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Seeing Further


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      Seeing Further

      THE STORY OF SCIENCE & THE ROYAL SOCIETY

      EDITED & INTRODUCED BY BILL BRYSON

      CONTRIBUTING EDITOR JON TURNEY

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       Copyright

      HarperPress

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk

      Visit our authors’ blog: www.fifthestate.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperPress in 2010

      Copyright © 2010 The Royal Society

      Introduction copyright © Bill Bryson 2010

      Individual contributions copyright © the individual

      authors 2010

      The individual authors assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007302567

      Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2010 ISBN: 9780007358007

      Version: 2019-01-15

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

      3 MARGARET WERTHEIM LOST IN SPACE: THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF NEWTONIAN COSMOLOGY

      5 REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN WHAT’S IN A NAME? RIVALRIES AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN SCIENCE

      6 SIMON SCHAFFER CHARGED ATMOSPHERES: PROMETHEAN SCIENCE AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY

      7 RICHARD HOLMES A NEW AGE OF FLIGHT: JOSEPH BANKS GOES BALLOONING

      8 RICHARD FORTEY ARCHIVES OF LIFE: SCIENCE AND COLLECTIONS

      9 RICHARD DAWKINS DARWIN’S FIVE BRIDGES: THE WAY TO NATURAL SELECTION

      10 HENRY PETROSKI IMAGES OF PROGRESS: CONFERENCES OF ENGINEERS

      11 GEORGINA FERRY X-RAY VISIONS: STRUCTURAL BIOLOGISTS AND SOCIAL ACTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

      12 STEVE JONES TEN THOUSAND WEDGES: BIODIVERSITY, NATURAL SELECTION AND RANDOM CHANGE

      13 PHILIP BALL MAKING STUFF: FROM BACON TO BAKELITE

      14 PAUL DAVIES JUST TYPICAL: OUR CHANGING PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE

      15 IAN STEWART BEHIND THE SCENES: THE HIDDEN MATHEMATICS THAT RULES OUR WORLD

      16 JOHN D. BARROW SIMPLE REALLY: FROM SIMPLICITY TO COMPLEXITY – AND BACK AGAIN

      17 OLIVER MORTON GLOBE AND SPHERE, CYCLES AND FLOWS: HOW TO SEE THE WORLD

      18 MAGGIE GEE BEYOND ENDING: LOOKING INTO THE VOID

      19 STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER CONFIDENCE, CONSENSUS AND THE UNCERTAINTY COPS: TACKLING RISK MANAGEMENT IN CLIMATE CHANGE

      20 GREGORY BENFORD TIME: THE WINGED CHARIOT

      21 MARTIN REES CONCLUSION: LOOKING FIFTY YEARS AHEAD

       Picture Acknowledgments

       Acknowledgments

       About the Publisher

       BILL BRYSON

      INTRODUCTION

      Bill Bryson is the internationally bestselling author of The Lost Continent, Mother Tongue, Neither Here Nor There, Made in America, Notes from a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods, Notes from a Big Country, Down Under, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and A Short History of Nearly Everything, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, won the Aventis Prize for Science Books in 2004, and was awarded the Descartes Science Communication Prize in 2005.

      I CAN TELL YOU AT ONCE THAT MY FAVOURITE FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY WAS THE REVEREND THOMAS BAYES, FROM TUNBRIDGE WELLS IN KENT, WHO LIVED FROM ABOUT 1701 TO 1761. HE WAS BY ALL ACCOUNTS A HOPELESS PREACHER, BUT A BRILLIANT MATHEMATICIAN. AT SOME POINT – IT IS NOT CERTAIN WHEN – HE DEVISED THE COMPLEX MATHEMATICAL EQUATION THAT HAS COME TO BE KNOWN