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How Old is Time?: Short Stories from Science, History and Philosophy
"I travel a lot around the world, I regularly follow the world's most notable news sources, and I often socialize with prominent intellectuals in various parts of the world, but the best short stories about science I encounter are those I find at home in my native Slovenia. The essays on science by my colleague Sašo Dolenc are not only fresh, exciting and entertaining but also very diverse, as they cover various topics from the social sciences and philosophy as well as technology, mathematics and the natural sciences. His books come closest to what we could call the royal road to knowledge."
-- Renata Salecl, philosopher and author of The Tyranny of Choice
The aim of the writings collected in this series is to present some key scientific events, ideas and personalities in the form of short stories that are easy and fun to read. Scientific and philosophical concepts are explained in a way that anyone may understand. Each story may be read separately, but at the same time, they all band together to form a wide-ranging introduction to the history of science and areas of contemporary scientific research, as well as some of the recurring problems science has encountered in history and the philosophical dilemmas it raises today.
CONTENTS
ATOMS
How old is time? 11
Conquering absolute zero 16
In search of the perfect machine 21
Baby pictures of the universe 26
How the universe was made 30
The beginnings of quantum physics 35
The Tao of science 39
A particle that wasn't there 44
BRAIN
The biology of ethics 51
How pleasure works 56
Thinking about alternatives 60
Why does digital music only make sense to a human ear? 64
Humans are co-operative creatures 69
What really causes addiction? 74
The power of ignorance and uncertainty 78
The biology of watching 83
The winner brain 88
How to build an artificial brain 92
Signing with numbers 97
LIFE
Do genes have memory? 103
The Gaia hypothesis 109
When nature falls silent 114
How would the world look like without fossil fuels? 119
CRISPR – biotechnology of the future 123
The placebo effect: how does it work? 128
Medicine: does the end justify the means? 133
What helps doctors make decisions? 137
Unusual theories about our senses 142
Food is more than a war between good and bad 146
SOCIETY
A third sex? 153
The psychology of terrorism and radicalization 158
The dilemma of a travelling salesman 163
Strangers in their own land 168
Social physics 173
The second machine age 178
What makes a good teacher? 183
The secret formula for making a hit 188
The new generation of cyber warriors 192
The Supreme Court’s sentencing algorithm 197
Why do we need privacy? 202
The battle for the Internet 206
Stories about money 211
How scientific journals became a lucrative business 216
Driverless cars - how do they work? 221
HISTORY
How logic was born from the crisis of Athenian democracy 229
The dangerous blend of love and logic 234
Hollywood star and military inventor 240
The world's most important scientist meets world’s most famous philosopher 245
The American physicist who taught the Japanese about quality 250
How a philosopher helped a scientist get a Nobel Prize 255
Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and the clash of the rich 258
The real Albert Einstein 262
Countess Ada of Lovelace – pioneer of computer science 267
A dangerous mathematical theory 272
-- Renata Salecl, philosopher and author of The Tyranny of Choice
The aim of the writings collected in this series is to present some key scientific events, ideas and personalities in the form of short stories that are easy and fun to read. Scientific and philosophical concepts are explained in a way that anyone may understand. Each story may be read separately, but at the same time, they all band together to form a wide-ranging introduction to the history of science and areas of contemporary scientific research, as well as some of the recurring problems science has encountered in history and the philosophical dilemmas it raises today.
CONTENTS
ATOMS
How old is time? 11
Conquering absolute zero 16
In search of the perfect machine 21
Baby pictures of the universe 26
How the universe was made 30
The beginnings of quantum physics 35
The Tao of science 39
A particle that wasn't there 44
BRAIN
The biology of ethics 51
How pleasure works 56
Thinking about alternatives 60
Why does digital music only make sense to a human ear? 64
Humans are co-operative creatures 69
What really causes addiction? 74
The power of ignorance and uncertainty 78
The biology of watching 83
The winner brain 88
How to build an artificial brain 92
Signing with numbers 97
LIFE
Do genes have memory? 103
The Gaia hypothesis 109
When nature falls silent 114
How would the world look like without fossil fuels? 119
CRISPR – biotechnology of the future 123
The placebo effect: how does it work? 128
Medicine: does the end justify the means? 133
What helps doctors make decisions? 137
Unusual theories about our senses 142
Food is more than a war between good and bad 146
SOCIETY
A third sex? 153
The psychology of terrorism and radicalization 158
The dilemma of a travelling salesman 163
Strangers in their own land 168
Social physics 173
The second machine age 178
What makes a good teacher? 183
The secret formula for making a hit 188
The new generation of cyber warriors 192
The Supreme Court’s sentencing algorithm 197
Why do we need privacy? 202
The battle for the Internet 206
Stories about money 211
How scientific journals became a lucrative business 216
Driverless cars - how do they work? 221
HISTORY
How logic was born from the crisis of Athenian democracy 229
The dangerous blend of love and logic 234
Hollywood star and military inventor 240
The world's most important scientist meets world’s most famous philosopher 245
The American physicist who taught the Japanese about quality 250
How a philosopher helped a scientist get a Nobel Prize 255
Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison and the clash of the rich 258
The real Albert Einstein 262
Countess Ada of Lovelace – pioneer of computer science 267
A dangerous mathematical theory 272
232 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 23, 2018
19 people are currently reading
17 people want to read
About the author
Sašo Dolenc
25 books26 followersSašo Dolenc is a science writer and a philosopher of science from Ljubljana, Slovenia. He studied physics and philosophy at University of Ljubljana and obtained PhD degree in 2002.
He is the Editor in Chief of the popular online science journal Kvarkadabra, whose mission is to explain science in a simple, attractive and fun form that is open to all. The journal was one of the nominees for the EU Descartes Prize for Science Communication.
So far, Sašo Dolenc has written 13 books and more than 400 scientific essays on the interplay of science, philosophy and history of ideas. His writings were published in the main national newspapers and magazines.
He is the Editor in Chief of the popular online science journal Kvarkadabra, whose mission is to explain science in a simple, attractive and fun form that is open to all. The journal was one of the nominees for the EU Descartes Prize for Science Communication.
So far, Sašo Dolenc has written 13 books and more than 400 scientific essays on the interplay of science, philosophy and history of ideas. His writings were published in the main national newspapers and magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 19, 2022
Random, fun, interesting.
Super fun book that explain many different subjects in an easy way to understand. I enjoyed it and it was an easy book to read
Super fun book that explain many different subjects in an easy way to understand. I enjoyed it and it was an easy book to read
August 19, 2021
"This perception of nature as a harmonic whole that can be thrown out of balance by external influences quickly caught on because it was simple, clear, and contained explicit instructions for use. The environment needed to be purged of all "chemicals" and of all that was "artificial" and should be kept "natural" and "organic," containing only elements that could bear the prefix "bio-".
A trend of oversimplifying things soon developed. It reached the degree where everything artificial was seen as bad and all that is natural as good, and became an important part of our intuitive image of the world. Our brains internalized this rule and resort to it frequently, in split-second emotional reactions, when faced with a dilemma. But unfortunately trusting too much in this simplification has also led to the rise of a number of collective delusions over the last few decades."
A trend of oversimplifying things soon developed. It reached the degree where everything artificial was seen as bad and all that is natural as good, and became an important part of our intuitive image of the world. Our brains internalized this rule and resort to it frequently, in split-second emotional reactions, when faced with a dilemma. But unfortunately trusting too much in this simplification has also led to the rise of a number of collective delusions over the last few decades."
November 18, 2018
Excellent work!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews