Scientific News
Articles across mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy.
Science
The Story of Science in America
The Story of Science in America is a 1967 science book by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp, illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher, published by Charles Scribner's Sons. It has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Burmese and French.
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Scientologie, Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens
Scientologie, Wissenschaft von der Beschaffenheit und der Tauglichkeit des Wissens (Scientology: Science of the Constitution and Usefulness of Knowledge) is a 1934 book published by Anastasius Nordenholz, in which he defines the term "Scientologie" or "Eidologie" as a science of knowing or knowledge and discusses the philosophical implications of the concept. The book has been cited by some as a p
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The Symbolic Species
The Symbolic Species is a 1997 book by biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon on the evolution of language. Combining perspectives from neurobiology, evolutionary theory, linguistics, and semiotics, Deacon proposes that language, along with the unique human capacity for symbolic thought, co-evolved with the brain. The Symbolic Species is a multi-disclipinary book that at the time of publishing
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Scientific Memoirs
Scientific Memoirs, Selected from the Transactions of Foreign Academies of science and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals was a series of books edited and published by Richard Taylor (1781–1858) in London between 1837 and 1852. After 1852 the publication continued in two series: Natural Philosophy, edited by J. Tyndall and William Francis; and, Natural history, edited by Arthur Henfrey an
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Sleepers, Wake!
Sleepers, Wake! Technology and the Future of Work is a book written by Barry Jones, originally published in 1982 and reprinted many times. A revised and updated edition was published in 1995. Based on the premise that technologically advanced nations are currently passing through a post-industrial or information revolution, Jones analyzes the unique threats and opportunities of the sudden rise in
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The Simple Plant Isoquinolines
The Simple Plant Isoquinolines is a 2002 book written by Alexander Shulgin and Wendy Perry about isoquinoline and tetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloids, for instance the various cyclized phenethylamine mescaline analogues found in many cactus species. It was published by Transform Press.
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The Sea Around Us
The Sea Around Us is a prize-winning and best-selling book by the American marine biologist Rachel Carson, first published as a whole by Oxford University Press in 1951. It reveals the science and poetry of the sea while ranging from its primeval beginnings to the latest scientific probings. Often described as "poetic," it was Carson's second published book and the one that launched her into the p
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Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber
Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions by the English writer John Evelyn was first presented in 1662 as a paper to the Royal Society. It was published as a book two years later in 1664, and is recognised as one of the most influential texts on forestry ever published. A second edition with new engravings was published in 1670, and a third edi
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Six-legged Soldiers
Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War is a nonfiction scientific warfare book written by author and University of Wyoming professor, Jeffrey A. Lockwood. Published in 2008 by Oxford University Press, the book explores the history of bioterrorism, entomological warfare, biological warfare, and the prevention of agro-terrorism from the earliest times to modern threats. Lockwood, an en
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The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet
The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet: Tools of Scientific Revolutions is a non-fiction scientific book by physicist Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus of Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in the U.S. It was first published in 1999 by Oxford University Press, and is based on lectures he gave in 1997 at New York Public Library.
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The Territorial Imperative
The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations is a 1966 nonfiction book by American writer Robert Ardrey. It characterizes an instinct among humans toward territoriality and the implications of this to property ownership and nation building. The Territorial Imperative was influential at the time, and encouraged public interest in human origins. The
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The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History is a 2014 nonfiction book written by Elizabeth Kolbert and published by Henry Holt and Company. The book argues that the Earth is in the midst of a modern, man-made, sixth extinction. In the book, Kolbert chronicles previous mass extinction events, and compares them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions during our present time. She also describes spe
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The Social Contract (Ardrey book)
The Social Contract: A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Sources of Order and Disorder is a 1970 book by Robert Ardrey. It is the third in his four-book Nature of Man Series. The book extended Ardrey's refutation of the prevailing conviction within social sciences that all social behavior is purely learned and not governed by innate patterns. Through interwoven analyses of animals and human s
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Thing Explainer
Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words is a 2015 illustrated non-fiction book created by Randall Munroe, in which the author attempts to explain various complex subjects using only the 1,000 most common English words. The word "thousand" is not one of those most-used words, thus things are described using "the ten hundred words people use the most often." Munroe conceptualized the book
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The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe (book)
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe: How to Know What's Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake is a 2018 book meant to be an all-encompassing guide to skeptical thinking written by Steven Novella and co-authored by other hosts of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast – Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein. It also contains material from former co-host Perr
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Superior: The Return of Race Science
Superior: The Return of Race Science is a non-fiction book by Angela Saini published in 2019. Built around interviews with experts, the scientific consensus, and the author's analysis, it argues that some fields of biology are still influenced by the discredited scientific racism theories of the 19th century.
