US are paid $200$400 per day, and because studies can last several weeks and subjects may volunteer several times a year, earning potential becomes the main reason for participation. Participants are usually taken from the poorest groups in society, and outsourcing increasingly means that trials may be conducted in countries with low wages by contract research organizations (CROs). The rate of growth for clinical trials in India is 20 percent a year, in Argentina 27 percent, and in China 47 percent, while trials in the UK have fallen by 10 percent a year and in the US by six percent.
The shift to outsourcing raises issues about data integrity, regulatory oversight, language difficulties, the meaning of informed consent among a much poorer population, the standards of clinical care, the extent to which corruption may be regarded as routine in certain countries, and the ethical problem of raising a population's expectations for drugs that most of that population cannot afford. It also raises the question of whether the results of clinical trials using one population can invariably be applied elsewhere. There are both social and physical differences: Goldacre asks whether patients diagnosed with depression in China are really the same as patients diagnosed with depression in California, and notes that people of Asian descent metabolize drugs differently from Westerners.
There have also been cases of available treatment being withheld during clinical trials. In 1996 in Kano, Nigeria, the drug company Pfizer compared a new antibiotic during a meningitis outbreak to a competing antibiotic that was known to be effective at a higher dose than was used during the trial. Goldacre writes that 11 children died, divided almost equally between the two groups. The families taking part in the trial were apparently not told that the competing antibiotic at the effective dose was available from Médecins Sans Frontières in the next-door building.
=== Chapter 3: "Bad Regulators" ===
Chapter three describes the concept of "regulatory capture," whereby a regulator such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK, or the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States ends up advancing the interests of the drug companies rather than the interests of the public. Goldacre writes that this happens for a number of reasons, including the revolving door of employees between the regulator and the companies, and the fact that friendships develop between regulator and company employees simply because they have knowledge and interests in common. The chapter also discusses surrogate outcomes and accelerated approval, and the difficulty of having ineffective drugs removed from the market once they have been approved. He argues that regulators do not require that new drugs offer an improvement over what is already available, or even that they be particularly effective.
=== Chapter 4: "Bad Trials" ===
"Bad Trials" examines the ways in which clinical trials can be flawed. Goldacre writes that this happens by design and by analysis, and that it has the effect of maximizing a drug's benefits and minimizing harm.
There have been instances of fraud, though he says these are rare. More common are what he calls the "wily tricks, close calls, and elegant mischief at the margins of acceptability."
These include testing drugs on unrepresentative, "freakishly ideal" patients; comparing new drugs to something known to be ineffective, or effective at a different dose or if used differently; conducting trials that are too short or too small; and stopping trials early or late. It also includes measuring uninformative outcomes; packaging the data so that it is misleading; ignoring patients who drop out (i.e. using per-protocol analysis, where only patients who complete the trial are counted in the final results, rather than intention-to-treat analysis, where everyone who starts the trial is counted); changing the main outcome of the trial once it has finished; producing subgroup analyses that show apparently positive outcomes for certain tightly defined groups (such as Chinese men between the ages of 56 and 71), thereby hiding an overall negative outcome; and conducting "seeding trials," where the objective is to persuade physicians to use the drug.
Another criticism is that outcomes are presented in terms of relative risk reduction to exaggerate the apparent benefits of the treatment. For example, he writes, if four people out of 1,000 will have a heart attack within the year, but on statins only two will, that is a 50 percent reduction if expressed as relative risk reduction. But if expressed as absolute risk reduction, it is a reduction of just 0.2 percent.
=== Chapter 5: "Bigger, Simpler Trials" ===
In chapter five Goldacre suggests using the General Practice Research Database in the UK, which contains the anonymized records of several million patients, to conduct randomized trials to determine the most effective of competing treatments. For example, to compare two statins, atorvastatin and simvastatin, doctors would randomly assign patients to one or the other. The patients would be followed up by having data about their cholesterol levels, heart attacks, strokes and deaths taken from their computerized medical records. The trials would not be blind patients would know which statin they had been prescribed but Goldacre writes that they would be unlikely to hold such firm beliefs about which one is preferable to the extent that it could affect their health.

