Reads tagged with “science”
The Art of Knowing What to Do in Life: Pioneering Astronomer Maria Mitchell on Purpose Beyond Expectation and Choice Unbounded by Convention
On rising above the maze of conditions and conditionings that limit who we can be.
Wonder-Sighting in the Medieval World: Stunning Sixteenth-Century Drawings of Comets, with Carl Sagan’s Poetic Meditation on Their Science
“A comet is … a great clock, ticking out decades or geological ages once each perihelion passage, reminding us of the beauty and harmony of the Newtonian universe, and of the daunting insignificance of our place in space and time.”
Trailblazing 18th-Century Mathematician Émilie du Châtelet, Who Popularized Newton, on Gender in Science and the Nature of Genius
“One must know what one wants to be. In the latter endeavors irresolution produces false steps, and in the life of the mind confused ideas.”
Meet Mary Somerville: The Brilliant Woman for Whom the Word “Scientist” Was Coined
How a Scottish polymath forever changed the course of gender in science and made a high art of connecting the seemingly disconnected.
16 Overall Favorite Books of 2016
From loneliness to love to black holes, by way of Neil Gaiman, Annie Dillard, and Mary Oliver.
Encke’s Comet, Celestial Poetics, and the Dawn of Popular Astronomy: How Emma Converse Became the Carl Sagan of the 19th Century
“The moment so long looked for may be nearer than we think, when, with a powerful grasp, like that of Newton, some watcher of the stars shall seize the secret of cometic history.”
Sleep Demons: Bill Hayes on REM, the Poetics of Yawns, and Maurice Sendak’s Antidote to Insomnia
“Sleep acts … more like an emotion than a bodily function. As with desire, it resists pursuit. Sleep must come find you.”
Remembering Vera Rubin: The Trailblazing Astrophysicist Who Confirmed the Existence of Dark Matter and Paved the Way for Modern Women in Science
“We have peered into a new world and have seen that it is more mysterious and more complex than we had imagined. Still more mysteries of the universe remain hidden. Their discovery awaits the adventurous scientists of the future. I like it this way.”
Physicist David Bohm on Creativity
“No really creative transformation can possibly be effected by human beings … unless they are in the creative state of mind that is generally sensitive to the differences that always exist between the observed fact and any preconceived ideas, however noble, beautiful, and magnificent they may seem to be.”
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