Scrape wikipedia-science: 406 new, 4 updated, 428 total (kb-cron)

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

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+---
+title: "The Transparent Society"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:50.327649+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Transparent Society (1998) is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices that he believes would provide benefits that would more than compensate for lost privacy. The work first appeared as a magazine article by Brin in Wired in late 1996. In 2008, security expert Bruce Schneier called the transparent society concept a "myth" (a characterization Brin later rejected), claiming it ignores wide differences in the relative power of those who access information.
+
+
+== Synopsis ==
+
+Brin argues that a core level of privacy—protecting our most intimate interactions—may be preserved, despite the rapid proliferation of cameras that become ever-smaller, cheaper and more numerous faster than Moore's law. He feels that this core privacy can be saved simply because that is what humans deeply need and want. Hence, Brin explains that "...the key question is whether citizens will be potent, sovereign and knowing enough to enforce this deeply human want."
+This means they must not only have rights, but also the power to use them and the ability to detect when they are being abused. That will only happen in a world that is mostly open, in which most citizens know most of what is going on, most of the time. It is the only condition under which citizens may have some chance of catching the violators of their freedom and privacy. Privacy is only possible if freedom (including the freedom to know) is protected first.
+Brin thus maintains that privacy is a "contingent right," one that grows out of the more primary rights, e.g. to know and to speak. He admits that such a mostly-open world will seem more irksome and demanding; people will be expected to keep negotiating the tradeoffs between knowing and privacy. It will be tempting to pass laws that restrict the power of surveillance to authorities, entrusting them to protect our privacy—or a comforting illusion of privacy. By contrast, a transparent society destroys that illusion by offering everyone access to the vast majority of information out there.
+Brin argues that it will be good for society if the powers of surveillance are shared with the citizenry, allowing "sousveillance" or "viewing from below," enabling the public to watch the watchers. According to Brin, this only continues the same trend promoted by Adam Smith, John Locke, the US Constitutionalists and the western enlightenment, who held that any elite (whether commercial, governmental, or aristocratic) should experience constraints upon its power. And there is no power-equalizer greater than knowledge. 
+
+
+== Conceptually related works ==
+Brin has introduced versions of the concept into his fiction.
+In Earth, the setting's future history includes a war pitting most of the Earth against Switzerland, fueled by outrage over the Swiss allowing generations of kleptocrats to hide their stolen wealth in the country's secretive banks. The war results in the end of secret banking and the destruction of Switzerland as a nation. In the setting's present, surveillance by elderly retirees wearing recognizable networked camera-glasses is common.
+His novel Kiln People is set in a future where cameras are everywhere and anyone can access the public ones and, for a fee, the private ones.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Sousveillance (and inverse surveillance)
+Surveillance
+Transparency (behavior)
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Book page on Brin's website
+Digitized version by the Internet Archive
+Brin, David (December 1996). "The Transparent Society". Wired. Vol. 4, no. 12. CondéNet. Retrieved 2008-03-14.
+The pitfalls of privacy.
+Sample chapter
+Sousveillance blog
+Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computers Freedom and Privacy (CFP) Opening Keynote in which Brin participated
+Book overview for RAND's list of 50 books for understanding the future human condition
+
+
+=== Reviews ===
+Gross, Neil (1998). "Everyone Is Living in a Fishbowl". BusinessWeek. The McGraw-Hill Companies. Archived from the original on February 19, 1999. Retrieved 2008-03-14.
+Frye, Curtis D. (1998). "Review of The Transparent Society". Technology & Society Book Reviews. Curtis D. Frye. Retrieved 2008-03-14.
+Finnern, Mark (August 15, 2004). "Transparent Society Update". Acceleration Studies Foundation Future Salon blog. Retrieved 2008-03-14.

