Product Description
This collection of essays, published to celebrate the 150th anniversary of "Scientific American", covers the themes of discovery, understanding, technological capability, and optimism. It explores in detail the following topics: the birth of the universe; the emergence of life; and the future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Life in the Universe
This is an outstanding read for anyone who is interested in the big picture.Mr. Sagan is a master of revealing man's folly and stresses the importance of critical thinking skills all the while revealing the majesty of the universe and its potential for life elsewhere.This is a must for any responsible thinking individual.

NOT ENOUGH STAR STUFF
As a Sagan fan I was hoping for more. The lectures are out of date, of course, and the statisics are totally off the wall now with new info for 15 years but I knew and expect that going in. What disappointed me was that this very small collection has so much repetative material. The man gave lectures for 30 years on TV, talk shows, radio, books and in hundreds of classes and all that they could find was a few repeat lectures?
It still gets 3 stars because if you haven't heard Sagan, and you have any interest in if "we are alone," then this is still a worth while buy. If you'd like to him at his best try "The Demon Haunted World." ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document is an article from Skeptic (Altadena, CA), published by Skeptics Society & Skeptic Magazine on December 22, 2002. The length of the article is 2659 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Farewell, fossilface: a memoir of Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002).
Author: Richard Milner
Publication: Skeptic (Altadena, CA) (Refereed)
Date: December 22, 2002
Publisher: Skeptics Society & Skeptic Magazine
Volume: 9Issue: 4Page: 30(6)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
This text is a metaphor for the way individuals and unpredictable events influence history. In response history, suggests the author, is the best model for evolution. The author explores the science of improbable outcomes in this wide ranging book written on the evolutionary theme. ... Read more

Product Description
Stephen Jay Gould's writing remains the modern standard by which popular science writing is judged. Ever since the late 1970s, his monthly essay in Natural History and his full-length books have bridged the yawning gap between science and wider culture. This fascinating new collection of essays from Natural History is his next to last. Gould has once again applied biographical perspectives to the illumination of key scientific concepts and their history, ranging from the origins of palaeontology to modern eugenics and genetic engineering. As always, the essays brilliantly illuminate and elucidate the puzzles and paradoxes great and small that have fuelled the enterprise of science and opened our eyes to a world of unexpected wonders. ... Read more

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First published in 1988, a collection of review articles on modern science, in which the author provides fresh insight into geology and evolution, criticises the misuse of genetics for political purposes, and explores the uses and abuses of scientific methods. ... Read more

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An exuberant and offbeat guide to Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard masterwork, the Well-Tempered Clavier, presents a series of forty-eight essays--one for each of the piece's fugues--that incisively illuminate one of the world's most famous musical works. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Bachfor bozos
I picked up this book with some excitement. Bach's 48 has been for me, as for many others, a great scource of spiritual nourishment. I had hoped for a book that would be enlightening and penetrating. Anything that grandly describes itself as a listener's guide, really should be able to get into the guts of the music. Alas no!
I find it hard to understand why this book was ever written let alone published. It is really quite feeble. Virtually nothing is said about the preludes, except that the author gives us a league table of his favourites, as he does the fugues. The fugues themselves are described in dreary terms of entries of subjects. Rarely is the emotional content mentioned.
The writer describes the charming c minor fuguefrom book one as the greatest of them all and dismisses the glorious b minor fugue as 'not one of his favourites'. He seems to have derived this opinion from statistical analysis. I doubt if many share his view.
The book is deeply schizophrenic. On one hand it wishes to appear learned and uses terms like stretti and inversion, and on the other, it wants to use expressions derived from baseball and popular culture. The two parts do not gel. The populist parts seem lightweight and the erudition heavy handed.
Ultimately, Bach's achievement in these pieces is greater than merely counting the number of entries of a subject or when it is being inverted, It is music with a heart and soul.
My advise is avoid, and spend your money buying the music itself.

Not great, not good, but informative
There's a good chance that those who find D. Hofstadter entertaining will like this book: it's very much in the same vein as his works. Those who can't stand Hofstadter, or actually know something about music, will probably hate it. Altschuler just has this grating tone; it's as if he wants you to believe everything he's saying is worth its weight in gold; perhaps it's because he went to an ivy school. Poor boy.

I read some insightful words about Hofstadter's GEB lately, and they apply here as well: "mathematicians find the mathematics almost dangerously oversimplified, but the stuff about music interesting; musicians find the talk about music banal, but the stuff about math interesting." In other words, when you mix two or more branches of knowledge with the intent of coming to some sort of synthetic point of view, you should probably know what you are talking about!

Trainspotters guide to Bach
Eric Lewin Altschuler loves lists. At the back of this book, and referred to throughout the text, are lists of his top ten preludes and fugues, andeven his top ten subjects and episodes. This self-confessed "diskjockey for Bach" can't help trivializing the music with his tone offorced jocularity and "delightfully irreverent" analogies to suchsubjects as football games, sex and horror movies. It's not all bad,however. The essays could provide an entry point for those nervous ofgetting to know this wonderful music alone. The basic analysis is good, andthe summaries of form are an easy way of following what's going on in thefugues. Grown up alternatives? Donald Tovey's short analysis pieces arestill the best. Cecil Gray's book on the 48, although grumpy and quirkylike the author, is interesting. Both are hard to get hold of, though.Altschuler's book can be found in second hand stores - just look out forthe gaudy cover.