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Stuff Matters
Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World is a 2014 non-fiction book by the British materials scientist Mark Miodownik. The book explores many of the common materials people encounter during their daily lives and seeks to explain the science behind them in an accessible manner. Miodownik devotes a chapter each to ten such materials, discussing their scientific
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Science
The Shulgin Index
The Shulgin Index, Volume One: Psychedelic Phenethylamines and Related Compounds is a 2011 book written by Alexander Shulgin, Tania Manning, and Paul F. Daley and published by Transform Press. It is about psychedelic substituted phenethylamines and related compounds and their chemistry and pharmacology. The book discusses 126 main compounds from this family as well as 1,300 compounds discussed in
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Science
Sneeze: The History and Science of the Common Cold
Sneeze: The History and Science of the Common Cold is a 2026 book by British infectious disease immunologist David Miles. This book examines the history of the cold virus, myths about it, and how best to combat the spread. The book is written for the lay audience and does not include an index. This book was published by August Books, and it was released March 16, 2026, everywhere but Canada and th
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How the Self Controls Its Brain
How the Self Controls Its Brain is a book by Sir John Eccles, proposing a theory of philosophical dualism, and offering a justification of how there can be mind-brain action without violating the principle of the conservation of energy. The model was developed jointly with the nuclear physicist Friedrich Beck in the period 1991–1992. Eccles called the fundamental neural units of the cerebral corte
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Lands Beyond
Lands Beyond is a study of geographical myths by L. Sprague de Camp and Willy Ley, first published in hardcover by Rinehart in 1952, and reissued by Barnes & Noble in 1993. It has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. It was the winner of the 1953 International Fantasy Award for nonfiction.
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I Am a Strange Loop
I Am a Strange Loop is a 2007 book by Douglas Hofstadter, examining in depth the concept of a strange loop to explain the sense of "I". The concept of a strange loop was originally developed in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.
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In the Name of Science
In the Name of Science is a book written by Harold L. Nieburg in 1966 concerning the political uses of science. It focuses on American defense spending on science and the U.S. military-industrial complex, and was one of the first books to discuss this issue at length. A summary appears in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 22 (March 1966), pp. 20–24, as R and D in the Contract State: Throwing A
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Natural Obsessions
Natural Obsessions is a book written by American science author Natalie Angier published in 1988. It chronicles a year in the laboratories of two prominent cancer biologists during a period where there was a race to discover and characterize some of the first cancer-causing and cancer-suppressing genes.
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Life and Energy
Life and Energy is a 1962 book by Isaac Asimov. It is about the biological and physical world, and their contrasts and comparisons. Thus the book is divided into two sections, which is separated by further sub-sections (i.e. chapters): 1) energy; 2) body. In order to accomplish its goal, the book starts with "layman" discussions about energy and how these can be used to single out human from other
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Lexicon Technicum
Lexicon Technicum: or, An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences: Explaining not only the Terms of Art, but the Arts Themselves was in many respects the first alphabetical encyclopedia written in English, compiled by John Harris, with the first volume published in 1704 and the second in 1710. Although the emphasis of the Lexicon Technicum was on mathematical subjects, its contents go
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John Drury Clark
John Drury Clark, Ph.D. (August 15, 1907 – July 6, 1988) was an American rocket fuel developer, chemist, and science fiction writer. He was instrumental in the revival of interest in Robert E. Howard's Conan stories and influenced the writing careers of L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt, and other authors.
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The Human Zoo (book)
The Human Zoo is a book written by the British zoologist Desmond Morris, published in 1969. It is a follow-up to his earlier book The Naked Ape; both books examine how the biological nature of the human species has shaped the character of the cultures of the contemporary world. The Human Zoo examines the nature of civilised society, especially in the cities. Morris compares the human inhabitants
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Interpretation of Schizophrenia
Interpretation of Schizophrenia (first edition, 1955) is a book by Italy-born American psychiatrist Silvano Arieti in which the author sets forth demonstrative evidence of a psychological etiology for schizophrenia. Arieti expanded the book vastly in 1974 (ISBN 0-465-03429-2) and that edition won the U.S. National Book Award in the Science category. Interpretation of schizophrenia is a 756-page bo
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The Internet Galaxy
The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society is a book by Manuel Castells, Professor of Sociology and Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. The title is a reference to The Gutenberg Galaxy, a 1962 book by Marshall McLuhan. It is regarded as a good introduction to Social informatics.
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Laboratory Life
Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts is a 1979 book by sociologists of science Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar. This influential book in the field of science studies presents an anthropological study of Roger Guillemin's scientific laboratory at the Salk Institute. It advances a number of observations regarding how scientific work is conducted, including descriptions of the
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Life Science Library
The Life Science Library is a series of hardbound books published by Time Life between 1963 and 1967. Each of the 26 volumes explores a major topic of the natural sciences at a level appropriate to an educated lay readership. In each volume, the text of each of eight chapters is followed by a "Picture Essay" illustrating the subject of the preceding chapter. They were available in a monthly subscr
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Incomplete Nature
Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter is a 2011 book by biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon. The book covers topics in biosemiotics, philosophy of mind, and the origins of life. Broadly, the book seeks to naturalistically explain "aboutness", that is, concepts like intentionality, meaning, normativity, purpose, and function; which Deacon groups together and labels as ententional ph
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Inside the Atom
Inside the Atom is a popular science book by American author Isaac Asimov. The first edition of the book was published in 1956 by Abelard-Schuman. Revised editions were brought out in subsequent years.