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=== Chapter 6: "Marketing" ===
In the final chapter, Goldacre looks at how doctors are persuaded to prescribe "me-too drugs," brand-name drugs that are no more effective than significantly cheaper off-patent ones. He cites as examples the statins atorvastatin (Lipitor, made by Pfizer) and simvastatin (Zocor), which he writes seem to be equally effective, or at least there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Simvastatin came off patent several years ago, yet there are still three million prescriptions a year in the UK for atorvastatin, costing the National Health Service (NHS) an annual £165 million extra.
He addresses the issue of medicalization of certain conditions (or, as he argues, of personhood), whereby pharmaceutical companies "widen the boundaries of diagnosis" before offering solutions. Female sexual dysfunction was highlighted in 1999 by a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which alleged that 43 percent of women were suffering from it. After the article appeared, the New York Times wrote that two of its three authors had worked as consultants for Pfizer, which at the time was preparing to launch UK-414,495, known as female Viagra. The journal's editor said that the failure to disclose the relationship with Pfizer was the journal's mistake.
The chapter also examines celebrity endorsement of certain drugs, the extent to which claims in advertisements aimed at doctors are appropriately sourced, and whether direct-to-consumer advertising (currently permitted in the US and New Zealand) ought to be allowed. It discusses how PR firms promote stories from patients who complain in the media that certain drugs are not made available by the funder, which in the UK is the NHS and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Two breast-cancer patients who campaigned in the UK in 2006 for trastuzumab (Herceptin) to be available on the NHS were being handled by a law firm working for Roche, the drug's manufacturer. The historian Lisa Jardine, who was suffering from breast cancer, told the Guardian that she had been approached by a PR firm working for the company.
The chapter also covers the influence of drug reps, how ghostwriters are employed by the drug companies to write papers for academics to publish, how independent the academic journals really are, how the drug companies finance doctors' continuing education, and how patients' groups are often funded by industry.
=== Afterword: "Better Data" ===
In the afterword and throughout the book, Goldacre makes suggestions for action by doctors, medical students, patients, patient groups and the industry. He advises doctors, nurses and managers to stop seeing drug reps, to ban them from clinics, hospitals and medical schools, to declare online and in waiting rooms all gifts and hospitality received from the industry, and to remove all drug company promotional material from offices and waiting rooms. (He praises the website of the American Medical Student Association www.amsascorecard.org which ranks institutions according to their conflict-of-interest policies, writing that it makes him "feel weepy.") He also suggests that regulations be introduced to prevent pharmacists from sharing doctors' prescribing records with drug reps.
He asks academics to lobby their universities and academic societies to forbid academics from being involved in ghostwriting, and to lobby for "film credit" contributions at the end of every academic paper, listing everyone involved, including who initiated the idea of publishing the paper. He also asks for full disclosure of all past clinical trial results, and a list of academic papers that were, as he puts it, "rigged" by industry, so that they can be retracted or annotated. He asks drug company employees to become whistleblowers, either by writing an anonymous blog, or by contacting him.
He advises patients to ask their doctors whether they accept drug-company hospitality or sponsorship, and if so to post details in their waiting rooms, and to make clear whether it is acceptable to the patient for the doctor to discuss his or her medical history with drug reps. Patients who are invited to take part in a trial are advised to ask, among other things, for a written guarantee that the trial has been publicly registered, and that the main outcome of the trial will be published within a year of its completion. He advises patient groups to write to drug companies with the following: "We are living with this disease; is there anything at all that you're withholding? If so, tell us today."

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== Reception ==
The book was generally well received. The Economist described it as "slightly technical, eminently readable, consistently shocking, occasionally hectoring and unapologetically polemical". Helen Lewis in the New Statesman called it an important book, while Luisa Dillner, writing in the Guardian, described it as a "thorough piece of investigative medical journalism".
Andrew Jack wrote in the Financial Times that Goldacre is "at his best in methodically dissecting poor clinical trials. ... He is less strong in explaining the complex background reality, such as the general constraints and individual slips of regulators and pharma companies' employees." Jack also argued that the book failed to reflect how many lives have been improved by the current system, for example with new treatments for HIV, rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.
Max Pemberton, a psychiatrist, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that "this is a book to make you enraged ... because it's about how big business puts profits over patient welfare, allows people to die because they don't want to disclose damning research evidence, and the tricks they play to make sure doctors do not have all the evidence when it comes to appraising whether a drug really works or not."
The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) replied in the New Statesman that Goldacre was "stuck in a bygone era where pharmaceutical companies wine and dine doctors in exchange for signing on the dotted line". The ABPI issued a press release, writing that the pharmaceutical industry is responsible for the discovery of 90 percent of all medicines, and that it takes an average of 1012 years and £1.1bn to introduce a medicine to the market, with just one in 5,000 new compounds receiving regulatory approval. This makes research and development an expensive and risky business. They wrote that the industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the world, and is committed to ensuring full transparency in the research and development of new medicines. They also maintained that the examples Goldacre offered were "long documented and historical, and the companies concerned have long addressed these issues". Goldacre argues in the book that "the most dangerous tactic of all is the industry's enduring claim that these problems are all in the past".
Humphrey Rang of the British Pharmacological Society wrote that Goldacre had chosen his target well and had produced some shocking examples of secrecy and dishonesty, particularly the nondisclosure of data on the antidepressant reboxetine (chapter one), in which only one trial out of seven was published (the published study showed positive results, while the unpublished trials suggested otherwise). He argued that Goldacre had gone "over the top" in devoting a whole chapter (chapter five) to recommending large clinical trials using electronic patient data from general practitioners, without fully pointing out how problematic these can be; such trials raise issues, for example, about informed consent and regulatory oversight. Rang also criticized Goldacre's style, describing the book as too long, repetitive, hyperbolic, and in places too conversational. He particularly objected to the line, "medicine is broken", calling it a "foolish remark".
== AllTrials ==
Following the book's publication, Goldacre co-founded AllTrials with David Tovey, editor-in-chief of the Cochrane Library, together with the British Medical Journal, the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, and others in the UK, and Dartmouth College's Geisel School of Medicine and the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in the US. Set up in January 2013, the group campaigns for all past and current clinical trials to be registered and reported, for all treatments in use.
The British House of Commons Public Accounts Committee produced a report in January 2014, after hearing evidence from Goldacre, Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, and others, about the stockpiling of Tamiflu and the withholding of data about the drug by its manufacturer, Roche. The committee said it was "surprised and concerned" to learn that information from clinical trials is routinely withheld from doctors, and recommended that the Department of Health take steps to ensure that all clinical-trial data be made available for currently prescribed treatments.
== Publication details ==
Bad Pharma: How drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients, Fourth Estate, 2012 (UK). ISBN 978-0-00-735074-2
Faber and Faber, 2013 (US). ISBN 978-0-86547-800-8
Signal, 2013 (Canada). ISBN 978-0-7710-3629-3
As of December 2012 foreign rights had been sold for Brazil, the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Italy, Korea, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Turkey.
== See also ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Bad Pharma, publisher's website.
badscience.net, Ben Goldacre's website.
"Bad Science", Goldacre's column for The Guardian.
"Why doctors don't know what they're prescribing", extract from Bad Pharma.
=== Articles and radio ===

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Bending Science: How special interests corrupt public health research is a 2008 book by Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy E. Wagner, published by Harvard University Press. Bending Science explores the ways that science is manipulated in the process of making public policy and the law. It has been called a "fascinating and troubling investigation." The authors present a collection of case studies, undertaken largely by industry and designed to distort the scientific process.
Thomas McGarity and Wendy Wagner are both University of Texas law professors.
== See also ==
List of books about the politics of science
== References ==

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The Ambidextrous Universe is a popular science book by Martin Gardner, covering aspects of symmetry and asymmetry in human culture, science and the wider universe. It culminates in a discussion of whether nature's conservation of parity (the symmetry of mirrored quantum systems) is ever violated, which had been proven experimentally in 1956.
The book was originally published in 1964 with the subtitle Left, Right, and the Fall of Parity, with a revised version following in 1969. A second edition was released in 1979 with the new subtitle Mirror Asymmetry and Time-Reversed Worlds. The third edition was released in 1990 under the title The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings; this was re-released with minor revisions in 2005.
== Content ==
The book begins with the subject of mirror reflection, and from there passes through symmetry in geometry, poetry, art, music, galaxies, stars, planets and living organisms. It then moves down into the molecular scale and looks at how symmetry and asymmetry have evolved from the beginning of life on Earth. There is a chapter on carbon and its versatility and on chirality in biochemistry.