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

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+---
+title: "The Two Cultures"
+chunk: 1/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:52.717949+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+"The Two Cultures" is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. The lecture was published that same year in book form as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Snow's thesis was that science and the humanities, which represented "the intellectual life of the whole of western society", had become divided into "two cultures", and that the growing division between them was a major handicap in solving the world's problems.
+
+== The lecture ==
+The talk was delivered 7 May 1959 in the Senate House, Cambridge, and subsequently published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. The lecture and book expanded upon an article by Snow published in the New Statesman of 6 October 1956, also titled "The Two Cultures". The book form of Snow's lecture was widely read and discussed on both sides of the Atlantic, leading him to write a 1963 follow-up, The Two Cultures: And a Second Look: An Expanded Version of the Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.
+Snow's position can be summed up by an oft-repeated passage from his lecture:
+
+A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
+I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question – such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? – not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had.
+In 2008, The Times Literary Supplement included The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution in its list of the 100 books that most influenced Western public discourse since the Second World War.
+Snow's Rede Lecture condemned the British educational system as having, since the Victorian era, over-rewarded the humanities (especially Latin and Greek) at the expense of scientific and engineering education, despite such achievements having been so decisive in winning the Second World War for the Allies. This in practice deprived British elites (in politics, administration, and industry) of adequate preparation to manage the modern scientific world. By contrast, Snow said, German and American schools sought to prepare their citizens equally in the sciences and humanities, and better scientific teaching enabled these countries' rulers to compete more effectively in a scientific age. Later discussion of The Two Cultures tended to obscure Snow's initial focus on differences between British systems (of both schooling and social class) and those of competing countries.
+
+== Implications and influence ==
+The literary critic F. R. Leavis called Snow a "public relations man" for the scientific establishment in his essay Two Cultures?: The Significance of C. P. Snow, published in The Spectator in 1962.  The article attracted a great deal of negative correspondence in the magazine's letters pages.
+In his 1963 book, Snow appeared to revise his thinking and was more optimistic about the potential of a mediating third culture. This notion was further developed in John Brockman's The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995).
+Simon Critchley, in Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2001) suggests:
+
+[Snow] diagnosed the loss of a common culture and the emergence of two distinct cultures: those represented by scientists on the one hand and those Snow termed 'literary intellectuals' on the other. If the former are in favour of social reform and progress through science, technology and industry, then intellectuals are what Snow terms 'natural Luddites' in their understanding of and sympathy for advanced industrial society. In Mill's terms, the division is between Benthamites and Coleridgeans.
+Critchley argues that what Snow said represents a resurfacing of a discussion current in the mid-nineteenth century. Critchley describes the Leavis contribution to the making of a controversy as "a vicious ad hominem attack"; going on to describe the debate as "a familiar clash in English cultural history", citing also T. H. Huxley and Matthew Arnold.
+Stephen Jay Gould's The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox (2003) provides a different perspective. Assuming the dialectical interpretation, it argues that Snow's concept of "two cultures" is not only off the mark, it is a damaging and short-sighted viewpoint, and that it has perhaps led to decades of unnecessary fence-building.
+In a New York Times retrospective on the 50th anniversary of the lecture, Peter Dizikes situated Snow's thesis in a Cold War context. Snow had geopolitical concerns, according to Dizikes, that the worsening split between science and the humanities was placing the West at a disadvantage in its struggle with the Eastern Bloc.
+
+In his opening address at the Munich Security Conference in January 2014, the Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves said that the current problems related to security and freedom in cyberspace are the culmination of absence of dialogue between "the two cultures": Today, bereft of understanding of fundamental issues and writings in the development of liberal democracy, computer geeks devise ever better ways to track people... simply because they can and it's cool. Humanists on the other hand do not understand the underlying technology and are convinced, for example, that tracking meta-data means the government reads their emails.

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures-1.md

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+---
+title: "The Two Cultures"
+chunk: 2/2
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:52.717949+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+== Antecedents ==
+Contrasting scientific and humanistic knowledge is a repetition of the Methodenstreit of 1890 German universities. A quarrel in 1911 between Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile on the one hand and Federigo Enriques on the other one is believed to have had enduring effects in the separation of the two cultures in Italy and to the predominance of the views of (objective) idealism over those of (logical) positivism. In the social sciences it is also commonly proposed as the quarrel of positivism versus interpretivism.
+
+== See also ==
+Culture war
+The Third Culture
+Science wars
+Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, a 1998 book written by biologist Edward Osborne Wilson, as an attempt to bridge the gap between "the two cultures"
+Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns
+Interdisciplinarity, a movement to cross boundaries between academic disciplines, including the divide between "the two cultures"
+
+== References ==
+
+== Further reading ==
+Burguete, Maria, and Lam, Lui, eds. (2008). Science Matters: Humanities as Complex Systems. World Scientific: Singapore. ISBN 978-981-283-593-2
+James, Frank A. J. L. (29 November 2016). "Introduction: Some Significances of the Two Cultures Debate" (PDF). Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. 41 (2–3): 107–117. Bibcode:2016ISRv...41..107J. doi:10.1080/03080188.2016.1223651.
+Sinclair, Andrew (1987). The Red and the Blue. Intelligence, Treason and the Universities (Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughten, U.K.) 211 pages ISBN 0-340-41687-4
+
+== External links ==
+Bragg, Melvyn. "The Two Cultures" (discussion). UK: BBC Radio 4.
+Ferris, Timothy (13 October 2011). "The World of the Intellectual vs. The World of the Engineer". Wired.
+Griffiths, Phillip (13 September 1995). "Phillip Griffiths looks at 'Two Cultures' Today". UK: St Andrews. Archived from the original on 2 November 2007.
+Precht, Richard David (2013). "Natural Sciences and Humanities: Genesis of two Worlds" (Webvideo). ZAKlessons. YouTube.
+"Are We Beyond the Two Cultures?". Seed. 7 May 2009. Archived from the original on 10 May 2009.

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

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+---
+title: "The Uninhabitable Earth (book)"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uninhabitable_Earth_(book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:56.154180+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming is a 2019 non-fiction book by David Wallace-Wells about the consequences of global warming. It was inspired by his New York magazine article "The Uninhabitable Earth" (2017).
+
+
+== Synopsis ==
+The book fleshes out Wallace-Wells' original New York magazine piece in more detail, dovetailing into discussions surrounding various possibilities for Earth's future across a spectrum of predicted future temperature ranges. Wallace-Wells' argues that even with active intervention, the effects of climate change will have catastrophic impacts across multiple spheres: rising sea levels, extreme weather events, extinctions, disease outbreaks, fires, droughts, famines, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and increased geopolitical conflict, among other calamities.
+While the book is not focused on solutions, it recognizes solutions exist to prevent the worst of the damages: "a carbon tax and the political apparatus to aggressively phase out dirty energy; a new approach to agricultural practices and a shift away from beef and dairy in the global diet; and public investment in green energy and carbon capture".
+
+
+== Reception ==
+The book has been both praised and criticized for its dramatic depictions of future life on Earth. As The Economist stated, "Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too." It was also reviewed in The Guardian, The New York Times, and Slate.  A review in The Irish Times by John Gibbons was critical of the book's primary focus on effects of climate change on humans rather than also covering impacts on other species.
+In The New Climate War, the climatologist Michael Mann dedicates 12 pages to comment on The Uninhabitable Earth. About the book, he notably writes that "while some of the blatant errors that marked the original article were largely gone, the pessimistic – and, at times, downright doomist – framing remained, as did exaggerated descriptions that fed the doomist narrative".
+
+
+== Television adaptation ==
+In January 2020, it was reported that The Uninhabitable Earth would be adapted into an anthology series on HBO Max. Each episode will be about the dangers of climate change. Adam McKay will serve as the executive producer.
+
+
+== Publications ==
+Wallace-Wells, David (February 19, 2019). The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming. New York, USA: Tim Duggan Books. ISBN 978-0-525-57670-9.  Hardcover edition.
+Wallace-Wells, David (March 17, 2020). The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming. New York, USA: Tim Duggan Books. ISBN 978-0-525-57671-6.  Paperback edition.
+
+
+== References ==

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

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+---
+title: "Transform Press"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transform_Press"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:49.153816+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Transform Press is a small publishing company in the area of psychedelics and other psychoactive drugs that is based in Berkeley, California. It is the publisher of the books of Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin and is led by Wendy Tucker, Ann Shulgin's daughter.
+The company's published books by the Shulgins include PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved) (1991), TiHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved) (1997), The Shulgin Index (2011), The Simple Plant Isoquinolines (2002), and The Nature of Drugs (2021). They have also published Ergot Alkaloids: History, Chemistry, and Therapeutic Uses (2023), an English translation by Jitka Nykodemová of Albert Hofmann's 1964 book Die Mutterkornalkaloide: Vom Mutterkorn zum LSD (The Ergot Alkaloids: From Ergot to LSD).
+According to Nick Cozzi of the Alexander Shulgin Research Institute (ASRI) in mid-2023, the group is in the process of translating Daniel Trachsel's book Phenethylamine: von der Struktur zur Funktion (Phenethylamines: From Structure to Function) into English, with tentative publication by Transform Press.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Bibliography of Alexander Shulgin
+List of psychedelic literature
+Alexander Shulgin Research Institute (ASRI)
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+Transform Press on LinkedIn