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The Hunting Hypothesis
The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man (commonly known as The Hunting Hypothesis) is a 1976 work of paleoanthropology by Robert Ardrey. It is the final book in his widely read Nature of Man Series, which also includes African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative (1966). The work deals with the ramifications of evolutionarily inherited trait
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The Kingdom of Speech
The Kingdom of Speech is a critique of Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky written by Tom Wolfe. The book's criticisms of Chomsky are outlined in an article in Harper's. In the book, Wolfe criticises Darwin and his colleagues for taking partial credit from Alfred Wallace for the theory of evolution and ignoring Wallace's later work on the theory. Wolfe then criticises Noam Chomsky for dismissing Danie
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How to Build a Dinosaur
How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever is a 2009 book by paleontologist Jack Horner and James Gorman. The book outlines Horner's theory for being able to resurrect a maniraptoran dinosaur by altering the genes of a chicken embryo. In 2010, a paperback version was published under the title How to Build a Dinosaur: The New Science of Reverse Evolution.
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How To (book)
How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems is a book by Randall Munroe in which the author provides absurd suggestions based in scientific fact on ways to solve some common and some absurd problems. The book contains a range of possible real-world and absurd problems, each the focus of a single chapter. The book was released on September 3, 2019.
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The Idiot Brain
The Idiot Brain is a 2016 science book by comedian and neuroscientist Dean Burnett. The book was published in the United Kingdom by Faber and Faber. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Goodreads Best Science & Technology Book Award.
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The Icepick Surgeon
The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science is a 2021 American nonfiction book written by Sam Kean and published by Little, Brown and Company. It features a series of stories throughout the past several centuries involving abuses and crimes committed by scientists in the pursuit of knowledge at all costs. Extensive documents an
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Gerhard Herzberg
Gerhard Heinrich Friedrich Otto Julius Herzberg, (German: [ˈɡeːɐ̯.haʁt ˈhɛʁt͡sˌbɛʁk] ; December 25, 1904 – March 3, 1999) was a German-Canadian pioneering physicist and physical chemist, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1971, "for his contributions to the knowledge of electronic structure and geometry of molecules, particularly free radicals". Herzberg's main work concerned atomic and mol
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Magia Naturalis
Magia Naturalis is a 1558 work of natural magic written by Giambattista della Porta. The first edition consists of four books that draw upon classical sources and craft knowledge, encompassings topics that range from growing plants, transforming metals, and for creating illusions through natural, rather than sorcerous, means. It has been called "one of the great masterpieces of the Renaissance phi
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The Millennial Project
The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps by Marshall T. Savage is a book (published in 1992 and reprinted in 1994 with an introduction by Arthur C. Clarke) in the field of exploratory engineering that gives a series of concrete stages the author believes will lead to interstellar colonization. Many specific scientific and engineering details are presented, as are numerous
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The Mind of God
The Mind of God is a 1992 non-fiction book by Paul Davies. Subtitled The Scientific Basis for a Rational World, it is a whirlwind tour and explanation of theories, both physical and metaphysical, regarding ultimate causes. Its title comes from a quotation from Stephen Hawking: "If we do discover a theory of everything...it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would truly know
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The New Inquisition
The New Inquisition is a book written by Robert Anton Wilson and first published in 1986. The New Inquisition is a book about ontology, science, paranormal events, and epistemology. Wilson identifies what he calls "Fundamentalist Materialism" belief and compares it to religious fundamentalism.
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The Naked Ape
The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal is a 1967 book by English zoologist and ethologist Desmond Morris that looks at humans as a species and compares them to other animals. The Human Zoo, a follow-up book by Morris that examined the behaviour of people in cities, was published in 1969.
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The Panda's Thumb (book)
The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History (1980) is a collection of 31 essays by the Harvard University paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. It is the second volume culled from his 27-year monthly column "This View of Life" in Natural History magazine. Recurring themes of the essays are evolution and its teaching, science biography, probabilities and common sense. The title essay (of 19
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Man and Power
Man and Power: the Story of Power from the Pyramids to the Atomic Age is a science book for children by L. Sprague de Camp, illustrated with documents, photographs by Russ Kinne, Roman Vishniac, and others, and paintings by Alton S. Tobey, first published in hardcover by Golden Press in 1961.
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Loimologia
Loimologia, or, an historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665, With precautionary Directions against the like Contagion is a treatise by Dr. Nathaniel Hodges (1629–1688), originally published in London in Latin (Loimologia, sive, Pestis nuperæ apud populum Londinensem grassantis narratio historica) in 1672; an English translation was later published in London in 1720. The treatise provides
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The Meme Machine
The Meme Machine is a popular science book by Susan Blackmore on the subject of memes. Blackmore attempts to constitute memetics as a science by discussing its empirical and analytic potential, as well as some important problems with memetics. The first half of the book tries to create greater clarity about the definition of the meme as she sees it. The last half of the book consists of a number o
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