The last several chapters deal with a conundrum called the Ozma Problem, which examines whether there is any fundamental asymmetry to the universe. This discussion concerns various aspects of atomic and subatomic physics and how they relate to mirror asymmetry and the related concepts of chirality, antimatter, magnetic and electrical polarity, parity, charge and spin. Time invariance (and reversal) is discussed. Implications for particle physics, theoretical physics and cosmology are covered and brought up to date (in later editions of the book) with regard to Grand Unified Theories, theories of everything, superstring theory and M-theory.
=== The Ozma Problem ===
The 18th chapter, "The Ozma Problem", poses a problem that Gardner claims would arise if Earth should ever enter into communication with life on another planet through Project Ozma. This is the problem of how to communicate the meaning of left and right, where the two communicants are conditionally not allowed to view any one object in common.
The problem was first implied in Immanuel Kant's discussion of a hand isolated in space, which would have no meaning as left or right by itself; Gardner posits that Kant would today explain his problem using the reversibility of objects through a higher dimension. A three-dimensional hand can be reversed in a mirror or a hypothetical fourth dimension. In more easily visualizable terms, an outline of a hand in Flatland could be flipped over; the meaning of left or right would not apply until a being missing a corresponding hand came along. Charles Howard Hinton expressed the essential problem in 1888, as did William James in his The Principles of Psychology (1890). Gardner follows the thread of several false leads on the road to the solution of the problem, such as the magnetic poles of astronomical bodies and the chirality of life molecules, which could be arbitrary based on how life locally originated.
The solution to the Ozma Problem was finally realized in the famous Wu experiment, conducted in 1956 by Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu (19121997), involving the beta decay of cobalt-60. At a conference earlier that year, Richard Feynman had asked (on behalf of Martin M. Block) whether parity was sometimes violated, leading Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang to propose Wu's experiment, for which Lee and Yang were awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics. It was the first experiment to disprove the conservation of parity, and according to Gardner, one could use it to convey the meaning of left and right to remote extraterrestrials. An earlier example of asymmetry had actually been detected as early as 1928 in the decay of a radionuclide of radium, but its significance was not then realized.
== Literary references ==
The Ambidextrous Universe references several physics-themed poems and certain works of literature which help to illustrate various points. Additionally, some other works have referenced Gardner's book.
=== W. H. Auden ===
W. H. Auden alludes to The Ambidextrous Universe in his poem "Josef Weinheber" (1965).
=== Vladimir Nabokov ===
Pale Fire
In the original 1964 edition of The Ambidextrous Universe, Gardner quoted two lines of poetry from Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire which are supposed to have been written by a poet, "John Shade", who is actually fictional. As a joke, Gardner credited the lines only to Shade and put Shade's name in the index as if he were a real person. In his 1969 novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Nabokov returned the favor by having the character Van Veen "quote" the Gardner book along with the two lines of verse:
"Space is a swarming in the eyes, and Time a singing in the ears," says John Shade, a modern poet, as quoted by an invented philosopher ("Martin Gardiner" [sic]) in The Ambidextrous Universe, page 165 [sic].
Look at the Harlequins!
Nabokov's 1974 novel Look at the Harlequins!, about a man who cannot distinguish left from right, was heavily influenced by his reading of The Ambidextrous Universe.
== Reviews ==
Games
== References ==
=== Bibliography ===
Gardner, Martin (2005) [1964]. The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings (3rd rev. ed.). Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-44244-6. OCLC 57373717.

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The Ancient Engineers is a 1963 science book by L. Sprague de Camp, one of his most popular works. It was first published by Doubleday and has been reprinted numerous times by other publishers. Translations into German and Polish have also been published. Portions of the work had previously appeared as articles in the magazines Fate, Isis and Science Digest.
== Contents ==
The work is an examination of engineering through the ages from 3000 BC to 1519 AD, from the monumental works of the Egyptians through the speculative inventions of Leonardo da Vinci. The technological legacies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, the medieval Arabs and Europeans, and Renaissance Europe, are all covered in separate sections, focusing particularly on architectural, military and civil engineering.
== Review ==
The following review is often quoted in reference to this book:
Mr. de Camp has the trick of being able to show technology engaging in feats as full of derring-do as those of Hannibal's army. History as it should be told.
