Títulos en Historia y filosofía

En octubre de 1927, veintinueve de los científicos más brillantes del mundo se reunieron en el Quinto Congreso Solvay. Diecisiete de ellos acabarían recibiendo el premio Nobel. Aquel encuentro, inmortalizado en una célebre fotografía, marcó el comienzo de una revolución intelectual sin precedentes. Allí, figuras como Marie Curie, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger o Albert Einstein debatieron los fundamentos de la recién nacida teoría cuántica, una forma radicalmente nueva de entender la naturaleza.

Un estimulante ensayo sobre los cambios que el auge de la tecnología está operando en el ser humano... y los aún por llegar. Descartes creía que los organismos vivos son máquinas biológicas, sometidas como cualquier otra entidad física a las leyes del universo. Los seres humanos, en cambio, seríamos diferentes, poseedores de libre albedrío. Pero Rick Deckard, el protagonista del clásico Blade Runner, tenía serias dificultades para distinguir a un "replicante", un robot biológico, de un ser humano, y así no equivocarse a la hora de "retirar" (eufemismo de matar) a las "entidades electrónicas".

Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it help us understand why there is so much irrationality in the world? Steven Pinker, author of Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates’s "new favorite book of all time”) answers all the questions here Today humanity is reaching new heights of scientific...

In a contest of change, which century from the past millennium would come up trumps? Imagine the Black Death took on the female vote in a pub brawl, or the Industrial Revolution faced the internet in a medieval joust – whose side would you be on? In this hugely entertaining book, celebrated...

Bayes' rule appears to be a straightforward, one-line theorem: by updating our initial beliefs with objective new information, we get a new and improved belief. To its adherents, it is an elegant statement about learning from experience. To its opponents, it is subjectivity run amok. Sharon Bertsch McGrayne here explores this controversial theorem and the human obsessions surrounding it.

In the 1970s, amid severe cutbacks in physics funding, a small group of underemployed physicists in Berkeley decided to throw off the constraints of academia and explore the wilder side of science. Dubbing themselves the “Fundamental Fysiks Group,” they pursued a freewheeling, speculative approach to physics. Some dabbled with LSD while conducting experiments. They studied quantum theory alongside Eastern mysticism and psychic mind reading, discussing the latest developments while lounging in hot tubs.

In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association....

Der Energiesektor steckt inmitten einer industriellen Revolution. So wie die Dampfmaschine die Pferdekraft verdrängt hat, das Auto die Kutsche oder das Smartphone das Handy, stellen heute erneuerbare Energien, Batteriespeicher und Elektroautos weltweit die Märkte auf den Kopf. Aber warum findet diese Revolution statt – und wird sie erfolgreich sein?

Brought to you by Penguin. Journey through time and space with Bill Bryson in the best-selling popular science book of the 21st century, exploring the history of the Earth, the universe, and everything in between. NOW FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED IN THIS NEW ABRIDGED EDITION, READ BY THE AUTHOR...

In The Allure of the Multiverse, physicist Paul Halpern tells the epic story of how science became besotted with the multiverse, and the controversies that ensued. The questions that brought scientists to this point are big and deep: Is reality such that anything can happen, must happen? How does quantum mechanics "choose" the outcomes of its apparently random processes? And why is the universe habitable? Each question quickly leads to the multiverse. 

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.

From imaginary numbers to the perplexing order of operations we all had drilled into us, Eugenia Cheng—mathematician, writer and woman on a mission to rid the world of maths phobia—brings us maths as we've never seen it before, revealing how profound insights can emerge from seemingly unlikely sources. Written with intelligence and passion, Is Maths Real? is a celebration of the true, curious spirit of the discipline.

John Forbes Nash, Jr., a prodigy and legend by the age of 30, dazzled the mathematical world by solving a series of deep problems deemed "impossible" by other mathematicians. But at the height of his fame, Nash suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and began a harrowing descent into insanity, resigning his post at MIT, slipping into a series of bizarre delusions, and eventually becoming a dreamy, ghostlike figure at Princeton, scrawling numerological messages on blackboards.

Sam Harris has discovered that most people, from secular scientists to religious fundamentalists, agree on one point: science has nothing to say on the subject of human values. Indeed, science’s failure to address questions of meaning and morality has become the primary justification for religious faith.The underlying claim is that while science is the best authority on the workings of the physical universe, religion is the best authority on meaning, values, morality, and leading a good life.

Quand il était au collège, Jacques Bainville n'aimait pas l'histoire. Que discerner dans ce tissu de drames sans suite, cette mêlée, ce chaos...

Luis Íñigo nos ofrece una versión total de la alquimia, desde sus antecedentes en las doctrinas filosóficas del hermetismo, del gnosticismo, del pitagorismo y de la Escuela de Jonia hasta la actualidad en la que, si bien no se practica, sí que se han aprovechado sus hallazgos en medicina o en química. Nos muestra en el inicio del audiolibro las teorías de la alquimia, el trabajo de laboratorio de los alquimistas y los avances a los que llegaron con principios que aún pertenecen a la ciencia como el de causa y efecto.

Interweaving her vast knowledge of neurology, sociology, psychology, and philosophy with fascinating down-to-earth examples and lively personal anecdotes, developmental psychologist, neuroscientist, and dyslexia expert Wolf probes the question, "How do we learn to read and write?" This ambitious and provocative new book offers an impassioned look at reading, its effect on our lives, and explains why it matters so greatly in a digital era.

"In nome della mia ormai pluridecennale consuetudine con le piante, ho immaginato che queste care compagne di viaggio, come genitori premurosi, dopo averci reso possibile vivere, vengano a soccorrerci osservando la nostra incapacità a garantirci la sopravvivenza. Come? Suggerendoci una vera e propria costituzione su cui costruire il nostro futuro di esseri rispettosi della Terra e degli altri esseri viventi.

As the climate emergency worsens and biodiversity shrinks, we somehow get used to it. We struggle to remember what summers were like before the unrelenting heat, in those years before wildfires became an annual routine. We adapt, we normalize. Scientists call this "shifting baseline syndrome,"...

In Understanding Artificial Intelligence: Of Minds and Machines, philosopher Patrick Grim traces the story of AI from ancient legends to the neural networks behind today’s breakthroughs. You see how modern systems became so powerful so quickly. You also explore the very meaning of “intelligence,” discovering how modern AI succeeds by drawing on three resources: vast datasets that let systems learn from examples; deep-learning architectures loosely modeled on the brain’s layers; and feedback loops that help models refine their behavior.