|
Product Description
Drawing on the lives of five great scientists, this “scholarly, insightful, and beautifully written book” (Martin Rees, author of From Here to Infinity) illuminates the path to scientific discovery.Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein all made groundbreaking contributions to their fields—but each also stumbled badly. Darwin’s theory of natural selection shouldn’t have worked, according to the prevailing beliefs of his time. Lord Kelvin gravely miscalculated the age of the earth. Linus Pauling, the world’s premier chemist, constructed an erroneous model for DNA in his haste to beat the competition to publication. Astrophysicist Fred Hoyle dismissed the idea of a “Big Bang” origin to the universe (ironically, the caustic name he gave to this event endured long after his erroneous objections were disproven). And Albert Einstein speculated incorrectly about the forces of the universe—and that speculation opened the door to brilliant conceptual leaps. As Mario Livio luminously explains in this “thoughtful meditation on the course of science itself” (The New York Times Book Review), these five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on earth, the evolution of the earth, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors.
“Thoughtful, well-researched, and beautifully written” (The Washington Post), Brilliant Blunders is a wonderfully insightful examination of the psychology of five fascinating scientists—and the mistakes as well as the achievements that made them famous.
Features
- National Bestseller
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas
- Why?: What Makes Us Curious
- Why?: What Makes Us Curious
- The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved: How Mathematical Genius Discovered the Language of Symmetry
- Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World
- Feynman
- Is God a Mathematician?
- The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number
- What Color Is My World?: The Lost History of African-American Inventors
- Ada Byron Lovelace & the Thinking Machine
*If this is not the "Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein - Colossal Mistakes by Great Scientists That Changed Our" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Oct 24, 2024 13:32 +08.