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

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+---
+title: "Transport Phenomena (book)"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Phenomena_(book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:51.583076+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Transport Phenomena is the first textbook about transport phenomena. It is specifically designed for chemical engineering students. The first edition was published in 1960, two years after having been preliminarily published under the title Notes on Transport Phenomena based on mimeographed notes prepared for a chemical engineering course taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison during the academic year 1957-1958. The second edition was published in August 2001.  A revised second edition was published in 2007. This text is often known simply as BSL after its authors' initials.
+
+
+== History ==
+As the chemical engineering profession developed in the first half of the 20th century, the concept of "unit operations" arose as being needed in the education of undergraduate chemical engineers. The theories of mass, momentum and energy transfer were being taught at that time only to the extent necessary for a narrow range of applications. As chemical engineers began moving into a number of new areas, problem definitions and solutions required a deeper knowledge of the fundamentals of transport phenomena than those provided in the textbooks then available on unit operations.
+In the 1950s, R. Byron Bird, Warren E. Stewart and Edwin N. Lightfoot stepped forward to develop an undergraduate course at the University of Wisconsin–Madison to integrate the teaching of fluid flow, heat transfer, and diffusion. From this beginning, they prepared their landmark textbook Transport Phenomena.
+
+
+== Subjects covered in the book ==
+The book is divided into three basic sections, named Momentum Transport, Energy Transport and Mass Transport:
+
+Momentum Transport
+Viscosity and the Mechanisms of Momentum Transport
+Momentum Balances and Velocity Distributions in Laminar Flow
+The Equations of Change for Isothermal Systems
+Velocity Distributions in Turbulent Flow
+Interphase Transport in Isothermal Systems
+Macroscopic Balances for Isothermal Flow Systems
+Energy Transport
+Thermal Conductivity and the Mechanisms of Energy Transport
+Energy Balances and Temperature Distributions in Solids and Laminar Flow
+The Equations of Change for Nonisothermal Systems
+Temperature Distributions in Turbulent Flow
+Interphase Transport in Nonisothermal Systems
+Macroscopic Balances for Nonisothermal Systems
+Mass transport
+Diffusivity and the Mechanisms of Mass Transport
+Concentration Distributions in Solids and Laminar Flow
+Equations of Change for Multicomponent Systems
+Concentration Distributions in Turbulent Flow
+Interphase Transport in Nonisothermal Mixtures
+Macroscopic Balances for Multicomponent Systems
+Other Mechanisms for Mass Transport
+
+
+== Word play ==
+Transport Phenomena contains many instances of hidden messages and other word play.
+For example, the first letters of each sentence of the Preface spell out "This book is dedicated to O. A. Hougen." while in the revised second edition, the first letters of each paragraph spell out "Welcome". The first letters of each paragraph in the Postface spell out "On Wisconsin".  In the first printing, in Fig. 9.L (p. 305) "Bird" is typeset safely outside the furnace wall.
+
+
+== Advantages of the first edition over the second edition ==
+According to many chemical engineering professors, the first edition is much better than the second edition. There are many reasons in this regard; The second edition has been revised many times despite the fact that there are still many defects and typographical errors in many parts of the book. On account of revision to defects of the revised second edition book, the authors published "Notes for the 2nd revised edition of TRANSPORT PHENOMENA" on 9 Aug 2011.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Chemical engineer
+Distillation Design
+Transport phenomena
+Unit Operations of Chemical Engineering
+Perry's Chemical Engineers' Handbook
+
+
+== External links ==
+Publisher's description of this book
+
+
+== References ==

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

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+---
+title: "Under a White Sky"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_a_White_Sky"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:53.815914+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future is a 2021 environmental book by Elizabeth Kolbert. The book follows many of the themes she explored in The Sixth Extinction.
+
+
+== Summary ==
+Under a White Sky is focused on the various kinds of environmental crises created by the Anthropocene and different degrees of technological solutions available to humanity to address them – while also being critical of full-blown techno-solutionism.
+The title refers to the most extreme climate change mitigation strategy, solar geoengineering, designed to reflect sunlight from the earth. Throughout the book she explores how a technological fix for one problem can lead to further problems while also acknowledging the important role those technologies might play.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+Reception of the book was generally positive. The Washington Post praised it for "expertly mix[ing] travelogue, science reporting, and explanatory journalism, all with the authority of a writer confident enough to acknowledge ambiguity." The New York Times review focused on how the book explores the ambiguities of our current environmental crisis. A NPR review described the book as "tell[ing] by showing. Without beating the reader over the head, she makes it clear how far we already are from a world of undisturbed, perfectly balanced nature – and how far we must still go to find a new balance for the planet's future that still has us humans in it." The Rolling Stone's Jeff Goodell lauded Kolbert by saying, "To be a well-informed citizen of Planet Earth, you need to read Elizabeth Kolbert..."
+Under a White Sky was shortlisted for the 2021 Wainwright Prize in the Global Conservation Writing category. The book made the long list for the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. It was selected for The Washington Post's "10 Best Books of 2021" list.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website
+Interview with the author on  WHYY "Radio Times" podcast
+Discussion on the LA Review of Books podcast