Good resource to better aprreciate Bach
The Well Tempered Clavier is a refreshing book which enlightened me to many details of Bach's compositons.Helpful observations on Bach's fugues made reading the Well Tempered Clavier as enjoyable as having a greatconversation with a passionate music lover.Alstschuler had a lot ofinteresting details on compositon and music history.As a songwritermyself, the insights into many of the techniques Bach employed to keep thelistener enthralled were especially valuable. It seemed every page wasfilled with at least one extremely interesting observation. This very goodbook was a very pleasant reading experience. ... Read more

Product Description
A mind-expanding discussion of millenarianism by four brilliant thinkers -- now in paperback.

There is nothing special about the year 2000, yet the start of the third millennium proved a focus for many deep anxieties and expectations. Four of the world's boldest and most celebrated thinkers offer a vast range of insights into how we make sense of time: paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould on dating the Creation, evolutionary "deep time," and the need for ecological ethics on a human scale; Umberto Eco, novelist, medievalist, and Web fanatic, on the brave new world of cyberspace and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity, and access to knowledge; screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière on "the art of slowness" and attitudes toward time in non-Western cultures; and Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Diversity is not all
This work does not really hang together very well. Each of the respective contributors does his own thing.
The work contains according to the book - jacket these essays. " Paleontologist Stephen Jay Goud on dating the Creation, evolutionary ' deep time' and the need for ecological ethics on a human scale. Novelist, medievalist and Web fanatic UmbertoEco on the breave new world of cyberspace, and its likely impact on memory, cultural continuity and access toknowledge. Catholic historian Jean Delumeau on how the Western Imagination has always been haunted by ideas of the Apocalypse. ScreenwriterJean- Claude Carriere on the 'art of slowness' and attitudes towardtime in non- Western cultures.'
The work nonetheless contains much interesting information and speculative matter.
One small piece from the work, the great Paleontologist Goud is asked " How do you see earth looking in a thousand years time? '
His answer is humble and refreshing.
" I don't see it. The things one can actually predict are not very interesting. The sun will continue to shine.. But the history of human beings-and that's what your question is about - consists only of unpredictable events. What we are least weel- placed to predict is technological evolution. I can't predict what will happen in fifty years, let alone in a thousand.. Culture evolves in a Lamarckian way, in that it allows the transmission of acquired characteristics. We directly transmit what we have learned to subsequent generations, which is why technological evolution is ultra- powerful, cumulative , directional ..

Conversations About the End of Time
Conversations About the End of Time is a a discussion of questions and answers given by four thinkers.Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere and Jean Delumeau all answer questions and are given a chapter in this book to espouse their respective answers.

Just think of a coffee table discussion, of a one on one discussion and you get to read the answers on questions of import.Each answering these questions with their respective insights and down-to-earth style.Each having their respective life experiences to draw from to unravel perplexing questions.

With fascination you read the thought-provoking answers.The answers will suprise some, others may be right inline with what you'd expect, but nerver boring... challenging, educational, lucid and erudite are more what you'd expect and you are not dissapointed.

This book reads fast and the questions are cogent with the general topic.Each respective thinker answers in a style of their own and the reader does not feel irrelevant.This is an interesting book in that questions asked make the reader think as well.

I found the book to be highly interesting and it has a fascination woven throughout the text captivating the reader.

Good guides!
Surely, we can't talk and think enough
about the state of mankind!
But these are hazardous waters! Where should we begin
and where do we want to go from there? So, Having
Gould and Eco as guides seems like a clever start!

According to the book, the hebrew language has
no exact present tense?? The infinitely brief, the
very essense of the present, is not to be found - it
can be neither fixed, nor measured. It is therefore
completely justifiable, grammaticale speaking,
to leave out the present?

Yet, obviously, it is from the present we look at the
past and towards the future.
Stephen Jay Gould is always a pleasure to listen to -
and the right one to put time into perspective.
For a palaeontologist, like Gould, 7000 years
(timespand of human culture) is really no more than
the twinkling of an eye. So all we know is really in
the present - which hardly exist!

From this position we look out into concepts like
the eternity - which we obviously really can't grasp.
And into ourselfes were e.g. DNA was discovered as recently
as 1953. Mystery upon mystery.
So, we struggle to discover instances of regularity and
to fit them together with the help of stories. We throw
in a little religion "were religions do not
ask questions, they answer them". Still we are far
removed from any real "understanding".

And that is what these conversations are about.
With Umberto Eco and Stephen Jay Gould - it is
of course an ok read. But only an appetizer.

-Simon

Hey mr. Gould stop making teachers into liars.
---------- ----------

I'm talking about that Darwinian theory of Natural Selection you keep telling as if it were true. It is "differential reproductive success". So then that means I need at least 2 different things to call some event NS. So then I ask myself what do these 2 different things have to do with each other? So then I say well either they influence each other's reproduction some way, or they could as well be in different environments. So they must influence each other's reproduction some way. So then I ask, what ways can the one influence the reproduction of the other?

+/- increase reproduction at cost of the other +/+ mutual increase of each other's reproduction -/- mutual decrease of each other's reproduction +/0 and so on -/0 0/0

but what you do, is pretend like there are only +/- relationships. You ignore all other type of relationships with NS. Your natural selection theory is false, for being unsystematic in describing the relationships between living beings. You make teachers into liars by it.

Intriguing thoughts about nature and the future of the world
Four thinkers (Gould, Eco, Jean Delumeau and Jean-Claude Carriere) cometogether to ponder questions about the end and beginning of the world andthe state of mankind and the planet in Conversations About the End of Time.Philosophy blends with science to provide some intriguing thoughts aboutthe nature and future of the world. ... Read more