—Isaac Asimov, The New York Times Book Review, 15 May 1963
== See also ==
Lest Darkness Fall
== Notes ==
== External links ==
The Ancient Engineers title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
The Ancient Engineers at Open Library

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The Ape-Man Within is a 1995 science book by L. Sprague de Camp, published in hardcover by Prometheus Books.
== Summary ==
The book undertakes to demonstrate how humankind's self-inflicted problems are rooted in its evolutionary past, with primitive survival traits appropriate to ancestral primates who were organized in small, foraging bands still manifesting in modern societies as competitive, adversarial behavior.
== Contents ==
1. Darwinian Man
2. Our Handy Kin
3. The Noble Savage
4. The Breeds of Man
5. The Phantom Aryans
6. Race and Power
7. Goat Island
8. What Makes Us Tick?
9. "And Hate Alone Is True"
10. Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
== Reception ==
De Camp's approach to his subject has been criticized for oversimplification and inaccuracy in matters of detail.
== Notes ==
== External links ==
"The Ape-Man Within by L. Sprague de Camp Book Review" - a positive book review by Tudor Vieru
"Darwinism made too simple" - a negative book review by Jeffrey McKee

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The Beauty of Fractals is a 1986 book by Heinz-Otto Peitgen and Peter Richter which publicises the fields of complex dynamics, chaos theory and the concept of fractals. It is lavishly illustrated and as a mathematics book became an unusual success.
The book includes a total of 184 illustrations, including 88 full-colour pictures of Julia sets. Although the format suggests a coffee table book, the discussion of the background of the presented images addresses some sophisticated mathematics which would not be found in popular science books. In 1987 the book won an Award for distinguished technical communication.
== Summary ==
The book starts with a general introduction to Complex Dynamics, Chaos and fractals. In particular the Feigenbaum scenario and the relation to Julia sets and the Mandelbrot set is discussed. The following special sections provide in depth detail for the shown images: Verhulst Dynamics, Julia Sets and Their Computergraphical Generation, Sullivan's Classification of Critical Points, The Mandelbrot Set, External Angles and Hubbard Trees, Newton's Method for Complex Polynomials: Cayley's Problem, Newtons's Method for Real Equations, A Discrete Volterra-Lotka System, Yang-Lee Zeros, Renormalization (Magnetism and Complex Boundaries).
The book also includes invited Contributions by Benoît Mandelbrot, Adrien Douady, Gert Eilenberger and Herbert W. Franke, which provide additional formality and some historically interesting detail. Benoit Mandelbrot gives a very personal account of his discovery of fractals in general and the fractal named after him in particular. Adrien Douady explains the solved and unsolved problems relating to the almost amusingly complex Mandelbrot set.
== The images ==
Part of the text was originally conceived as a supplemented catalogue to the exhibition Frontiers of Chaos of the German Goethe-Institut, first seen in Europe and the United States. It described the context and meaning of these images. The images were created at the "Computer Graphics Laboratory Dynamical Systems" at the University of Bremen in 1984 and 1985. Dedicated software had to be developed to make the necessary computations which at that time took hours of computer time to create a single image. For the exhibit and the book the computed images had to be captured as photographs. Digital image capturing and archiving were not feasible at that time.
The book was cited and its images were reproduced in a number of publications. Some images were even used before the book was published. The cover article of the Scientific American August 1985 edition showed some of the images and provided reference to the book to be published.
One particular image sequence of the book is the close up series "seahorse valley". While the first publication of such a close up series was the June 1984 cover article of the Magazine Geo, The Beauty of Fractals provided the first such publication within a book.
== Translations ==
Italian translation: La Bellezza dei Frattali, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1987, ISBN 88-339-0420-2
Japanese translation: Springer-Verlag, Tokyo 1988, ISBN 3-540-15851-0
Russian translation: Krasota Fractalov, Mir, Moscow 1993, ISBN 5-03-001296-6
Chinese translation: Z.-J. Jing and X.-S. Zhang, Science Publishers, Beijing 1994, ISBN 7-03-004188-7/TP 374
== References ==
== External links ==
Web page of the Center for Complex System and Visualization Archived 2020-09-25 at the Wayback Machine
Web page of the book at Springer-Verlag