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

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+---
+title: "Under the Sea Wind"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Sea_Wind"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:54.926283+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Under the Sea Wind: A Naturalist's Picture of Ocean Life (1941) is the first book written by the American marine biologist Rachel Carson. It was published by Simon & Schuster in 1941 and received very good reviews, but sold poorly. After the great success of a sequel The Sea Around Us (Oxford, 1951), it was reissued by Oxford University Press; that edition was an alternate Book-of-the-Month Club selection and became another bestseller, and has never gone out of print. It is recognized as one of the "definitive works of American nature writing," and is in print as one of the Penguin Nature Classics.
+Under the sea-wind was reportedly Rachel Carson's personal favourite book, although first edition copies by Simon & Schuster remain scarce.
+
+
+== Background ==
+Under the Sea Wind was based on the article Undersea by Carson, published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1937. This article began as an eleven-page introduction to a government fisheries brochure, and grew into Carson's first book. Prior to publishing Undersea, she wrote marine themed radio scripts which influenced her later work. The article elaborates on ecology and the unwavering will to survive that embodies marine organisms. After the article was published, Dutch-born children's author Hendrik Van Loon became interested in Carson's work. He supported and encouraged her to continue this type of depiction of nature in her writing, as well as advising her about publishing. Carson furthered the perspectives from her article and expanded them in Under the Sea Wind, which was described as her personal favorite. The initial failure of Under the Sea Wind may have been due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and America entering World War II the same year it was published. The book became popular after the publication of the second book in the Sea Trilogy, The Sea Around Us, and it was this second text that established her as a natural history author.
+
+
+== Description ==
+Under the Sea Wind describes the behavior of organisms that live both on and in the sea on the Atlantic coast. Under the Sea Wind consists of three parts, each following a different organism that interacts with the sea, and viewing it from a personified organism's perspective. The first section, Edge of the Sea, follows a female sanderling Carson names Silverbar. The second section, The Gull's Way,  follows a mackerel named Scomber, and the third section, River and Sea follows Anguilla, an eel. The narrative follows these creature's migration habits over the span of a year.
+Viewing ocean life from a broader ecological perspective was crucial to Carson, rather than just isolating parts of the sea. The term "sea wind" was Carson's way of referring to the entirety of the shore, sea, and sky. Carson had a poetic way of writing about nature, while still maintaining the scientific accuracy of her observations. Her work draws connections between nature and home, the borders of interrelated communities, and the growing separation between man and nature. Carson took inspiration from natural history authors such as Henry Williamson and Henry Beston, and uses her scientific expertise to ground Under the Sea Wind in scientifically accurate detail on each animal's appearance, diet and behavior.
+Carson's stated goal of using poetic prose and personifying sea life was "to make the sea and its life as vivid a reality for those who may read the book as it has become for me during the past decade." This writing style brought scientific observations to a larger audience, and as stated by fellow marine environmentalist author Joel Hedgpeth in a review of the book, allowed for "turning the subject of the sea to a respectable reading matter for the clientele of the New Yorker and Reader's Digest sets, and inspiring a fashion in literature about the sea, its ways, and creatures." The style of Carson's writing makes the book suitable for children as well as adults, and the appeal is enhanced with illustrations, originally by Howard Frech. These were eventually replaced in 1991 with illustrations by Robert W. Hines. Though Under the Sea Wind is a story of struggle and chance survival, the style that Carson presents is in stark contrast to her later work, Silent Spring, which is much more dire and analytical.
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Under the Sea-wind at Faded Page (Canada)

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

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+---
+title: "Unscientific America"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unscientific_America"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:57.386548+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future is a nonfiction book by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum. It was a New York Times best seller. In the book, the authors tackle the problem of scientific illiteracy in America.  The authors criticize scientists for talking down to the misinformed and insulting the religious while calling for more friendly and magnanimous science advocates.  They also blame the New Atheist movement, the creation–evolution controversy, the entertainment industry, the media, and science skeptics.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+
+
+=== Science press ===
+The journal Science Communication gave the book a favourable review, noting that the arguments presented "may make the Ph.D. crowd even more cranky than usual." Indeed, the book did spark significant debate particularly on-line. Seed magazine selected Unscientific America as one to "read now" although it was subsequently more critical of certain aspects of the book. The BMJ, while supporting the authors' assessment of the problem, was critical of the proposed solution. It said that the book sometimes "reads like an overlong and somewhat condescending whine about why science and scientists are not sufficiently appreciated."  The New Scientist was similarly supportive of the description of the problem while being critical of the solution arguing that "by looking only at science, Unscientific America misses the big picture."  American Scientist called it "at best, a thin and unsatisfying broth."  Science was also critical calling the book "slight in both length and substance" and the analysis it contains "shallow and unreflective". This review was itself criticized by Donald Marcus of Baylor College of Medicine, who called it "a dismissive rant that misrepresents the text."  PZ Myers, who was criticised in the book, stated in his review that "It's not a badly written book, but it's something worse: it's utterly useless."
+
+
+=== Other media ===
+California Bookwatch gave it a positive review. Kenneth Krause gave it a mixed to negative review in The Humanist criticizing the lack of an explanation of "how we can interest and invest the popular media in the serious science their viewers and subscribers have so evidently rejected" while characterizing the book with Chicken Little analogies. In the popular press Gerry Rising of The Buffalo News wrote, "This important book makes clear that the turn back toward science after the strong opposition of the Bush administration, [...], falls far short of solving our nation's problems." National Defense magazine said the authors had "captured the current zietgeist" in an analysis of the challenges of recruiting and retaining qualified young professionals in the defense industry. Kirshenbaum was interviewed about the book on Science Friday.
+
+
+== Publication information ==
+Mooney, Chris; Kirshenbaum, Sheril (2009). Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-01305-0.
+
+
+== See also ==
+Antiscience
+Agnotology
+List of books about the politics of science
+Politicization of science
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Official website

data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstoppable_(Nye_book)-0.md

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+---
+title: "Unstoppable (Nye book)"
+chunk: 1/1
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unstoppable_(Nye_book)"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:58.551952+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World is a 2015 book written by Bill Nye and edited by Corey S. Powell. Published by St. Martin's Press, it is Nye's second book, after Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, also with Powell, which was also published by St. Martin's Press in 2014. The book is about how to use science to improve the environment and the challenges faced with global warming as well as raising the standard of living.
+
+
+== Reception ==
+BBC science columnist Rose Eveleth wrote a joint review in The New York Times of the audiobook versions of Unstoppable and Leonard Mlodinow's 2015 book The Upright Thinkers. Eveleth found Nye's audiobook "easy to listen to", noting the familiarity of Nye's voice to those who have watched the children's television series Bill Nye the Science Guy. However, Eveleth wrote that both books "stumble" because they "recycle well-known material", describing how Nye "spends a good chunk of his book talking about the setup of his extremely energy-efficient home ... Some of these stories are relevant and interesting. Other times, they feel forced, as if both authors knew that without a personal touch, their books would read like any other general primer on climate change or great men in science." Simon Warthall, in the introduction to an interview with Nye for National Geographic's "Book Talk" column, commented that Unstoppable "mixes science and [Nye's] trademark humor". Jennifer Kay, in a review for the Associated Press, commented on the clarity of Nye's language, writing how "Nye explains the basics of climate science without making Unstoppable feel like a textbook."
+
+
+== References ==
+
+
+== External links ==
+Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World at Google Books

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

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+---
+title: "Unweaving the Rainbow"
+chunk: 1/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:59.791725+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder is a 1998 book by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in which the author discusses the relationship between science and the arts from the perspective of a scientist.
+Dawkins addresses the misperception that science and art are at odds. Driven by the responses to his books The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker wherein readers resented his naturalistic world view, seeing it as depriving life of meaning, Dawkins felt the need to explain that, as a scientist, he saw the world as full of wonders and a source of pleasure. This pleasure was not in spite of, but rather because he does not assume as cause the inexplicable actions of a deity but rather the understandable laws of nature.
+His starting point is John Keats's well-known, light-hearted accusation that Isaac Newton destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by 'reducing it to the prismatic colours.' See Keats's poem Lamia and Edgar Allan Poe's To Science. Dawkins's agenda is to show the reader that science does not destroy, but rather discovers poetry in the patterns of nature.
+
+== Summary ==
+
+=== Preface ===
+It is of little concern whether or not science can prove that the ultimate fate of the cosmos lacks purpose: we live our lives regardless at a "human" level, according to ambitions and perceptions which come more naturally. Therefore, science should not be feared as a sort of cosmological wet blanket. In fact, those in search of beauty or poetry in their cosmology need not turn to the paranormal or even necessarily restrict themselves to the mysterious: science itself, the business of unravelling mysteries, is beautiful and poetic.  (The rest of the preface sketches an outline of the book, makes acknowledgements, etc.)
+
+=== The anaesthetic of familiarity ===
+
+==== Opening lines ====
+"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, greater scientists than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"
+
+==== Summary ====
+The first chapter describes several ways in which the universe appears beautiful and poetic when viewed scientifically.  However, it first introduces an additional reason to embrace science.  Time and space are vast, so the probability that the reader came to be alive here and now, as opposed to another time or place, was slim. More important, the probability that the reader came to be alive at all were even slimmer: the correct structure of atoms had to align in the universe.
+Given how special these circumstances are, the "noble" thing to do is employ the allotted several decades of human life towards understanding that universe. Rather than simply feeling connected with nature, one should rise above this "anaesthetic of familiarity" and observe the universe scientifically.
+
+=== Drawing room of dukes ===
+This chapter describes a third reason to embrace science (the first two being beauty and duty): improving one's performance in the arts. Science is often presented publicly in a translated format, "dumbed down" to fit the language and existing ideas of non-scientists. This offers a disservice to the public, who are capable of appreciating the beauty of the universe as deeply as a scientist can. The successful communication of unadulterated science enhances, not confuses, the arts; after all, poets (Dawkins's synonym for artists—see page 24) and scientists are motivated by a similar spirit of wonder. We should therefore battle the stereotype that science is difficult, uncool, and not useful for the common person.
+
+=== Barcodes in the stars ===
+Studying a phenomenon, such as a flower, cannot detract from its beauty.
+First, some scientists, such as Feynman, are able to appreciate the aesthetics of the flower while engaged in their study. Second, the mysteries which science unfolds lead to new and more exciting mysteries; for example, botany's findings might lead us to wonder about the workings of a fly's consciousness.
+This effect of multiplying mysteries should satisfy even those who think that scientific understanding is at odds with aesthetics, e.g. people who agree with Einstein that "the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious".
+(For evidence, the rest of this chapter discusses the fascinating science and beautiful new mysteries which followed in the wake of Newton's "unweaving" of the rainbow, e.g. his explanation of the prismatic effects of moist air.)
+
+=== Barcodes on the air ===
+This chapter offers more evidence that science is fun and poetic, by exploring sound waves, birdsong, and low-frequency phenomena such as pendula and periodic mass extinctions.
+
+=== Barcodes at the bar ===
+A fourth reason to embrace science is that it can help deliver justice in a court of law, via DNA fingerprinting or even via simple statistical reasoning.
+Everyone should learn the scientist's art of probability assessment, to make better decisions.
+
+=== Hoodwink'd with faery fancy ===
+This chapter explores what Dawkins considers to be fallacies in astrology, religion, magic, and extraterrestrial visitations. Credulity and Hume's criterion are also discussed.
+
+=== Unweaving the uncanny ===
+Amazing coincidences are much more common than we may think, and sometimes, when over-interpreted, they lead to faulty conclusions. Statistical significance tests can help determine which patterns are meaningful.

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+---
+title: "Unweaving the Rainbow"
+chunk: 2/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:59.791725+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+=== Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance ===
+Unlike "magisterial poetry" (where metaphors and pretty language are used to describe the familiar), "pupillary poetry" uses poetic imagery to assist a scientist's thinking about the exotic (e.g. consider "being" an electron temporarily). Although it is useful, some authors take pupillary poetry too far, and, "drunk on metaphor", they produce "bad science"; i.e. postulate faulty theories. This is powered by humanity's natural tendency to look for representations.
+
+=== The selfish cooperator ===
+Genes compete with each other, but this occurs within the context of collaboration, as is shown with examples involving mitochondria, bacteria, and termites. Two types of collaboration are co-adaptation (tailoring simultaneously the different parts of an organism, such as flower colour and flower markings), and co-evolution (two species changing together; e.g. predator and prey running speeds may increase together in a sort of arms race).
+
+=== The Genetic Book of the Dead ===
+The body of any organism provides clues about its habitat. The genes allow one to reconstruct a picture of the range of ways of life that the species has experienced; in this sense DNA would act as a palimpsestic "digital archive" if only its language of encoding history could be fully understood. Finally, the curious genetics of cuckoos is discussed.
+
+=== Reweaving the world ===
+The brain is akin to a powerful computer, which creates a sort of virtual reality to model economically the environment. Neural circuitry is discussed, and a comparison is made between brains and genes: albeit over different time scales, both record the environment's past to help the organism make the optimal actions in the (predicted) future.
+
+=== The balloon of the mind ===
+The simultaneous explosions in hardware and software of the 20th century are together an example of what Dawkins calls "self-feeding co-evolution".
+A similar event occurred over a longer time scale (millions of years) when the minds and brains of our ancestors simultaneously improved very rapidly. Five possible triggers of this improvement were: language, map reading, ballistics, memes, and metaphors/analogies.
+
+==== Conclusion ====
+The final two paragraphs of The balloon of the mind conclude by saying that human beings are the only animal with a sense of purpose in life, and that that purpose should be to construct a comprehensive model of how the universe works.
+
+== Petwhac ==
+The book coins the acronymical term, petwhac, short for "Population of Events That Would Have Appeared Coincidental". Dawkins suggests that when one encounters an extremely unlikely coincidence, it should be considered in the broader context of other, similar events which would also have seemed coincidental.
+An example would be a person on a foreign holiday encountering a friend they had not seen for years. In isolation this may feel like an impossible coincidence, but considering the wider petwhac (meeting any friend from around the same period, or meeting an acquaintance, or not meeting them but being told weeks later that they had been in the same city at that time) the true odds are more likely. In short, the bigger the petwhac, the stronger case you have to avoid ascribing something to fate or coincidence.
+Dawkins offers several examples of petwhacs in the book, two of which are the bedside clock of a woman (Richard Feynman's wife) stopping exactly when she died, and a psychic who stops the watches of his television audience.
+The first is explained by the fact that the clock had a mechanical defect which made it stop when tilted off the horizontal, which is what a nurse did to read the time of death in poor lighting conditions. The matter of the watches, in Dawkins's own words, is explained thus —
+
+If somebody's watch stopped three weeks after the spell was cast, even the most credulous would prefer to put it down to chance. We need to decide how large a delay would have been judged by the audience as sufficiently simultaneous with the psychic's announcement to impress. About five minutes is certainly safe, especially since he can keep talking to each caller for a few minutes before the next call ceases to seem roughly simultaneous. There are about 100,000 five-minute periods in a year. The probability that any given watch, say mine, will stop in a designated five-minute period is about 1 in 100,000. Low odds, but there are 10 million people watching the show. If only half of them are wearing watches, we could expect about 25 of those watches to stop in any given minute. If only a quarter of these ring into the studio, that is 6 calls, more than enough to dumbfound a naïve audience. Especially when you add in the calls from people whose watches stopped the day before, people whose watches didn't stop but whose grandfather clocks did, people who died of heart attacks and their bereaved relatives phoned in to say that their 'ticker' gave out, and so on.
+
+== Notes ==
+
+== External links ==

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+---
+title: "Unweaving the Rainbow"
+chunk: 3/3
+source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unweaving_the_Rainbow"
+category: "reference"
+tags: "science, encyclopedia"
+date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:06:59.791725+00:00"
+instance: "kb-cron"
+---
+
+Video interview with Dawkins about the book, Charlie Rose, 11 April 2000]
+Dawkins's Rainbow Reduces Science to Truth, Beauty—and Fantasy – reviewed by Robert N. Proctor, American Scientist.
+Richard Dawkins: The man who knows the meaning of life Archived 31 August 2009 at the Wayback Machine review from The Guardian.
+How, Why and Wow! Archived 1 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine – reviewed by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Spectator.
+There is Poetry in Science – reviewed by Melvyn Bragg, The Observer.
+Everyone a Scientist Archived 7 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine – reviewed by John Gribbin, The Literary Review.
+The Poetry of Science – reviewed by Sam Hurwitt, The San Francisco Examiner.
+The Science of Selfishness – reviewed by Andrew Brown, Salon.
+Nature of Science: A Wondrous and Poetic Spectrum Archived 1 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine reviewed by Charles M. Vest, Science.
+Frauds! Fakes! Phonies! – reviewed by Timothy Ferris, The New York Times.
+Unweaving the Rainbow  Archived 24 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine reviewed by Paul R. Gross, The Wall Street Journal.
+Finding Awe, Reverence, and Wonder in Science – reviewed by Kendrick Frazier, Skeptical Inquirer.
+Unweaving the Rainbow – review from The Complete Review.
+The Scientist As Poet – Arthur Winfree's 1964 essay